The Blade

Dec 11, 2009 — This expansive tribute to the iconic Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai was first published on the Criterion Collection’s website in fall 2005, around the time of the Criterion releases of two films starring Nakadai: Kurosawa’s Ran and the less well-known samurai...

Aug 5, 2022 — We wrap the week with melodrama and Odorama, a new magazine, and the summer of 1982.

Jul 30, 2013 — Guillermo del Toro’s ghostly fable beautifully reflects the director’s fascination with the personal and the political.

Nov 2, 2021 — As Denis Villeneuve prepares Dune: Part Two, writers delve into the religious and political ideas that inform the new franchise.

Aug 20, 2019 — With The Hired Hand, Fonda created a classic of the new era ushered in by Easy Rider.

Sep 18, 2017 — Hong Sang-soo has begun shooting his twenty-second feature, reports the Yonhap News Agency. This one stars Kim Min-hee and Kwon Hae-hyo, both of whom appeared in Hong’s Cannes competition entry, The Day After. Kwon's management agency tells Yonhap: “We understand...

May 19, 2017 — “Although the word ‘overkill’ can be used to describe practically any of Takashi Miike’s films,” begins Maggie Lee in Variety, “in some ways, the director’s brutal, 2½-hour sword-fight fantasy Blade of the Immortal takes the notion to another level. For...

Dec 19, 2023 — Year’s end brings new translations of Serge Daney and Jean Cocteau and new books on Francis Ford Coppola and Jia Zhangke.

Aug 10, 2023 — “You’re the company I waited so long for,” Dr. Rosetta Stone (Tilda Swinton) says to her three Self Replicating Automatons in Teknolust (2002), artist Lynn Hershman Leeson’s sci-fi farce about a scientist’s well-meaning pursuit of artificial life. Stone’s color-coded clones...

Jul 6, 2020 — Songbook In the blue moonlight of a humid December night, an escape is underway. A man in army fatigues runs from an open-air cell with a rolled-up rug in one hand and a sword in the other, stolen from someone...