The Tale

Oct 27, 2021 — Channel Calendars Celebrate Noirvember on the Criterion Channel with a tribute to the cool-as-ice Robert Mitchum, whose nonchalance and quiet menace made him a defining presence in American cinema’s underworld. Or enjoy the sophisticated, pitch-dark pulp classics in our Fox...

Oct 20, 2021 — This uncanny tale of existential anxiety stands out as the most rigorously pared-down American science-fiction film of the 1950s.

Sep 29, 2021 — Luchino Visconti’s scandalous antifascist melodrama envisions the liquidation of desire with expressionistic panache.

Nov 25, 2020 — A camera dollies down a hallway into the interior of a nursing home: the opening of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (2019) prompts a foreboding that seeps into all that follows. The Five Satins’ 1956 doo-wop classic “In the Still of...

Sep 11, 2020 — As Toronto opens, here’s an overview of early critical response to some of the festival’s titles arriving directly from their premieres in Venice.

Apr 13, 2020 — The director of House, dozens of experimental films, and thousands of commercials returned again and again to the devastation of the Second World War.

Apr 9, 2020 — The American Cinematheque premieres a delightful five-minute film that Varda made in 2008.

Mar 27, 2020 — Following a briefing on the crisis, we turn to a few items that might help us take our minds off it.

Feb 3, 2020 — Nearly half of the awards presented over the weekend went to female filmmakers.

Jan 16, 2020 — Deep Dives The question that was asked of the great actors and actresses of silent film with the coming of sound was simple: Could they speak? Could they adapt the styles they had developed to the demands of dialogue and...