The Criterion Collection
Dec 1, 2009 — The first words we hear are Sam Cutler’s: “Everybody seems to be ready—are we ready?” We were nowhere near ready for what was to come, there at the bitter end of the sixties. I remember that rainy day so well,...
Features
Nov 9, 2009 — The following essay, written in October 1987, after the release of Wings of Desire, originally appeared in The Logic of Images, a collection of Wim Wenders’s writing that was published in 1992. In the last few years, since Paris, Texas, Berlin...
Sep 22, 2009 — 1967 was the year when a great divide opened between “pop” and “rock,” and when the burgeoning S.F. hippie subculture began to usurp the chirpier L.A. world of surf music and Sonny and Cher.
Jun 3, 2009 — We’ve pieced together comments from production designer Donald Burt and property master Hope Parrish of working with the supermeticulous and precise David Fincher on perfecting the atmosphere and historical accuracy of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. You can click...
Apr 20, 2009 — The French scientist-educator-filmmaker Jean Painlevé’s groundbreaking work consistently revealed not only a commitment to informed science and effective communication but to the creative expression of ideas.
Essays
Apr 2, 2009 — Writing the screenplay with Suzanne Schiffman, I intended to do for the theater what I had done for the cinema in Day for Night: the chronicle of a troupe at work, within a framework respecting the unities of place, time,...
Essays
Sep 15, 2008 — Max Ophuls’s 1952 comedy celebrates existence by presenting a world full of unresolvable contradictions.
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.
Jul 7, 2008 — Every decade since 1984 the Toronto International Film Festival has conducted a poll of film scholars, critics, and directors to determine the ten best movies in the history of Canadian cinema. This top-ten list has changed somewhat over the years,...
Jun 23, 2008 — Five years of increasingly horrific news from the former Yugoslavia made Milcho Manchevski’s searing yet lyrical film timely to a degree that few filmmakers have ever achieved.