The Criterion Collection
Oct 2, 2014 — People struggle to escape their socially dictated roles in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s moving, Douglas Sirk–inspired melodrama.
Essays
Sep 24, 2014 — Roman Polanski’s dark vision is the perfect fit for Shakespeare’s grim tale of treachery and ambition.
Sep 2, 2014 — The following is excerpted from the book-length study Terence Davies, out September 8. See the bottom of the post for a clip of the scene it describes. Excerpt copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois...
Jul 29, 2014 — The writer and director is inspired by Lawrence Kasdan’s classic comic drama to consider the joys and disappointments of the baby boomer generation that begot her.
Jul 24, 2014 — Everyday life gets a musical makeover in Jacques Demy’s tale of chance and love, a film of exquisitely sad happiness.
Jun 27, 2014 — The American war in Vietnam was officially divided into two halves: the military war and “the other war: the war to win the hearts and minds of the people,” which gives Peter Davis’s 1974 documentary its title. Whereas the aim...
Essays
Apr 8, 2014 — In telling the story of the young outcast Antoine Doinel, François Truffaut was moving both backward and forward in time—recalling his own experience while forging a filmic language that would grow more sophisticated throughout the 1960s.
Feb 25, 2014 — A testament to Steven Soderbergh’s versatility, this story of a boy growing up during the Great Depression is a tender but tough-minded look at a child’s inner world.
Dec 3, 2013 — This scathing drama about a toxic society established Elio Petri as an important director of popular political entertainment in Italy.
Nov 18, 2013 — When Tokyo Story was released in late 1953, Western audiences were just being exposed to Japanese cinema. Akira Kurosawa had made his breakthrough with Rashomon three years earlier, and Kenji Mizoguchi was moving to the forefront of the international festival...