The Comic

May 16, 2019 — Within a brisk seventy-seven minutes, Dupieux and Jean Dujardin escort us into the mind of a potential psychopath.

May 21, 2018 — Movies you may not care about are inspiring some writing you won’t want to ignore.

Apr 17, 2018 — “Almost every Steven Spielberg movie has its antecedent in a TV show, a movie serial or a comic book,” wrote Michael Sragow when he spoke with Spielberg for Rolling Stone in 1981. “The one he feels [Raiders of the Lost...

Mar 28, 2018 — A touchstone of contemporary independent cinema since its release in 2007, Frownland makes its debut on the Criterion Channel this week. Here’s an excerpt from a new conversation with director Ronald Bronstein.

Nov 2, 2017 — Two leading figures in American independent cinema talk about the challenges of bringing their visions to life on shoestring budgets.

May 17, 2016 — Juxtaposing a vision of a stark, primitive existence on a remote Japanese island with that country’s vast twentieth-century modernization, Kaneto Shindo reveals Japan’s postwar paradoxes and makes a case for its essential, immutable character.

Oct 13, 2015 — Divorce wreaks a particularly devastating form of havoc in David Cronenberg's personal take on the dissolution of a marriage.

Jun 24, 2014 — In 1964, Richard Lester harnessed the Beatles’ exploding superstardom for a giddy day-in-the-life pop masterpiece.

Apr 23, 2013 — Who is Pierre Etaix and where has he been all your life? This is the story of a filmmaker who was vanished, banished, skipped over. It’s as if one of those invisible cubicles mimes are always getting themselves shut in...

Aug 20, 2007 — In the mid-sixties, Luis Buñuel became fascinated by the youth rebellion that culminated with the events of May 1968 in Paris and also manifested itself in music, fashion, opposition to institutions, family, and state. Buñuel felt that the forces of...