Poor But Beautiful

May 31, 1990 — Isabelle Huppert shot from minor actress to full-fledged French star with a mesmerizing performance as, ironically, a young woman who is incapable of escaping anonymity. In Swiss director Claude Goretta’s elegant, beautifully observed tragedy/character study, Huppert is “Pomme,” a lovely,...

Nov 23, 2021 — The End In the end, it should not have come as any kind of surprise. When Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo dethroned Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) as the greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound magazine’s international poll of...

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.

Jan 5, 2016 — Toshiya Fujita’s two-film saga set exuberant, manga-inspired martial-arts choreography against a backdrop of a Japanese society in transition to unfold a vivid tale of epic vengeance.

May 28, 2024 — With just a few exceptions, critics are generally pleased with this year’s awards.

Feb 24, 2015 — Federico Fellini’s fragmentary and picturesque tale of death and debauchery in ancient Rome is a surreal take on reality.

Jan 14, 2020 — There’s been a whole of kvetching, but also a bit of celebrating since the nominations were announced on Monday.

Dec 7, 2010 — Guillermo del Toro understands the power of fairy tales. Not the prettified romances of Charles Perrault, who tamed the Brothers Grimm for French drawing rooms, or the charming animal fables of Aesop, or the reassuring moral lessons Disney made of...

Sep 19, 2005 — Jane Campion is a rarity, not simply because she is a world-class female director, but because she has devoted her career to exploring female subjectivity.

Sep 18, 1995 — The global problem of domestic violence destroys families and, in a broader context, locks entire societies into a pathology of pain, distrust, and self-hate. When the basic building blocks of any society—the bonds between mother, father, children—are so grossly violated,...