The Criterion Collection
Feb 5, 2014 — Performances We don’t often talk about documentaries as featuring performances. But consider the highly performative people at the centers of Grey Gardens, General Idi Amin Dada, and last year’s The Act of Killing, or even the seemingly more modest souls...
Dec 10, 2013 — Djibril Diop Mambety’s Senegalese masterwork is remarkable for both its technical audacity and its postcolonialist expressionism.
Essays
Dec 2, 2013 — With its dazzling array of characters, acerbic take on American entertainment and politics, and innovative approach to sound, this is the ultimate Robert Altman movie.
Oct 21, 2013 — As a film star, John Cassavetes embodied the kinetic, wild-eyed, insanely grinning villain. He seemed born to the role, with his volatile energy and dynamic outbursts, luminous yet curiously deadened eyes, wide-gaping mouth (David Thomson has likened it to a...
Aug 26, 2013 — From the beginning, it was clear that Rainer Werner Fassbinder was destined to shake up German cinema.
Jun 20, 2013 — The prophetic voice of H. G. Wells resonates throughout this singularly ambitious, spectacularly designed vision.
Jun 17, 2013 — The silent legend practices slapstick with clockwork precision in his most iconic, astonishing comedy.
May 21, 2013 — It’s tough to tell where reality ends and fiction begins in Haskell Wexler’s deft chronicle of a turbulent era.
Apr 22, 2013 — A vivid portrait of a ruthless murderer, Laurence Olivier’s Technicolor Shakespeare adaptation is back in a killer restoration.
Feb 25, 2013 — When an ethnographic filmmaker and a sociologist joined forces, they helped change the course of nonfiction cinema.