The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty

With his stunning visuals, ambiguous narratives, and still relevant focus on modern alienation, this Italian master ushered in a new European art cinema permeated by a distinctly contemporary ennui.

Oct 25, 2011 — It’s not a movie about how things were; it’s a movie about how things are remembered.

Oct 18, 2011 — Hair, There, and Everywhere Are the Leningrad Cowboys for real? With pointy pompadours reaching to impossible heights above their expressionless faces and needlelike winklepicker shoes that could have been torn from the feet of oversize elves, they might be a...

Oct 12, 2011 — Our own Kim Hendrickson and Susan Arosteguy will be in Columbus, Ohio, tonight to discuss movies—and monsters—at the Wexner Center for the Arts. At 7 p.m., in an event the Wexner’s website promises will be a “behind-the-scenes look at Criterion’s...

Oct 7, 2011 — For Janus Films’ new print of Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend, which starts showing today, designer Steve Chow created an eye-catching poster that vividly captures that New Wave battering ram’s apocalyptic, sideways vision. This is the third Godard design that Chow has...

Sep 26, 2011 — Toward the end of Olivier Assayas's Carlos, a young French diplomat's wife goes to answer the door of their flat in Beirut and is greeted by a huge bunch of flowers—which immediately disappears to reveal a gun that shoots her...

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...

Sep 13, 2011 — Poignant news to pass along: our good friend and frequent contributor Michael Sragow has announced on his Baltimore Sun blog that at the end of this week, he will be hanging up his hat as a regular film critic. This...

Aug 31, 2011 — French sociologist Roger Caillois proposed that every form of human recreation could be placed somewhere on a continuum between two terms: ludus and paidia. The first of these represents games defined almost wholly by their rule systems. Crossword puzzles and...

Aug 31, 2011 — Let there be no trouble, no pranks . . . Do you realize the enormity of our moral responsibility? —Headmaster in Zéro de conduite There is nothing in the history of movies that mirrors or matches the achievement of Jean...