The Blue Star

Sep 15, 2020 — When Claire Denis’s Beau travail (1999) first appeared on American screens, the critic Stephen Holden used a striking phrase to capture its embracing of bold opposites: “voluptuous austerity.” His characterization, widely quoted since, illuminates the film on many levels, and...

Mar 9, 2020 — “My objective is to create my own world, and these images which we create mean nothing more than the images which they are.” Andrei Tarkovsky More than three decades after his passing, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky retain their ability...

Jul 24, 2018 — A feast of sumptuous color and cinematic imagination, Powell and Pressburger’s postwar masterpiece is also a powerful reckoning with recent history.

Dec 17, 2015 — Repertory PicksJust in time for December’s holiday gatherings and celebrations, the Cinefamily theater in Los Angeles will screen Arnaud Desplechin’s 2008 film A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël), as part of its monthly series La Collectionneuse, which is devoted...

Oct 28, 2014 — What you hear is as crucial—and as funny—as what you see in Tati’s films.

Jan 17, 2012 — At once a political epic and a radical gesture in personal filmmaking, Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic is an unexpected, unlikely triumph. It was a film that Hollywood didn’t want to make—every studio in town turned it down—that went on to secure...

Jan 15, 2017 — To make the performance of a tedious, exacting, time-consuming task riveting to watch, it is only necessary for the activity to be illegal.

Feb 25, 2014 — A testament to Steven Soderbergh’s versatility, this story of a boy growing up during the Great Depression is a tender but tough-minded look at a child’s inner world.

Dec 6, 2022 — Known for their austerity and shocking moments of violence, the Austrian director’s first three films cultivate a kind of humanism in their dogged refusal to coddle the viewer.

Jan 8, 2018 — Hirokazu Kore-eda has begun work on an as-yet-untitled film already slated for release in Japan in June, reports Patrick Frater for Variety. “The story, which the director has been developing for some ten years, involves a small girl who is...