The Criterion Collection
Aug 11, 2020 — I’ve often found that the most successful short films and short stories apply what Ernest Hemingway called the “iceberg theory,” distilling a larger narrative into a very specific moment that allows audiences to infer the bigger picture in their own...
Jun 27, 2019 — Sergei Bondarchuk pulled out all the stops to bring Tolstoy’s sprawling vision to the screen, and the result remains one of the most extravagant epic films of all time.
The Daily
May 10, 2019 — The latest updates from Cannes, the Berlinale, Il Cinema Ritrovato, and beyond.
The Daily
Apr 29, 2019 — The festival will premiere new restorations of films by Luis Buñuel, Vittorio De Sica, Jean Renoir, Andrzej Wajda, and more.
Apr 29, 2019 — Sergio, the bourgeois Havana intellectual at the center of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s 1968 Memories of Underdevelopment, isn’t your typical movie protagonist. An idle, arrogant property owner with an easy swagger, Sergio is in many ways a rather distasteful individual, exploitative...
Jan 25, 2019 — Retrospectives in New York and Glasgow offer opportunities to catch up with or revisit the work of an outstanding director of comedies.
Dec 9, 2018 — Songbook The final scene of Robert Altman’s 1975 film Nashville belongs to the transient wannabe singer Albuquerque, played by the late Barbara Harris. Up to that point, the storyline has followed numerous musician characters who are striving to get discovered or bolster...
The Daily
Oct 16, 2017 — J. Hoberman will be at Light Industry in New York tomorrow evening to introduce a program of films he’s calling Against Riefenstahl: Charles A. Ridley’s The Lambeth Walk (1940), Frank Capra and Anatole Litvak’s Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike...
Essays
Dec 1, 2015 — Critic Todd McCarthy takes an inside look at Michael Ritchie's outdoor drama, which he calls “spare, cut to the bone, as fine as dry powder. Had Hemingway ever written about competitive skiing, this would have been the right style with...
Jun 7, 2015 — Critic Glenn Kenny reveals the connection between two classics: Nicolas Roeg’s film Don’t Look Now and Robert Wyatt’s album Rock Bottom.