The Medium

Nov 30, 2009 — The following essay was originally written for Criterion’s website in 2005, on the occasion of the DVD release of Powell and Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffmann. We have posted it here to coincide with BFI Southbank’s ongoing Hein Heckroth exhibition...

Mar 4, 2002 — Wong Kar-wai’s biggest commercial success to date elevated him to the mainstream of international art house cinema, and it echoes the end of an era with pure melancholic power.

Jun 13, 1988 — G. W. Pabst lends humanity and depth to his adaptation of a play by Bertolt Brecht—one of the last great works of German cinema's richest period.

Dec 6, 1987 — Mike Nichols’s treatment of a young man’s initiation into the mysteries of sex at the hands of an older married woman has become a model for this common fantasy.

Dec 10, 2025 — To celebrate the centennial of Battleship Potemkin, the Austrian Film Museum presents a near-complete retrospective.

Dec 5, 2025 — New issues of Cineaste and Found Footage Magazine are among this week’s highlights.

Nov 18, 2025 — Though the first two decades of the Iranian filmmaker’s career have long been underappreciated, this fertile period yielded philosophical and restlessly innovative works that reinvigorated both documentary and narrative-fiction cinema.

Nov 4, 2025 — The director of La commune and The War Game shook up viewers with dramatizations historical conflicts and imminent futures.

Jun 16, 2025 — The New York theater screens films by Miranda July, William Lustig, D. A. Pennebaker, and Yasujiro Ozu.

Jan 30, 2025 — The next four days see the spotlights hit Frederick Wiseman, Jerry Schatzberg, Chantal Akerman, and more.