The Son

May 20, 2009 — Iconoclasts are meant to kill their idols, and so it’s fitting that Shohei Imamura launched into his career as if on a patricidal rampage. Like Nagisa Oshima, the other towering figure of the Japanese New Wave, Imamura (1926–2006) rejected the...

After making his mark in the early thirties with two very different films, this French master closed out the decade with two humanistic studies of French society that routinely turn up on lists of the greatest films ever made.

Aug 18, 2008 — One of the most awarded films in Japanese history, Keisuke Kinoshita’s nostalgia piece unfolds a celebration of family values and scenic beauty.

Jan 22, 2007 — A delightfully old-fashioned morality tale, Robert Day’s low-budget space flick is far more than the standard monster fare it was initially sold as.

Nov 6, 2006 — The circumstances of our first encounters with movies are often as memorable as the movies themselves. Sometimes the juxtaposition of movie and circumstance seems merely accidental; but there are those films that change us enough that we can identify the...

Nov 21, 2005 — Akira Kurosawa’s late masterpiece is a tragedy fed by Shakespeare, Noh, and the samurai epic; it shows human brutality, warfare, and suffering as if from the eye of a dispassionate God.

Jan 31, 2005 — With this early work, Bernardo Bertolucci confidently demonstrated the instinctive lyricism and sensuality that in his maturity would become his very own signature.

Jul 19, 2004 — In Yasujiro Ozu’s hands, the extended-family drama widened its focus to encompass friends, neighbors, and employers.

Aug 18, 2003 — One of the Swedish director’s most representative works, this drama’s portentousness, banked intensity, and recondite symbolism come near to embodying the popular stereotype of the Bergmanesque.

Mar 28, 2022 — Rosine Mbakam’s documentaries are exercises in reconfiguring relations of power. Her first three nonfiction features are all portraits of Cameroonian women, each of whom is invited to participate in coconstructing a cinematic space of testimony, candor, and expressive autonomy. Filmed...