American Romance

May 17, 2017 — Welcome to the first entry of the Daily at the Criterion Collection. For those of you who don’t know me, since 2003 I’ve been gathering links to essential—or simply fun—reading, news stories, and items of interest into a sort of...

Mar 1, 2017 — In his most seductive experiment with cinematic time, Richard Linklater wrestles with the joys and challenges of long-term intimacy.

Feb 17, 2017 — Did You See This? In a wide-ranging and moving new interview with online film magazine Bright Wall/Dark Room, Guillermo del Toro discusses the political power of art, the election of Donald Trump, and the way that film “exists in a...

Jan 23, 2017 — In his radical debut feature, Ousmane Sembène reveals the agony of the postcolonial experience through the story of a Senegalese migrant abused by her French employers.

Jan 9, 2017 — A feast of whip-smart banter, Howard Hawks’s protofeminist take on newsroom politics is the most grown-up of all remarriage comedies.

Nov 22, 2016 — The result of a notoriously troubled production, Marlon Brando’s unorthodox western presents a brooding vision of human futility.

Aug 14, 2016 — While considered to lie outside the highly policed boundaries of film noir, films like Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind and Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes nevertheless share many of noir’s stylistic and thematic tropes.

Jul 25, 2016 — In his masterful reimagining of the story of John Smith and Pocahontas, Terrence Malick meditates on the nature of beauty and America’s path from innocence to experience.

Jun 14, 2016 — Alexander Hall’s 1941 film showcased Robert Montgomery’s star power and, with its premise of a death revoked, provided much-needed comic relief to war-worried audiences.

Apr 27, 2016 — In Phoenix, Christian Petzold sets his nuanced melodrama of postwar German-Jewish identity within a starkly realist aesthetic, making newly fascinating use of his enduring interest in the tensions between the real and the artificial.