That Most Important Thing: Love

Jul 16, 2021 — The spotlight this week is on Sara Driver, Jacques Tati, Bill Duke, Lizzie Borden, and Nobuhiko Obayashi.

Jun 20, 2017 — At the dawn of sound cinema, French theater titan Marcel Pagnol immortalized his epic vision of his native Provence in three exquisite humanist dramas.

Sep 19, 2011 — Jean-Luc Godard, lover of paradox, once characterized Claude Chabrol’s Les cousins (1959) as “a deeply hollow and therefore profound film,” a pronouncement, like so many of the pithy mots Godard used to reel off in the pages of Cahiers du...

Jan 26, 2026 — The new year brings an ode to Judy Garland, conversations with Martin Scorsese, and a novel by John Sayles.

Jan 17, 2007 — This week, Border Radio was released on DVD. The film is the post-UCLA film school project of first-time directors Allison Anders, Kurt Voss, and Dean Lent. Yesterday, we got a note from a fan who wrote a really thoughtful, personal...

May 22, 2006 — Luis Buñuel’s merciless satire concerns the smallness of our vision of progress and our narrow attempts to achieve it through rational or moralistic planning.

Dec 7, 2010 — In 1981, it seemed to me that a new era of fantastic cinema was upon us.

Jun 21, 2024 — An underrated figure of Japanese cinema’s postwar era, the director tackled a wide range of subjects over his long career, including corporate double-dealing, government espionage, and various forms of fanaticism.

Aug 21, 2019 — One Scene One of my absolute favorite quotes from Douglas Sirk—and he has a million of ’em—was made in reference to Magnificent Obsession. “It is a combination of kitsch and craziness and trashiness,” he said (this isn’t the quote quite...

Oct 15, 2050 — Voice-over narration has existed since the beginnings of cinema and has been an integral part of some of the great masterworks of narrative film, from The Magnificent Ambersons to Double Indemnity to Jules and Jim to Taxi Driver. It spans...