This Could Be the Night

Jul 11, 2017 — A forged note brings chaos and corruption to the lives of everyone it touches in Robert Bresson’s devastating final film.

Mar 27, 2006 — The Italian drama marked the first full blossoming of director Vittorio De Sica and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini’s ongoing collaboration.

Sep 29, 2003 — “Gray literature” is the term German film historians use to describe the material written purely for publicity purposes and made available to the press, but not meant for official publication. Often this gray literature, which is only accessible to film...

Oct 26, 2022 — The ’80s Horror collection now playing on the Criterion Channel brings together some of my favorite films from a time when the horror genre took on strange and thrilling new forms. When I began programming it, my thoughts drifted back...

Jul 27, 2020 — The first shot of Atom Egoyan’s 1984 debut feature, Next of Kin, is a ground-level pan across the baggage claim section at Toronto’s Pearson Airport. The camera is angled so that our gaze is on the various pieces of luggage...

Nov 16, 2016 — The joy of new love collides with the anxieties of everyday life in Paul Thomas Anderson’s off-kilter foray into romantic comedy.

Oct 16, 2012 — After breaking out with Maria Full of Grace, filmmaker Joshua Marston visited a strange new land with persistent and deadly traditions.

Sep 25, 2012 — No mere jigsaw movie, David Fincher’s thriller is also a nuanced character study, a satire of corporate culture, and a film about filmmaking.

Jul 27, 2009 — We enter Roman Polanski’s harrowing Repulsion as if in the middle of the story, but it’s actually the beginning of the end. Polanski unceremoniously drops us into a beauty salon where a pampered matron takes to task our heroine, a...

Apr 27, 2009 — The idea of making a film about Japan’s most famous sex crime, with a decent budget and in conditions of complete freedom, reawakened Nagisa Oshima’s desire to direct—and the prospect of circumventing Japanese censorship must have made the decision even...