The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 19, 2019 — In 1989, film critic Raphaël Bassan coined the term cinéma du look. Describing a tendency in French cinema that had begun in the early eighties and would continue into the nineties, Bassan identified commonalities in the work of Jean-Jacques Beineix,...
The Daily
Nov 18, 2019 — A new restoration of the novelist and critic’s debut feature opens in New York on Friday.
Nov 18, 2019 — One of the most ambitious feature debuts in recent cinema, Hu Bo’s An Elephant Sitting Still is a daunting challenge for any viewer: not only does this nearly four-hour cri de coeur plunge audiences into the spiritual desolation of China’s...
Visual Analysis
Nov 17, 2019 — Under the Influence As an aspiring filmmaker in the early nineties, Ira Sachs first sat down to watch Chantal Akerman’s 1975 feature debut, Je tu il elle, about an adrift young woman (played by the director herself) grasping for human connection. At the...
Nov 16, 2019 — Greg Mottola’s irresistible first feature, the dysfunctional-family odyssey The Daytrippers, is one of the great stories of 1990s low-budget independent filmmaking. Shot for $60,000 on Super 16 mm in just seventeen days—with up-and-coming cast members like Parker Posey, Liev Schreiber, Hope...
Features
Nov 15, 2019 — It’s a strange feeling: adoring cinema while at the same time always sensing that it’s not made for you. This is how I felt growing up, at least. I came of age watching movies, crushing on them so hard that...
The Daily
Nov 14, 2019 — Curators Richard Peña and Livia Bloom Ingram bring nine “under the radar” titles by independent American filmmakers to the Cinémathèque française.
The Daily
Nov 13, 2019 — TIFF Cinematheque presents an eclectic selection of eleven films by the Japanese director.
On the Channel
Nov 12, 2019 — Thai filmmaker Sorayos Prapapan’s Death of the Sound Man begins with a black screen accompanied by the mysterious but unmistakably sexual sound of someone slurping. Shortly after, the first shot reveals a young man in a sound booth fellating a...
Nov 12, 2019 — The Daytrippers came out in theaters in 1997, back when I was in graduate school at NYU. That was a year when you could rent videotapes everywhere—at Blockbuster, but also at a Laundromat or a bodega. There were still phone booths...