So Close, So Far

Jan 29, 2001 — Masahiro Shinoda’s historical drama uses traditional elements of Japanese theater to explore the tension between ethics and eroticism.

Nov 13, 2000 — Featuring what may be the only 1950s monster that could not be destroyed, this cult classic warns parents to listen to their kids because the world they understood and controlled is over.

Oct 9, 2000 — One of the most meticulously crafted supernatural fantasy films ever made, Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan (1964) is also one of the most unusual. While such classic black and white chillers as The Uninvited, The Innocents and The Haunting teasingly speculate on...

Feb 22, 1999 — Flipping around the channels of late-night TV in my Tokyo apartment in 1984 I came across what seemed like a B movie from the ’60s. The studio: Nikkatsu. The star: Joe Shishido. The director: Seijun Suzuki. I was not at...

Mar 31, 1991 — In Jacques Tati’s final work, the physical borders of spectacle and audience are broken down through a variety of means.

Aug 23, 2024 — We’re revisiting key films from Francis Ford Coppola, Martha Coolidge, John M. Stahl, Asghar Farhadi, and Jacques Rozier.

May 16, 2023 — New this month: André Bazin in English, the Farrow family, and Tom Hanks’s first novel.

Jan 7, 2019 — Critics are fine with the actors who’ve won Golden Globes this year—as for the films they appear in, not so much.

Oct 8, 2026 — Having achieved fame for her work in On the Waterfront and North by Northwest, Saint insisted on putting her private family life first.

Sep 28, 2026 — Anchored by an extraordinary performance from Sandrine Bonnaire, the epic historical drama Joan the Maid strips away its saintly protagonist’s mythic aura and gives us a humbler, more intimate version of her life story.