This Is Not a Film

Oct 23, 2006 — Throughout the sixties and seventies, the Italian director created a series of political dramas that were at once provocations, exposés, puzzles, and acts of virtu­osity.

Oct 16, 2006 — Alfonso Cuarón’s first film—a sex farce that pokes fun at Mexican culture, including a public-service AIDS campaign—emerged from Mexico’s beleaguered state funding system for cinema, and was initially shelved by the government.

Oct 24, 2005 — The hero in Masahiro Shinoda’s popular samurai movie is both a genre figure and an ordinary character, both killer and savior, both larger than life and lost in the mists.

Jun 3, 2002 — Ronald Neame’s character study examines a talented, eccentric artist, who is also difficult, conniving, uncouth, and thoroughly disreputable.

Oct 9, 2000 — One of the most meticulously crafted supernatural fantasy films ever made, Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan (1964) is also one of the most unusual. While such classic black and white chillers as The Uninvited, The Innocents and The Haunting teasingly speculate on...

Dec 31, 1999 — As a tour de force of screen acting, Autumn Sonata stands unchallenged as the finest work of Ingmar Bergman’s last few years as a movie director. Fanny and Alexander may have won the Oscars, but Autumn Sonata represents Bergman’s chamber...

Dec 4, 1995 — While Carol Reed’s psychological noir is the most compassionate of movies, it’s a poetic summary of twentieth century harshness—of what can be called the inhuman condition.

Dec 11, 1989 — Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic divided film history into that which came before and that which was possible after its epochal appearance.

Sep 5, 1988 — A wild mixture of gangster thriller, slapstick comedy, and bittersweet romance, François Truffaut’s second film was one of the signal works of the French New Wave.

Sep 24, 2026 — The elegantly crafted portmanteau films Quartet, Trio, and Encore adapt twelve spellbinding tales of deception and passion from one of the best-selling authors of the twentieth century.