Things Change

Jul 10, 2006 — In his unpredictable daily encounters with the gorilla Koko and her teacher, Barbet Schroeder foregrounds the quiddity of Koko’s situation in episodic fashion.

May 22, 2006 — Luis Buñuel’s merciless satire concerns the smallness of our vision of progress and our narrow attempts to achieve it through rational or moralistic planning.

Nov 7, 2005 — Often appearing on lists of the ten greatest films of all time, called one of the most beautiful films ever made, or the most masterful work of Japanese cinema, Ugetsu comes to us awash in superlatives. No less acclaimed has...

Sep 26, 2005 — “They were down for each other.” If one wanted to pitch the concept of Bad Timing in six words, this comment by its director, Nicolas Roeg, couldn’t be bettered.

Jul 25, 2005 — Seijun Suzuki stages a fearsome guerrilla night raid on an axis of oppression that includes the state, the church, the U.S. military occupation, and both the commercial exploitation of sexuality and the nonprofit pleasures of carnal love.

Apr 25, 2005 — Pietro Germi offers locomotive relief in this comedy about the horrors of inertia.

Jan 10, 2005 — Seijun Suzuki's penultimate film for Nikkatsu is a subversively funny account of the making of a model fascist.

Apr 19, 2004 — “Floating weeds, drifting down the leisurely river of our lives,” has long been a favored metaphor in Japanese prose and poetry. This plant, the ukigusa (duckweed in English), floating aimlessly, carried by stronger currents, is seen as emblematic of our...

Feb 2, 2004 — A story about defeat and failure, Robert Bresson’s masterpiece is a milestone in the slow process of the liberation of postwar French cinema

Dec 30, 2003 — In 1936 the rise of Hitler in Germany and the Popular Front in France created within the French Left a new sense of solidarity with the Soviet Union. In that context the Russian immigrant producer Alexander Kamenka asked Jean Renoir...