A Funny Man

Jan 13, 2021 — About a decade ago, I went to see Welcome, or No Trespassing at Spectacle. It’s still the only time I’ve known anyone to project the movie, a 1964 satire of Soviet summer camps that was the debut feature of Elem...

Aug 17, 2020 — Louise Brooks, Oliver Stone, James Stewart, Andy Warhol, and more are here to help relieve this year’s summer doldrums.

May 24, 2019 — In her quest for romantic connection, the protagonist of Claire Denis’s searching, slyly funny Let the Sunshine In—Parisian painter Isabelle (Juliette Binoche)—finds herself falling in with a series of hopelessly self-involved men: an oleaginous (and married) banker, an elegant (but...

Jan 25, 2019 — Deep into Cristian Mungiu’s 2007 drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, we sit in on a leisurely dinner-table chat that appears to be unrelated to the film’s main event, an illegal abortion conducted in a seedy hotel. After...

Jan 7, 2018 — The updates to the entry on Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread are still rolling in, and one of the most recent ones links to Sheila O'Malley’s cover article for the new issue of Film Comment. “Unlike other clichéd Great Men...

Dec 29, 2015 — Kitchen Conversations“I almost have the impression that films come by themselves and you’re like a slave to them—one of them decides to go for it, and you run after it,” said director Deniz Gamze Ergüven when she and her eight-month-old...

Nov 13, 2014 — Michael Lennick, visual effects supervisor, writer, filmmaker, self described sci-fi geek, and friend of the Criterion Collection, died last week in Toronto. Early in his career, Michael created special video effects for David Cronenberg’s films Videodrome and The Dead Zone....

Jul 19, 2004 — In Yasujiro Ozu’s hands, the extended-family drama widened its focus to encompass friends, neighbors, and employers.

Dec 18, 2000 — Elegant humor cloaks despair in Luis Buñuel’s masterwork, wherein greedy characters flee their toxic lives and find refuge in the loneliness of dreams.

Mar 18, 2016 — The French filmmaker discussed revisiting the world of his breakthrough feature, his desire to communicate with a younger generation, and his signature cinematic flourishes.