People on Sunday

Sep 8, 2016 — Mike Leigh’s 1990 comedy Life Is Sweet, showing at the Trylon microcinema as part of a monthlong retrospective of the director’s early films, presents an intimate portrait of working-class life in Thatcher-era north London.

May 11, 2015 — The poignancy of Leo McCarey's tearjerker is due as much to the director's scrupulous aesthetic choices as his unforgettable characters and story.

Apr 14, 2015 — Before he turned Vienna into a labyrinth of shadows with The Third Man, Carol Reed brought film noir to Belfast for this stylishly fatalistic tale of a man caught up in political violence.

Feb 25, 2014 — A testament to Steven Soderbergh’s versatility, this story of a boy growing up during the Great Depression is a tender but tough-minded look at a child’s inner world.

Aug 13, 2013 — John Frankenheimer burrows into the insidious side of the American sixties in his visually dazzling thriller.

Jul 16, 2013 — Theater legend Peter Brook’s approach to bringing the classic fable about human savagery to the screen was radical in its straightforwardness.

Mar 24, 2011 — Costumer Lindy Hemming began her decades-long collaboration with Mike Leigh at London’s Hampstead Theater Club, where the director, with his now legendary method of extended improvisation, was guiding his company toward what would become, in April 1977, Abigail’s Party. “At...

Feb 22, 2011 — Andrea Arnold seemed to emerge out of nowhere with Red Road (2006), her revelatory, shrewdly observed debut feature about voyeurism and sexual revenge. That film won Arnold multiple awards, and she had already earned an Oscar for her short Wasp...

Oct 29, 2009 — In the spirit of the season, we asked a select coven of horror mavens (including a couple of our own) to write about their favorite Criterion scarefests. Chuck StephensEquinox: The Eyebrows of Mr. Asmodeus There are myriad ways into Equinox,...

Jan 22, 2007 — Forget the Beatles vs. Elvis: for me the world is divided into Karloff people and Lugosi people, and I’m in the Karloff clique. Bela Lugosi’s oversize mannerisms and thickly accented drawl have always seemed camp to me, while Boris Karloff’s...