The BFG

Jan 20, 2016 — Earlier this month, we lost Vilmos Zsigmond, the venerated Hungarian cinematographer. Not only was he one of the greatest directors of photography in the world—known for his influential work with Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg, and Brian De Palma, among others—Zsigmond...

Jan 14, 2016 — Repertory PicksThe Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, New York, hosts a recurring series called Sunday Schmooze, and on offer this weekend is Gabriel Axel’s 1987 gem Babette’s Feast. The Oscar-winning drama, based on a short story by Danish author Karen...

Jan 5, 2016 — Toshiya Fujita’s two-film saga set exuberant, manga-inspired martial-arts choreography against a backdrop of a Japanese society in transition to unfold a vivid tale of epic vengeance.

Dec 31, 2015 — Back in October, the great Liv Ullmann stopped by Criterion to film a program for the release of Jan Troell’s 1970s films The Emigrants and The New Land, which form a two-part epic in which Ullmann stars alongside Max von...

Dec 30, 2015 — Repertory PicksIn honor of the centennial anniversary of Orson Welles’s birth in 2015, the Northwest Film Center in Portland, Oregon, has undertaken a major celebration of the director’s work that will continue into the New Year. The series offers a...

Dec 29, 2015 — Kitchen Conversations“I almost have the impression that films come by themselves and you’re like a slave to them—one of them decides to go for it, and you run after it,” said director Deniz Gamze Ergüven when she and her eight-month-old...

Dec 29, 2015 — One refrain often heard in discussions of twenty-first-century film culture is a lament for the loss of social film viewing. While we celebrate the fact that digital technologies have given us convenient access to unprecedented numbers of movies, old and...

Dec 28, 2015 — In June, we lost the inimitable American writer James Salter. The author, one of the great novelists of the twentieth century, also had a career as a Hollywood screenwriter—which included penning Michael Ritchie’s 1969 Olympic skiing drama Downhill Racer. Our...

Dec 17, 2015 — Repertory PicksJust in time for December’s holiday gatherings and celebrations, the Cinefamily theater in Los Angeles will screen Arnaud Desplechin’s 2008 film A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël), as part of its monthly series La Collectionneuse, which is devoted...

Dec 14, 2015 — In the early 1960s, Agnès Varda traveled to Cuba to make the documentary Salut les Cubains (1963). Varda’s twenty-eight-minute film, composed almost entirely of photographs that captured Cuba’s vibrant postrevolutionary culture, was inspired by two of Chris Marker’s films—Varda took...