The Wonders

Jan 31, 2017 — Brooklyn-based director Tim Sutton stopped by for a visit and sat down to chat about the films that have inspired his work and the importance of maintaining an outsider’s point of view.

Nov 19, 2007 — Akira Kurosawa explores criminal machismo in his seventh film, which he felt was his official breakthrough in Japanese cinema.

Sep 9, 2002 — With her debut feature, Lynne Ramsay confirmed herself as one of the most distinct and important voices to emerge from the United Kingdom in recent years.

Nov 12, 1990 — For a twenty-seven-year-old director with a smattering of television experience and only one prior feature, Steven Spielberg demonstrated an awesome mastery of the film medium when his first big production hit the screen in 1975. An instant and certifiable phenomenon,...

May 13, 2014 — Few national cinemas have confronted the issue of preparedness for war with the creative vigor of England’s. Thorold Dickinson’s The Next of Kin (1942), Alberto Cavalcanti’s Went the Day Well? (1942, from a story by Graham Greene), and, of course,...

Jun 16, 2010 — What seems so extraordinary to me about Mystery Train, watching it again twenty years after its deadpan arrival, is not just how fresh and vivid—how utterly timeless—it remains but the extent to which it truly embraces both the myth and...

Jan 27, 2007 — Despite all the hype (or maybe because of it), it wasn’t that hard to get into the films I wanted to see. Standing on the last minute wait line worked for me every time, although that might say something for...

Sep 23, 2002 — In 1940 and 1941, David O. Selznick won back-to-back Academy Awards for Best Picture. In 1942, unsurprisingly, he was depressed. His wife, Irene, persuaded him to seek help, and, less than one year later, hale and hardy, he was eager...

Apr 3, 1989 — If the notion of “fiftes science-fiction films” conjures up pictures of scantily clad women defending their virtue against rubber-suited aliens, it is not for want of exceptions. MGM’s Forbidden Planet remains the most remarkable of these, a glossy, relatively high-budget...

Jan 9, 2017 — The glittering surfaces of classic fairy tales often mask undercurrents of emotional torment, spiritual foreboding, and moral transgression. This week, our latest series on the Criterion Channel, Happily Ever After?, showcases the deviant forces lurking within some of cinema’s most...