The Criminal

Feb 12, 2019 — In a stark, forbidding prison, a nun ascends a staircase, framed by vertical bars, and walks down a corridor, unlocking cell doors. Women start coming out; two of them quarrel. Smoking on her bunk, one inmate sighs when told she...

Apr 24, 2015 — Atypical in style and subject, Yasujiro Ozu’s early crime dramas show a future master brilliantly experimenting with camera and editing.

Nov 16, 2008 — Chungking Express (1994) was the Masculin féminin of the 1990s, a pop-art movie about cool twentysomethings looking for love in the city that has replaced Paris as the center of the world-cinema imagination. What Jean-Luc Godard did for “the children...

Dec 12, 2023 — In the history of cinema, French director Albert Lamorisse is a unique figure. His intense focus on three subjects—children, animals, and flight—is distinctive, and the fact that all of his works clock in under ninety minutes (and most under an...

Aug 6, 2019 — The groundbreaking filmmaker had a hand in inventing—and then reinventing over and again—the modern documentary.

Jan 17, 2014 — The bravura centerpiece of Jules Dassin’s model heist thriller, Rififi, is the elaborately staged burglary itself—a nearly half-hour sequence without dialogue. With surgical precision, the film’s career criminals go about their business in silence—a brilliant directorial choice that leaves us...

Dec 6, 2018 — Adam McKay’s Vice leads the Golden Globe nominations as critics write up their lists of the best of 2018.

Apr 17, 2006 — Another movie, another cause célèbre: this mysterious film by Orson Welles has been dismissed as a disaster and hailed as a masterpiece.

Oct 3, 2018 — Denis’s first feature in English—and her first foray into science fiction—stars Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche.

Apr 16, 2013 — With its idiosyncratic humor, killer soundtrack, and middle finger to Reagan-era politics, Alex Cox’s film was the perfect cult hit for the golden age of the video store.