The Criterion Collection
Aug 15, 2011 — Celebrated as Stanley Kubrick’s first mature film and made when he was only twenty-eight years old, The Killing (1956) is remarkable for boldly announcing so many of the stylistic and thematic preoccupations that would become important constants of his cinema....
Aug 9, 2011 — Gillo Pontecorvo’s incendiary epic commemorates the popular uprising that had succeeded in ousting the French from Algeria in July 1962.
In just a handful of films, one of cinema’s most richly creative artists opened a door to an unparalleled dream world.
Akira Kurosawa once said, “The ordinary Japanese actor might need ten feet of film to get across an impression. Toshiro Mifune needed only three feet.” The filmmaker certainly gave Mifune a lot of space, however: over the course of sixteen...
Short Takes
Jul 28, 2011 — We’re pleased to announce that Janus Films has picked up the North American rights to Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre, which, as you may have heard, premiered to much acclaim in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI (the...
Short Takes
Jul 27, 2011 — A sure sign that fall is coming: the Venice and Toronto film festivals (August 31–September 10 and September 8–18, respectively) have begun to announce their lineups. As usual, the schedules of these two important world-cinema showcases share some titles, destined...
Jul 26, 2011 — To a secular eye, Jean-Pierre Melville’s sixth feature film, Léon Morin, Priest (1961), is about almost anything except religion: the deleterious effects of sexual repression, the moral bleariness of wartime and life under occupation, the harsh inflections of history in...
Jul 25, 2011 — A fearless tragicomedy about hope, dread, longing, and forgiveness, Life During Wartime (2010) is Todd Solondz’s boldest and most haunting movie to date, carrying his exploration of Middle American malaise into new territory. As before, he probes the dreams, dissatisfactions,...
Jul 21, 2011 — Performances When people talk about Mike Leigh’s Naked, the conversation is inevitably focused on David Thewlis’s nerve-shredding, tour de force central performance as the callous drifter Johnny, who slices through life like a straight razor. Yet consider how impossible his...
Short Takes
Jul 20, 2011 — Wes Anderson’s vision of New York City in The Royal Tenenbaums may be a storybook one, but, as a new short video on the A.V. Club proves, it’s all based on reality. The entertaining three-and-a-half-minute piece—made as part of the...