The Little Gangster

Oct 28, 2017 — We begin with a few translations. Asymptote lives up to its own billing as “the premier site for world literature in translation” with the presentation of Adam Kuplowsky’s renderings in English of some observational work by Yasujiro Ozu. “These three...

Oct 14, 2017 — Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel is “a passionate comedic drama that unfolds some of the tones of Allen’s youth,” writes the New Yorker’s Richard Brody. “It’s set in the early nineteen-fifties, in Coney Island, and Allen lends the drama a structure...

Jul 27, 2017 — Venice International Film Festival director Alberto Barbara has presented the lineup for the seventy-fourth edition (August 30 through September 9) at a press conference in Rome. I’ve gathered notes and trailers.CompetitionAi Weiwei’s Human Flow. From the Hollywood Reporter’s Tatiana Siegel:...

Jul 15, 2017 — “The film’s tag line was ‘They share the same body . . . but hate each other’s guts!’ I was told that the timing was a coincidence, but even before the film began it was clear that this was a...

Sep 19, 2016 — If you consider noir as a global phenomenon, then films like Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le moko (1937), Jean Renoir’s La bête humaine (1938), and Carné’s Port of Shadows (1938) may be the first full harvest of this bitter crop.

May 12, 2016 — When director Amy Heckerling visited Criterion, she reflected on her days as a struggling filmmaker, the allure and disappointment of moving to the West Coast, and her love for old-Hollywood actors.

Aug 5, 2013 — For those of us who rank The Earrings of Madame de . . . at the top of our list of all-time favorite films, the mystery is why our passion isn’t universally shared. Every year, thanks to committed revival houses,...

Oct 25, 2011 — The film is made up of a succession of small visions, observed and executed with apparent ease but thought through with such exquisite care and attention that the experience becomes overwhelming.

Apr 12, 2011 — Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, drew a circle with a piece of red chalk and said: “When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever their diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come...

Aug 13, 2010 — The Docks of New York When John Grierson, the Scotsman whose absolute devotion to realism on film—he coined the word documentary and created the National Film Board of Canada—was asked how he’d enjoyed a screening of a now-lost Josef von Sternberg...