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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...

Jul 17, 2009 — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ acclaimed, meticulously restored 35 mm print of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, which Janus Films is currently touring across the country, opens today at Baltimore’s historic Senator Theatre, and in a feature for the...

Apr 26, 2009 — The British film magazine Sight & Sound dedicates its May issue to the fiftieth anniversary of the French New Wave, which it dates to the first screening of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (on May 4, 1959, at the Cannes...

Mar 24, 2009 — With a sense of urgency, and a touch of morbidity, Yahoo! Movies has put out a list of “100 Movies to See Before You Die.” “To choose the titles for the list,” write Yahoo!’s editors, “we considered factors like historical...

Jan 15, 2009 — The Berlin International Film Festival this week announced the competition lineup for its upcoming fifty-ninth edition, and the list includes an intriguing array of world premieres from Criterion-family directors. Costa-Gavras, whose Missing we released last October, returns with Eden Is...

Jan 13, 2009 — This week marks the long-anticipated release of Roberto Rossellini’s beloved The Taking of Power by Louis XIV, the crowning achievement of the filmmaker’s remarkable end-of-career endeavor to capture the history of human knowledge in a series of provocatively minimalist television films...

Dec 17, 2008 — ANew Year’s treat from the Film Society of Lincoln Center: Jacques Tati’s supersized comic odyssey Playtime will be shown in its original, rarely screened 70 mm format at the Walter Reade Theater. If you haven’t seen this visionary work, which...

May 22, 2006 — Barbara Kopple’s detailed analysis of a Kentucky mine workers’ strike is a virtual hub of urgent themes, formal tendencies, political debates, and material practices that define post-sixties documentary in America.

May 9, 2005 — This seminal documentary conveys the particular seductiveness and resonance of the dream of going pro for two talented Chicago teenagers.

Nov 8, 1999 — The virgin of Orleans and those matters that surrounded her death began to interest me when the shepherd girl’s canonization in 1920* once again drew the attention of the public-at-large to the events and actions involving her—and not only in...