The Criterion Collection
May 23, 2012 — Iranian master director Abbas Kiarostami voyaged to Italy to make a film that questions love, relationships, and Western art cinema.
Essays
Sep 26, 2011 — Toward the end of Olivier Assayas's Carlos, a young French diplomat's wife goes to answer the door of their flat in Beirut and is greeted by a huge bunch of flowers—which immediately disappears to reveal a gun that shoots her...
Essays
Aug 18, 2009 — Jacques Tati’s masterpiece converts work into play so pleasurably that it turns the very acts of seeing and hearing into a form of dancing.
Sep 30, 2008 — 9 August 2008: I go to the neighborhood theater to see Snow Trail (a.k.a. To the End of the Silver Mountains, a.k.a. Ginrei no haté), a 1946 Senkichi Taniguchi film now revived because it was Toshiro Mifune’s second film. Revived...
Essays
Jun 18, 2007 — The audacious and outrageous political comedy by Yugoslav filmmaker Dušan Makavejev jolts viewers out of complacency and encourages freedom, creativity, and bliss.
Jun 13, 2005 — Ernst Lubitsch was a big-city director. The historical dramas that he made in Germany in the late 1910s and early 1920s were known around the world for their distinctively urbane approach, focusing on the private lives of public people. This...
Features
Jul 9, 2021 — A raucous, fast-talking diva, the actor had a remarkable ability to convey both glamour and silliness, a gift that made her the queen of screwball comedy before her untimely death in 1942.
Apr 24, 2015 — Atypical in style and subject, Yasujiro Ozu’s early crime dramas show a future master brilliantly experimenting with camera and editing.
Short Takes
Nov 5, 2015 — Director Guillermo del Toro isn’t shy about the wealth of influences that have shaped his dark and fantastical cinematic worlds. In a piece published earlier this month in the Guardian, the acclaimed Mexican filmmaker cited a range of inspirations for...
The Daily
Jun 10, 2026 — Early reviews of his thirty-fifth feature may be all over the place, but appreciation of the man himself is universal.