Only Good Things

Sep 27, 2019 — Charlie Chaplin gave The Circus (1928) one of his favorite themes, some of his most sublime gags, and an incomparably poignant ending. It’s a hugely personal work, which draws on moments from his whole career, from his early stage work...

Sep 20, 2019 — In the winter of 1981, when I was young, I fell madly in love with a handsome poet. About two weeks into our affaire de cœur, we went to the Thalia on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to see...

Sep 17, 2019 — Also this month: Hollywood stars writing and reading and a novel that reimagines the intertwined lives of Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahl.

Sep 9, 2019 — In his thought-provoking latest book, the critic and frequent Criterion contributor traces the complex ways European filmmakers have grappled with the influences of Christianity and modernity.

Sep 2, 2019 — Dark Passages Thieves’ Highway A hay cart trundles through a sunny field above Fresno, California, in the opening shot of Thieves’ Highway. This is not an image you expect to see in film noir, which most often breeds in cities, alienated from the...

Aug 30, 2019 — In 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, after being censured for its invasion of Manchuria. Despite this, the majority of Japanese people remained avid consumers of American movies and Western fashion, which exasperated the militarists in power. A...

Aug 27, 2019 — In 1986, having made a number of child-centered films in his position as the head of the filmmaking division at Iran’s Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (an organization Iranians call Kanoon), Abbas Kiarostami accepted a...

Aug 20, 2019 — With The Hired Hand, Fonda created a classic of the new era ushered in by Easy Rider.

Aug 14, 2019 — There is a scene in Henry King’s State Fair (1933) that ranks among the most poetic moments in all of 1930s American cinema. There is not much to it, just a family driving through the dusk in their rattling pickup...

Aug 12, 2019 — This month we’re looking at titles by or about Chantal Akerman, Orson Welles, Chris Marker, Kathleen Collins, and many more filmmakers and writers.