The Master

Jan 30, 2017 — It wasn’t until the second half of his life that Senegalese master Ousmane Sembène dedicated himself to cinema, with his debut feature, Black Girl, premiering in 1966 when he was forty-three. Already an acclaimed novelist, Sembène had lived in France...

Mar 13, 2014 — Repertory PicksThe lovely domestic drama Equinox Flower (1958) was the first color film by the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. Though this master of cinematic composition was initially resistant to moving to the relatively new process (the first color film...

Mar 26, 2012 — A Night to Remember, the 1958 British film adaptation of Walter Lord’s 1955 book about the brief life and agonizing death of the Titanic, has proven unsinkable. With its Olympian yet unfailingly life-size view of the disaster that scuttled illusions...

Mar 21, 2012 — The famed collaboration between director Mikhail Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky, which, with its distinctive combination of effective melodrama and a wild, powerful visual style, helped make Kalatozov the most successful Soviet cinematic export of his generation, in fact spanned...

Dec 13, 2011 — Just what is it that makes Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter (1966) so different, so appealing? The cherubic hero in the neat powder blue suit, who looks like he was torn out of a yakuza pop-up book? That hauntingly cornball theme...

Sep 19, 2011 — When Claude Chabrol’s first film, Le beau Serge, had its premiere at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival (out of competition), a fellow critic at Cahiers du cinéma, François Truffaut, wrote: “Technically, the film is as masterly as if Chabrol had...

Jul 10, 2009 — The final, resolutely unfashionable film from grand old master Carl Theodor Dreyer, Gertrud was met with dismissal in 1964 and continues to be somewhat overlooked even today. But this week, Jonathan Rosenbaum reminds us of its unique beauties and unconventional...

Sep 27, 2018 — Family tensions come to a boil in Hollywood master Anthony Mann’s searing blend of western and melodrama The Furies, playing at the Belcourt Theatre this week.

Aug 9, 2021 — Edson Oda is a Japanese Brazilian writer-director based in Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of São Paulo with a bachelor’s degree in advertising and completed his Master of Fine Arts in film and production at the University of...

The rapper, record producer, composer, and filmmaker talks about how the Once Upon a Time in China series elevated the martial genre, praises Mikey and Nicky as a master class in how to write a buddy movie, and shouts out...