† This is the Life

Sep 18, 2000 — Serving as codirector with Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard found one of the finest roles of his career in this witty adaptation written by George Bernard Shaw.

Jun 5, 1995 — Kenji Mizoguchi departed abruptly from his earlier sentimental films into a world of acute realism with this bold critique of the position of women in contemporary Japanese society.

Nov 15, 1994 — Andrzej Wajda’s third full-length film established the director as a leader of the new Polish cinema.

Dec 28, 1993 — In his touchstone of postwar Japanese cinema, Kenji Mizoguchi uses woman’s fate to reveal the human cost of oppression.

Dec 19, 1993 — The first above-ground picture made by John Waters was a cinematic breakthrough more profound than Dolby sound or Cinerama.

Jan 5, 1993 — All right, I’ll just say it. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the most sublimely irreverent, most jaw-droppingly hysterical movie of the last twenty years. How many films, after all, have Knights who say “Ni!,” filth-eating peasants, and 160...

Jun 16, 1992 — Of the 18 movies made by the filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, none was as personally and artistically fulfilling as The Tales of Hoffmann. This dazzling screen adaptation of the Offenbach opera—a visual, sonic, and sensual delight—marked...

Nov 30, 1991 — Starring Jack Nicholson and Candice Bergen, Mike Nichols’s provocative drama is about sex without relationships and eroticism.

Dec 9, 1990 — Michael Powell’s war thriller ranks alongside Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent as one of the two finest amalgams of suspense and propaganda to grace the big screen during the years 1939-45.

Feb 11, 1990 — Bob Rafelson’s ultimate road movie is a relaxed masterpiece, a film of laid-back innovation that hasn’t aged one iota since its original release.