The Old Young People

Nov 25, 2013 — He massages, he gambles, and he’s great with a blade. Who is this blind swordsman, anyway?

Feb 23, 2023 — Notes on new features from Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Margarethe von Trotta, and Volker Koepp.

Sep 11, 2018 — There is a brief, nearly throwaway scene early in Olivier Assayas’s Cold Water (1994) that testifies to the transcultural power of rock and roll. In an apartment outside Paris in 1972, we see two teenage brothers wrestling over a portable...

Jun 21, 2018 — I have lost count of the number of times I have had the pleasure of watching El Sur, but I suspect it is among the films I have seen most frequently in my life. It is a treasure chest that reveals...

Sep 11, 2017 — In this documentary portrait of the Newport Folk Festival, Murray Lerner captured seismic changes in American music and politics.

Dec 18, 2016 — Imogen Sara Smith examines the tensions between tradition and modernity reflected in two silent crime films by Yasujiro Ozu and Tomu Uchida.

Jan 21, 2008 — While Agnès Varda was prescient in picking up on the new social phenomenon of France’s young female drifters, she also anticipated the culture of extreme individualism that has come to dominate Western society since the 1980s.

Jul 21, 2026 — At the beginning of Cruel Story of Youth (1960), the title splashes across the screen in fiery red. Each of the three Japanese words that appear offers a key to understanding director Nagisa Oshima’s breakthrough film and the energies that...

Jun 18, 2020 — When Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader made its theatrical premiere in July 2000, it was entering a queer political landscape vastly different from the one we live in today. Over the last two decades, we’ve witnessed the rise of LGBTQ...

Feb 6, 2019 — On the Criterion edition of Secret Sunshine, Lee Chang-dong describes his creative process as one of utter despair. That should come as no surprise to anyone who knows his work. Since making his feature debut, Green Fish, in 1997 at...