The Theme

Jun 9, 2003 — In Stan Brakhage’s films we enter into momentary perceptual transactions in which we trade unhindered assimilation of images for intensified contact with pictorial or sensory features that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Jul 28, 2020 — The films of Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda are graceful meditations on memory and the inextricable connections that bind our lives together. Whether transporting us to a way station in the afterlife or into a household in crisis, his character studies...

Jul 28, 2014 — Jacques Demy’s first full-fledged storybook fantasy challenges and subverts traditional fairy-tale norms.

Nov 8, 2011 — Upon its release in the U.S. in 1983, the theatrical version of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander generated a wealth of controversy. Bergman has always seemed to breed conflict among cineastes (Phillip Lopate, for example, has written recently about the...

May 24, 2011 — Andrei Tarkovsky belongs to that handful of filmmakers (Dreyer, Bresson, Vigo, Tati) who, with a small, concentrated body of work, created a universe. Though he made only seven features, thwarted by Soviet censors and then by cancer, each honored his...

Apr 18, 2011 — An Eagle for an Emperor, a Gyrfalcon for a King;   a Peregrine for a Prince, a Saker for a Knight, a Merlin for a Lady;   a Goshawk for a Yeoman, a Sparrowhawk for a Priest,   a Musket...

Oct 27, 2009 — Who speaks of Howards End these days? Who expounds on the virtues of this magnificent drama, whose traditional style seems almost as distant as its Edwardian setting? Seen today, years past its 1992 release, it strikes one as not only...

May 20, 2009 — The title alone screams incongruity. Shohei Imamura’s 1961 black-and-white caper movie Pigs and Battleships bursts with the confusion and exuberance of a cross-cultural encounter. In its lively portrayal of enthusiastic Japanese locals welcoming the U.S. Navy on R&R to the...

Oct 26, 2015 — Known to most of the world as the labyrinthine inspiration for Stephen King’s novel The Shining (which was of course the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1980 adaptation), the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, is about to get a...

Jul 30, 2013 — Guillermo del Toro’s ghostly fable beautifully reflects the director’s fascination with the personal and the political.