Just Play Dead

Jan 12, 2016 — In German filmmaker Wim Wenders’s high-strung thriller, adapted from two Patricia Highsmith novels, Dennis Hopper plays sociopathic con man Tom Ripley as a “hopped-up elf from hell” who works his charms on a winsome and guileless Bruno Ganz.

Nov 4, 2015 — In the midst of a tumultuous period in his life and career, Ingmar Bergman made one of his most ebullient comedies.

Sep 28, 2015 — Rarely has schizophrenia been closer to the surface of American cinema than in the transitional period of 1968–71. Hollywood had just abandoned its censorship code after nearly thirty-five years, and the behemoth studios were heaving and rattling into oblivion or...

Aug 17, 2015 — François Truffaut’s love letter to the movies is a lightheartedly self-reflexive symphony of camera movement and musical flourish.

Jul 13, 2015 — “I think that in a few years, in ten, in twenty, or thirty years, we shall know whether Hiroshima mon amour was the most important film since the war, the first modern film of sound cinema.” That was Eric Rohmer,...

May 27, 2015 — Costa-Gavras’s political drama sheds disturbing light on the violent methods used by governments to maintain order.

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,...

Jan 20, 2015 — Here he is: the real, unreal Guy Maddin, in his phantasmagorical, polymathic stew of sex, memory, and dreams.

Oct 21, 2014 — Federico Fellini’s frantic tragicomedy is such a classic it risks being underestimated.

Oct 16, 2014 — This past August, on the occasion of Volker Schlöndorff’s being selected for a Silver Medallion award by the Telluride Film Festival, Criterion’s Peter Becker talked with the German filmmaker about his long career. A short version of the conversation was...