The Confined

Sep 11, 2018 — There is a brief, nearly throwaway scene early in Olivier Assayas’s Cold Water (1994) that testifies to the transcultural power of rock and roll. In an apartment outside Paris in 1972, we see two teenage brothers wrestling over a portable...

Jun 19, 2013 — Disorienting, brutal, and bloody beautiful, František Vláčil’s epic is a dark medieval vision teeming with cinematic invention.

Feb 9, 2009 — Luis Buñuel’s ferociously brilliant The Exterminating Angel (1962) is one of his most provocative and unforgettable works. In it, we watch a trivial breach of etiquette transform into the destruction of civilization. Not only does this story undermine our confidence...

Jul 21, 2008 — Akira Kurosawa’s modern adaptation of an American thriller represents a departure from his usual themes and stylistic choices.

Jun 12, 1991 — I didn’t get very far with my first script collaborator, Kuba Goldberg. Then Jerzy Skolimowski appeared on the scene.

Jan 29, 2026 — Critics have taken a liking to the new films from Olivia Wilde, Padraic McKinley, and John Wilson.

Mar 3, 2025 — His range was astounding, and yet every performance was immediately recognizable as uniquely his.

Aug 27, 2018 — Theater and movie audiences laughed at his one-liners throughout the 1960s and ’70s.

Mar 18, 2025 — In what he described as his “first serious drama,” Charlie Chaplin channeled the influence of modernist literature, foreign cinema, and his European travels into a work of striking formal sophistication.

Aug 24, 2021 — Andrzej Wajda’s masterful portrait of postwar Poland pits Communist ideals against the bitter realities of a new order.