From Karkhe to Rhein

Mar 15, 2004 — This Japanese classic’s guiding passion is hunger, and its central image—a gaping black hole in the earth—is that of an all-consuming maw.

Mar 18, 2003 — Director William Dieterle’s 1941 film adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster” is a melodramatic fever dream, a hallucinatory tour de force.

Jan 6, 2003 — “No one would claim that Lubitsch’s German films were more important than his American ones (cf. Fritz Lang).” This was Richard Roud’s response to my piece “Ernst Lubitsch: German Period” in his Cinema: A Critical Dictionary. One could indeed ask...

Feb 11, 2002 — Miloš Forman’s film is an amazing balancing act of subtle social satire and adolescent romantic longing, of blank despair and irrepressible hope.

Jul 9, 2001 — Director Bruce Robinson reminisces about the days that inspired his uproarious black comedy.

Feb 22, 1999 — To experience a film by Japanese B-movie visionary Seijun Suzuki is to experience Japanese cinema in all its frenzied, voluptuous excess. Born in Tokyo in 1923, Seijun Suzuki is best known for a cycle of extraordinary yakuza (gangster) movies he...

Oct 31, 2025 — A packed batch this week, from die-hards by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Jacques Tourneur to new films by Kathryn Bigelow and Radu Jude.

Sep 21, 2017 — The leading scorer in NBA history talks with us about how cinema first led him to his basketball career and how he drew inspiration from samurai movies.

Extending from the “kitchen-sink dramas” of the early sixties to contemporary masters like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, the tradition of social realism in British film runs strong.

Nov 21, 2008 — It's pretty hard to go wrong selecting ten “best” or ten “favorites” from the Criterion Collection, although it might be interesting to select the ten worst Criterion releases (something that, in deference to my friends at Criterion, I will not...