Loving

May 2, 2017 — On a trip to the Library of Congress’s Mostly Lost workshop—affectionately known as “film-geek heaven”—Imogen Sara Smith joined early-cinema aficionados in uncovering treasures from the vaults.

Apr 12, 2017 — British director Jack Clayton elicited landmark performances from a host of great ladies of the cinema, including Maggie Smith, Deborah Kerr, and Anne Bancroft.

Dec 16, 2016 — One of the most ambitious achievements of Italian master Ermanno Olmi’s career, The Tree of Wooden Clogs opens at New York’s Film Forum today in a ravishing new 4K restoration, supervised by the director himself. Made in close collaboration with...

Nov 25, 2016 — In his deeply personal third feature, Noah Baumbach charts a family’s dissolution against the backdrop of 1980s literary Brooklyn.

Mar 29, 2016 — Les Blank’s long-lost documentary revels in the trippy, eccentric world of and surrounding Tulsa Sound pioneer Leon Russell, transforming what might have been a standard concert movie into a genuine work of art.

Mar 15, 2016 — Set during the height of McCarthy-era paranoia and arriving in 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, John Frankenheimer’s high-anxiety Communist conspiracy thriller tapped into the darkest fears of Cold War America.

Aug 25, 2015 — Bill Hader and Fred Armisen’s hilarious new IFC Channel show Documentary Now! started last week, and already we can’t get enough. Of course, it helps that the crackerjack comedy team (one of whom is an avowed Criterion fanatic) launched the...

Jul 2, 2015 — Repertory PicksAmong Dustin Hoffman’s indelible cinematic creations are The Graduate’s awkward Benjamin Braddock, Midnight Cowboy’s apoplectic Ratzo Rizzo, and Rain Man’s autistic Raymond Babbit. But nothing in this chameleon’s oeuvre compares to his Dorothy Michaels, the female alter ego invented...

Oct 2, 2014 — The following is a chapter on The Innocents from cinematographer Freddie Francis’s memoir, The Straight Story from “Moby Dick” to “Glory.” It is reproduced here courtesy of Scarecrow Press. The last picture I worked on as a cinematographer in my...

Aug 19, 2014 — Alfonso Cuaron, a filmmaker congenitally allergic to creative constriction, made his most liberated movie with this erotic, moving, often funny threesome tale.