Mélo

Dec 7, 2018 — Christian Petzold’s films are like dances in which people circle each other but never quite connect. The most resonant moments in the German writer-director’s work are not ones of dialogue or plot development but of blocking and choreography: bodies intertwining,...

Dec 6, 2018 — Repertory Picks Since September, the Cinematheque at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has devoted its Sunday-afternoon screening series at the Chazen Museum of Art to the work of New German Cinema icon Rainer Werner Fassbinder. And this weekend, the retrospective’s second...

Dec 3, 2018 — True Stories, David Byrne’s 1986 paean to American eccentricity and ordinariness, called to me from the shelves of a video store in Austin, Texas. Subtitled “A Film About a Bunch of People in Virgil, Texas,” True Stories is not “true”...

Nov 28, 2018 — In the 1940s, the nonlinear narrative began to enter the mainstream, as films like Citizen Kane and Double Indemnity boldly did away with the chronological mode that had dominated the cinematic storytelling of decades prior. While the visionary Orson Welles...

Nov 28, 2018 — The career of one of Italy’s greatest directors was riddled with scandal and accolades.

Nov 26, 2018 — The Magnificent Ambersons “Plus one and minus one equal nothing. So you mean I’m nothing in particular?” —Isabel “Remember you very well indeed.” —George “George, you never saw me before in your life!” —Eugene What is this cult I signed up...

Nov 13, 2018 — Turning to theater for inspiration, Kenji Mizoguchi transformed a popular eighteenth-century play into a spiritually charged meditation on forbidden love and societal oppression.

Nov 9, 2018 — This week has seen appreciations of such disparate figures as Ida Lupino, André Bazin, and F. J. Ossang.

Nov 5, 2018 — With the gradual rollout of his two-part semi-musical, Wang is seeing his strongest reviews yet.

Oct 29, 2018 — With Lee Chang-dong’s latest film opening in U.S. theaters, we take a look at the second wave of critical response.