Genius

May 10, 2016 — Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place imbues the conventions of film noir with a subtle, tense vulnerability that lends a naturalistic weight to the film’s powerful emotional impact.

Mar 23, 2016 — We had come to expect Chantal Akerman’s periodic gifts of small and large cinematic gems. Certain of this flow, we were devastated when, all too abruptly, we were forced to think of her latest film, so beautiful, as her last.

Feb 18, 2016 — The Kid marked Charlie Chaplin’s wholehearted embrace of sentiment, which he intertwined with the slapstick he was known for to enrich his Tramp character and carry the narrative of feature-length directorial debut.

Feb 5, 2016 — The Emigrants and The New Land, the incredible pair of films made by Swedish director Jan Troell in the early 1970s, remain among the most authentic and powerful portrayals of the mid-nineteenth-century wave of emigration from Europe to the United...

Oct 19, 2015 — Last week, Joel and Ethan Coen accompanied T Bone to Criterion to talk about the music on Inside Llewyn Davis.

Jul 14, 2015 — Carroll Ballard’s film is a work of rapture, a mesmerizing adventure that envelops the viewer in the beauties of the natural world.

Jul 7, 2015 — Our recollections of Robert Siodmak’s 1946 movie The Killers are apt to center on three primary elements: Ernest Hemingway’s story, so literally brought to the screen in the film’s opening scenes; Ava Gardner, carrying the full weight of that late-forties...

May 22, 2015 — It is one of my most strongly held critical beliefs that you should not write about films you don’t like. First, it is bad for the soul to exult in pointing out the deficiencies of the film in question. Second,...

May 21, 2015 — Repertory PicksWhen cinematographic genius Max Ophuls made his first Technicolor, CinemaScope extravaganza (also, sadly, his last, due to his death), he pulled out all the stops. Lola Montès, his ravishing biopic of the notorious nineteenth-century courtesan, is the kind of...

Dec 11, 2014 — The opening installment of Terry Gilliam’s “Trilogy of Imagination” reminds us we’d be better off if we paid more attention to the kid’s-eye view of things.