Almost Human

Aug 20, 2001 — I have known Torben Skjødt since 1983. His debut video Englefjæs—which I thought to be very accomplished—was presented during a film week in Silkeborg. A debut work, yes, but made with a self-assured maturity by a self-taught creator of images....

Dec 11, 2009 — This expansive tribute to the iconic Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai was first published on the Criterion Collection’s website in fall 2005, around the time of the Criterion releases of two films starring Nakadai: Kurosawa’s Ran and the less well-known samurai...

Sep 8, 2009 — “It’s not my fault that I’m Japanese . . . yet it’s my worst crime that I am!” The words are those of Kaji, hero of The Human Condition (1959–61), but in his anguish and existential despair, he also speaks...

Nov 12, 2007 — What is left of Berlin Alexanderplatz, this endless canon of the sublime and the trivial, is thus a perpetuum mobile of the human dance of love and death.

Oct 28, 2025 — An adaptation of a classic pulp novel by William Lindsay Gresham, Guillermo del Toro’s first foray into film noir is an intensely evocative exploration of how human impulses can give rise to monsters.

Aug 28, 2025 — Made for public television, this moving vérité documentary about three terminally ill cancer patients is one of the purest expressions of the director’s career-long preoccupation with human fragility.

Aug 12, 2024 — The great actor creates an unforgettable portrait of a man worn down by the world in Tamara Jenkins’s darkly funny and deeply moving family drama.

Jan 19, 2023 — The frequent collaborators talk about their close friendship, the paths that led them to each other, and the artistic values they share.

Dec 13, 2022 — A pioneering feminist artist drawn to universal themes, the Swedish director mined the complexity and humor of human behavior in films that courted controversy and cultivated a sense of detachment.

Aug 31, 2021 — Cary Joji Fukunaga’s devastating child-soldier movie unflinchingly captures the shock of war without forsaking the complexity of human experience.