The Road

Sep 3, 2007 — It came from nowhere, it’s always been here—or so Stranger Than Paradise might seem.Jim Jarmusch had completed his first feature, Permanent Vacation, in 1980 and spent the next four years working on his second. Screened a few times as a...

Aug 14, 2006 — La collectionneuse is a strong, sensuously lush, deceptively slight film, a Riviera fruit with a bitter, uncompromising aftertaste. In retrospect, it is both classically Rohmeresque and atypical, as befits a film in which the director was still finding his way....

Jan 31, 2005 — Like the movie’s rattletrap trucks lurching down the highway as they carry way-too-heavy loads, the characters in Jules Dassin’s brilliantly volatile Thieves’ Highway struggle under psychological and moral baggage until they can lay their burdens down. Working from a novel...

May 15, 2000 — Vagabond has been called Agnès Varda’s Ulysses, and with good reason. The comparison with James Joyce’s era-defining epic novel extends well beyond a recognizable similarity between the two artists. Both writer and filmmaker occupy vanguard positions in the history of...

Nov 15, 1999 — Great comedy cannot be confined within normally accepted boundaries of taste and sensitivity. The essence of the Pythons was that they were always ready to take on formidable, daunting subjects that others might find too dangerous to contemplate. The idea...

Jun 21, 1999 — Despite what you may have heard, Armageddon is a work of art by a cutting-edge artist who is a master of movement, light, color, and shape—and also of chaos, razzle-dazzle, and explosion. (It was no surprise to me to learn...

Sep 14, 2016 — Asian-cinema expert Tony Rayns unpacks the significance of Zatoichi’s name and the strict social hierarchy that the character so gleefully upends.

Jun 9, 2016 — Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller has given us some of the most transcendent images ever captured on-screen. Since beginning his career in the late sixties, he has lensed a wealth of indelible moments—from Harry Dean Stanton wandering alone through the vast...

These stories of discovery and disillusionment capture lives transformed by the open road.

Sep 7, 2016 — Jenni Olson is an acclaimed filmmaker, writer, archivist, LGBT film historian, and online pioneer. Since premiering at Sundance in 2015, her innovative feature-length essay film The Royal Road, which reflects on an array of topics ranging from the Spanish colonization...