The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jan 20, 2015 — Here he is: the real, unreal Guy Maddin, in his phantasmagorical, polymathic stew of sex, memory, and dreams.
Jan 13, 2015 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s characters play an endlessly layered game of dress-up in this tale of sadomasochistic love.
Essays
Nov 25, 2014 — More than just observational, Les Blank’s sensual documentaries are personal and participatory celebrations of American culture.
Aug 26, 2014 — Define the Japanese New Wave however you like—there are innumerable possible launching points, and the name players in the fifties and sixties were old and young and in between—but from any juncture, Shohei Imamura was a primary figure and, at...
Essays
Aug 12, 2014 — The emotional culmination of a brilliant career in film, John Cassavetes’s unruly masterpiece is an enigmatic character study and a direct investigation of the nature of love.
Jun 19, 2014 — PerformancesTime has added some latter-day ironies to All That Heaven Allows, and not just the revelation that its star Rock Hudson was gay. There’s also the political career of Ronald Reagan, the ex-husband of Hudson’s costar, Jane Wyman—built on the...
Essays
May 6, 2014 — This humorous magazine piece from 1970 sheds some light on the meaning of the title of Il sorpasso, along with the way Vittorio Gassman comports himself behind the wheel in it.
Apr 14, 2014 — Lars von Trier brought his brand of provocation to his widest audience yet with this inquiry into faith and human goodness.
Mar 24, 2014 — Rome is as exquisite as it is suffocating in Paolo Sorrentino’s profound tale of contemporary entropy.
Essays
Feb 27, 2014 — Roman Polanski’s film is a highly sophisticated adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel, in both its faithfulness and its divergences.