Mood of the Day

May 14, 2014 — The author recalls his meetings and correspondence with the uncompromisingly independent British director.

Aug 20, 2013 — Satyajit Ray’s delicate masterpiece about forbidden love in the late nineteenth century is lovingly adapted from a novella by the great Rabindranath Tagore.

Jun 12, 2017 — Informed by his work in theater and his travels through rural America, Nicholas Ray brought an outsider’s perspective to genre filmmaking in his debut feature.

Apr 9, 2013 — This essay by novelist, playwright, and culture critic Gary Indiana originally appeared in the 1992 book Everything Is Permitted: The Making of “Naked Lunch.” Burroughs’s work tends to affect people like a Rorschach test. It separates cultural conservatives from avant-gardists,...

Jan 11, 1999 — It was quite a surprise to learn that David Lean had not read Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations before he embarked on his film version in 1945. The closeness of the adaptation, the understanding of the characters, make one swear it...

Feb 23, 2016 — Without any overt topical references, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate captured the zeitgeist of the 1960s and the dawning countercultural revolution.

Apr 14, 2014 — Lars von Trier brought his brand of provocation to his widest audience yet with this inquiry into faith and human goodness.

Jun 8, 2022 — A major figure in contemporary Hindi literature pays tribute to Guru Dutt in this fantasia that reimagines the great filmmaker’s death.

May 11, 2020 — One Scene Over the course of four features and several shorts, Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker Matt Wolf has mined the histories hidden in archives, stitching together a rich and complicated view of twentieth-century America. He’s drawn to subjects that are misunderstood...

Nov 18, 2015 — On the night of the New York premiere of Gaspar Noé’s controversial new film Love, his 3D cinematic sex odyssey, the French-Argentine provocateur stopped by Criterion with the film’s star, Aomi Muyock.