On the Sea

Feb 7, 2011 — Death looms over the films of Hirokazu Kore-eda. His first fiction feature, Maborosi (1995), is a quiet study of bereavement, about a young woman struggling to move on after her husband’s inexplicable suicide. In After Life (1998), a supernatural fable...

Sep 26, 2010 — The Thin Red Line, arguably the greatest war film ever made, ended two decades of silence from Terrence Malick, cinema’s wandering auteur. The silence wasn’t entirely self-imposed, since during this time he tried to launch a few productions—including a tale...

Aug 13, 2010 — The Docks of New York When John Grierson, the Scotsman whose absolute devotion to realism on film—he coined the word documentary and created the National Film Board of Canada—was asked how he’d enjoyed a screening of a now-lost Josef von Sternberg...

Oct 29, 2009 — In the spirit of the season, we asked a select coven of horror mavens (including a couple of our own) to write about their favorite Criterion scarefests. Chuck StephensEquinox: The Eyebrows of Mr. Asmodeus There are myriad ways into Equinox,...

Sep 22, 2009 — Abandoning the cinematic conventions and references that informed his previous works, Jean-Luc Godard’s explosive crime drama reaches new heights of spontaneity and lightning invention.

Aug 18, 2008 — One of the most awarded films in Japanese history, Keisuke Kinoshita’s nostalgia piece unfolds a celebration of family values and scenic beauty.

Jan 21, 2008 — In September 1997, I saw Agnès Varda introduce a brand-new 35 mm print of her first feature film, La Pointe Courte (made in 1954), to an admiring audience at Yale University. More astonishing than the luminous black-and-white images was Varda’s...

Jul 9, 2007 — Hiroshi Teshigahara’s late work is a masterful amalgam of high international modernism and traditional Japanese fine arts.

Oct 23, 2006 — The New Zealand director’s debut feature is a bridge between her tentative, probing film school works and her subsequent female character studies.

Oct 16, 2006 — Screenwriter Carlos Cuarón delves into the character played by Astrid Hadad