A Difficult Life

Feb 25, 2019 — Songbook Pace Lou Reed, nobody’s life is saved by rock and roll in Cold Water. This in spite of  its young characters’ relentless pursuit of it, in both musical and metaphysical forms. Made in 1994, set in 1972, Olivier Assayas’s...

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...

Aug 17, 2018 — Also, a personal remembrance of cinematographer Masaki Tamura.

Jul 2, 2018 — Josef von Sternberg may have been one of cinema’s original micromanagers, but his films are testaments to longstanding collaborations with brilliant artists and technicians.

Sep 27, 2017 — In conjunction with a new edition of Stan Brakhage’s Metaphors on Vision, we’re sharing a selection from the opening pages of this seminal work.

Jun 11, 2015 — The author recalls the two great cinematographers and their work.

Apr 9, 2013 — This review by film critic Janet Maslin originally appeared in the December 27, 1991, edition of the New York Times, and appears by permission of the author. Naked Lunch, adapted by the dauntless David Cronenberg from William S. Burroughs’s 1959...

Sep 19, 2012 — Marcel Carné’s tale of love and devilry in medieval France was a sensation during the German occupation.

Oct 4, 2011 — Pier Paolo Pasolini’s landmark film intermingles the sacred and profane, associating libertines with holy music, the avant-garde of the thirties, and neoclassical and biblical references.

Jul 9, 2007 — The names Hiroshi Teshigahara, Kobo Abe, and Toru Takemitsu loom large among Japanese intellectuals of the late twentieth century. Each in his own right was an artist of peculiar genius, each resisting easy classification in conventional categories: Teshigahara as filmmaker,...