At Dawn

Sep 8, 2009 — “It’s not my fault that I’m Japanese . . . yet it’s my worst crime that I am!” The words are those of Kaji, hero of The Human Condition (1959–61), but in his anguish and existential despair, he also speaks...

Sep 3, 2007 — It came from nowhere, it’s always been here—or so Stranger Than Paradise might seem.Jim Jarmusch had completed his first feature, Permanent Vacation, in 1980 and spent the next four years working on his second. Screened a few times as a...

Mar 26, 2007 — Across five films, the Swedish director defined his guiding themes and cinematic style.

Oct 23, 2006 — The New Zealand director’s debut feature is a bridge between her tentative, probing film school works and her subsequent female character studies.

Oct 16, 2006 — Screenwriter Carlos Cuarón delves into the character played by Claudia Ramírez

May 22, 2006 — Barbara Kopple’s detailed analysis of a Kentucky mine workers’ strike is a virtual hub of urgent themes, formal tendencies, political debates, and material practices that define post-sixties documentary in America.

Jan 5, 2004 — “Sometimes I think of my death,” Kurosawa has written: “I think of ceasing to be . . . and it is from these thoughts that Ikiru came.” The story of a man who knows he is going to die, the...

Aug 18, 2003 — One of the Swedish director’s most representative works, this drama’s portentousness, banked intensity, and recondite symbolism come near to embodying the popular stereotype of the Bergmanesque.

Jun 18, 2001 — Bathed in scarlet hues, Ingmar Bergman’s period drama is his most daring attempt to achieve a dream state on film.

Jun 7, 1999 — From the moment of its first appearance, at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959—where it won the Palme d’Or—it was clear that Black Orpheus was a very special film. Taking the ancient Greek myth of a youth who travels to...