First Love

Oct 14, 2008 — Okay, quiz time. What does the music video for Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” have to do with the Criterion Collection? Give up? Well, it was shot by none other than ace director of photography Christopher Doyle, whose work is being brought...

Feb 10, 2003 — The poet Paul Eluard says that to understand my film version of Beauty and the Beast, you must love your dog more than your car. Ordinarily, I would settle for that. However, with so much being written about the film...

Jun 26, 2000 — Brief Encounter was the fourth and final film that David Lean made in association with Noël Coward. Derived from Still Life, a one-act play which Coward included in the portmanteau Tonight 8:30, the story tells of a suburban housewife, Laura...

Sep 8, 1998 — In David Lean’s Summertime, in which Rossano Brazzi seduces Katharine Hepburn—an aging, repressed Ohio “working girl” on vacation in Venice—the Continental lover reached his pinnacle and approached his end. In the next decade, he would be embodied by Marcello Mastroianni,...

The actor and producer praises the groundbreaking work of martial-arts legends Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, shares her love for Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, and remembers the thrill of seeing The Grifters for the first time.

The celebrated actors and costars of The Return recommend favorites to each other, share their love for Andrei Tarkovsky and Orson Welles, and discover such Eclipse box sets as The First Films of Samuel Fuller and Basil Dearden’s London Underground.

The legendary actor shares his love for the Akira Kurosawa classics Red Beard and Ikiru, recalls how Tatsuya Nakadai was his teacher when he first began acting, admires the visual storytelling of City Lights, and shouts out his latest collaborator,...

Nov 26, 2025 — This short week brings writing on Wong Kar Wai’s first series and Kubrick’s and Pasolini’s last features.

Nov 18, 2025 — Though the first two decades of the Iranian filmmaker’s career have long been underappreciated, this fertile period yielded philosophical and restlessly innovative works that reinvigorated both documentary and narrative-fiction cinema.

Feb 14, 2025 — The director of Down with Love talks about his favorite romantic comedies set in the great metropolis and looks back on the making of his own foray into the genre.