This Is Not a Film

Aug 31, 2015 — “When you’re writing a screenplay, it’s like you’re dreaming the film for yourself again and again and again until it becomes almost like a memory before you make it,” says writer and actor Greta Gerwig in a new interview in...

Oct 2, 2020 — This wild week we’re celebrating William Greaves, watching Denis Lavant dance, and listening to Léonce-Henry Burel’s juicy stories about Robert Bresson.

Aug 11, 2017 — A new video essay on our edition of The Breaking Point breaks down the fluid visual style of one of Hollywood’s most dependable and prolific masters.

Thanks to the two most famous roles of her career—the enigmatic woman referred to only as A in Alain Resnais’ _Last Year at Marienbad_ and the middle-aged widow stuck in domestic routine in Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du...

Jun 10, 2009 — Kind Hearts and Coronets, that most wicked comedy of ill manners, had established Alec Guinness as an acting force—and coming so soon after he had disappeared into the role of Fagin in David Lean’s Oliver Twist, his dazzling embodiment of...

Sep 29, 2023 — The newly reconstructed and restored seven-hour version of the 1923 melodrama screens on Saturday and again next week in New York.

A delicate hand, effervescent humor, and an economy with words and images define this German director, who became a legendary figure in Hollywood comedy.

May 17, 2016 — For decades, celebrated Italian film composer Ennio Morricone has been lending his musical talents to directors from Pier Paolo Pasolini and Sergio Leone to Terrence Malick and Quentin Tarantino. In the latest installment of the Guardian’s weekly This Much I...

Jul 10, 2015 — Sean Baker is a writer-director and cocreator of the television show Greg the Bunny. His movies include Prince of Broadway (2008), Starlet (2012), and Tangerine (2015). He says, “Writing this list was a little like Sophie’s choice for me. And...

Oct 23, 2014 — “I have been collecting Criterion Collection DVDs almost as long as I have owned a DVD player,” writes Alex Ross Perry, the director of Impolex (2009), The Color Wheel (2011), and Listen Up Philip (2014). “These are not my top...