The Women of Niskavuori

Aug 18, 2014 — The filmmaker and critic discuss the pleasures and provocations of the Spanish auteur’s work.

Oct 22, 2013 — This delicately creepy Hollywood horror movie lives up to its reputation as a classic of the genre.

Aug 26, 2013 — From the beginning, it was clear that Rainer Werner Fassbinder was destined to shake up German cinema.

Feb 27, 2013 — More than eighty films into his career, Kenji Mizoguchi made this emotionally devastating masterpiece, from a story by Ogai Mori.

Jan 25, 2012 — Creating an effect of pity and terror unique in Francesco Rosi’s cinema, The Moment of Truth ought by rights to be counted among his finest achievements. On its original release in 1965, Pauline Kael acclaimed “the beauty of rage, masterfully...

Oct 26, 2011 — Performances The galumphing hulk who terrorized early sound cinema audiences in Frankenstein (1931) and The Mummy (1932), Boris Karloff was the movies’ politest monster. Even in his darkest on-screen moments, the London-born Karloff (né William Henry Pratt) exhibited a regal...

Nov 26, 2010 — Early in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, as the wind from the Texas plains whips the small town of Anarene, the high-school senior Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) halts his recalcitrant pickup truck—Hank Williams is warbling “Why Don’t You Love...

Jul 27, 2010 — Americans got The Secret of the Grain. In France, they got La graine et le mulet (The Grain and the Mullet)—basically, “Couscous and Fish.” Depending on whose table you eat dinner at, the French title can seem as elemental as...

Dec 25, 2008 — Robert Rossellini’s efforts to put history into images would yield some forty-two hours of “didactic” movies, mostly for television.

Aug 22, 2005 — Featuring a brilliant, idiosyncratic performance by Michel Simon, Jean Renoir’s early comedy is a commendation of loitering as the antidote to efficiency and perfection.