The Criterion Collection
Jun 28, 2016 — This excerpt of a 1974 episode of the French television program Italiques offers a candid look at the eccentric artist behind René Laloux’s surreal, countercultural sci-fi classic.
Short Takes
Jun 21, 2016 — For more than thirty years, Taiwanese cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bin has been collaborating with some of the greatest living filmmakers. Although best known for his work with director Hou Hsiao-hsien on films such as A Time to Live, a Time...
Jun 21, 2016 — Animated in Czechoslovakia amid a Soviet invasion, the French film Fantastic Planet, the third collaboration between René Laloux and Roland Topor, timelessly renders its surreal sci-fi story of captivity and resistance.
In Theaters
Jun 16, 2016 — Repertory PicksThis week, Miloš Forman’s 1965 masterwork Loves of a Blonde will close out the series Female Sexuality in European Cinema at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz theater in Austin, Texas. This three-act Czech New Wave classic offers a tender portrait...
Jun 15, 2016 — Although afflicted by on-set drama and offscreen tragedy, Jean Renoir’s La Chienne shows the director’s early mastery of sound cinema and features the trademarks that would come to define his style.
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.
Short Takes
Jun 7, 2016 — “One of the discoveries of the road movies was not only that you could travel and work and make a film at the same time, and improvise it, but that rock and roll could also be, in the true sense,...
Jun 7, 2016 — Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1955 feature about a group of Turinese women plays on the themes of the novel it was adapted from, while showcasing the developing style of the soon-to-be legendary director.
Short Takes
Jun 6, 2016 — For the Paris Review’s site, Dante A. Ciampaglia writes about the midcentury film writing of artist-writer-poet-filmmaker and all-around New York legend Jonas Mekas. For more than half a century, Mekas, now ninety-three, has been changing the landscape of experimental film,...
Jun 4, 2016 — Wim Wenders’s road movies, Michael Almereyda writes, are “at once minimal and romantic, austere and lyrical,” focusing on questions—of individuals and society, culture and nature—that Wenders has returned to throughout his career.