As director

Sep 13, 2004 — The following piece by Sony Pictures Classics cofounder and copresident Michael Barker, who picked up Slacker for Orion Classics in 1991, originally appeared in the program for the 2001 Austin Film Society event Slacker: A Ten-Year Reunion. What I’ve found...

Jul 19, 2004 — In Yasujiro Ozu’s hands, the extended-family drama widened its focus to encompass friends, neighbors, and employers.

Nov 11, 2002 — A second Monterey International Pop Festival has for the past month been put in jeopardy by a vicious handful of citizens, cops, and city officials in a small-town drama straight from Peyton Place and The Invaders.

Sep 23, 2002 — The theatricality of Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller makes the point that psychoanalysis is a sister to cinema rather than a rival.

Jul 29, 2002 — Viewing Kon Ichikawa’s film of the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo, it is apparent that even then his main idea (despite the more than 150 cameras available to him) was to present a fragmented picture of the Games, rather than...

May 7, 2001 — test

Jan 29, 2001 — Masahiro Shinoda’s historical drama uses traditional elements of Japanese theater to explore the tension between ethics and eroticism.

Aug 28, 2000 — In what is arguably his most popular and enduring feature, W. C. Fields nails the American tendency to inflate one’s importance.

Apr 24, 2000 — “Most of Aesop’s fables have many different levels and meanings. There are those who make myths of them by choosing some feature that fits in well with the fable. But for most of the fables this is only the first...

May 31, 1999 — In Abbas Kiarostami’s universe, it might be said, there are no things, only relations between things. Likewise, in his cinema: no films, only relations between films—and within them. And between them and us.Three and one. The most celebrated of Iran’s...