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Apr 26, 2011 — In anticipation of Criterion’s release of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator next month, and in honor of the one hundredth entry in his DVD of the Week column on his New Yorker blog, The Front Row, Richard Brody has begun a weeklong...

Mar 22, 2011 — In 1985, deep into the twelve-year reign of the Reagan-Bush administration, Rob Epstein mounted a Hollywood stage with Richard Schmiechen, both men resplendent in tuxedos. Epstein was only twenty-nine years old. The director had just made history, with producer Schmiechen,...

Feb 22, 2011 — It wasn’t intended. No one could have predicted it. But Sweet Smell of Success turned out to be a terminus where several movie genres and subgenres converged and curdled, producing a uniquely delicious perfume of everlasting cynicism. Inhale deeply. And...

Dec 8, 2010 — Over at his New Yorker blog, The Front Row, Richard Brody dives back into Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning, the Criterion edition of which is his DVD pick of the week. Over a lovingly assembled montage of clips from...

Nov 28, 2010 — “What we need are good old American—and that’s not to be confused with European—Art Films.” So declared the then twenty-nine-year-old beatnik Method actor Dennis Hopper in an unpublished 1965 manifesto. “The whole damn country’s one big real place to utilize...

Oct 13, 2010 — In a new Slate article titled “Cracked Actor,” critic Jessica Winter takes an enjoyable, affectionate look back at the film career of that slender shape-shifter David Bowie, on the occasion of the Criterion release of Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. In...

Sep 16, 2010 — Seven years ago, I was a bright-eyed recent university grad who had just moved to the big city—Toronto—for the first time. I was struggling to find my path as a filmmaker, and at the Toronto International Film Festival that year,...

Jun 10, 2010 — Fans of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s films (which really should include any lover of cinema) have reason to celebrate. The long-gestating website devoted to the Danish director, Carl Th. Dreyer—The Man and His Work, launched at the end of May and...

Nov 10, 2009 — “If American independent cinema could be said to have a birthday, November 11 is as good a date to celebrate as any,” writes Elbert Ventura in a terrific new article in Slate. The occasion is the fortieth anniversary of the...

Oct 12, 2009 — Man is Not a Bird: Flying Away The term “independent cinema” has lost its punch in recent years, from overuse and misapplication. One need only look to the films of Dušan Makavejev for a reminder of its true meaning. This...