The Journey

May 17, 2011 — “There was a strong influence of Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal throughout this film,” director Masahiro Shinoda would later remember of his 1964 squid-ink noir Pale Flower, made in the days when his career as a filmmaker and founding figure of...

Sep 10, 2009 — Is That Hamilton Woman, starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier at their most heart-stoppingly beautiful and mutually enraptured, one of the most romantic movies ever made because or in spite of the fact that it was designed as propaganda? It...

Feb 11, 1990 — Bob Rafelson’s ultimate road movie is a relaxed masterpiece, a film of laid-back innovation that hasn’t aged one iota since its original release.

Apr 19, 2004 — “Floating weeds, drifting down the leisurely river of our lives,” has long been a favored metaphor in Japanese prose and poetry. This plant, the ukigusa (duckweed in English), floating aimlessly, carried by stronger currents, is seen as emblematic of our...

Jun 25, 2024 — Barry Jenkins’s extraordinarily ambitious limited series distinguishes itself in the tradition of the cinematic slavery epic through its understanding that Black joy and Black trauma cannot be cleaved from each other.

Mar 22, 2022 — In Robert Aldrich’s epic disaster film, James Stewart leads a pack of temperamentally different men as they struggle to survive in the face of the unknown—a template that would go on to influence Hollywood blockbusters for decades to come.

Mar 9, 2020 — The towering Swede left indelible impressions as a medieval knight, a few tormented artists, two emigrants, and a loving father.

Aug 13, 2019 — Something uncanny is brewing in George Sikharulidze’s Fatherland. This darkly comedic film transports us to a spring evening in Joseph Stalin’s birthplace—Gori, Georgia—where the townspeople have gathered on the sixty-third anniversary of their long-departed leader’s death. What follows is part...

Mar 9, 2026 — The comprehensive retrospective can be a daunting prospect, but programmer David Schwartz has spotlit five essential features.

Oct 27, 2025 — The Melbourne Cinémathèque presents vibrant and enduring mashups of melodrama and social realism.