Back to the Future

May 13, 2009 — It doesn’t really come as a surprise that Chris Marker is a devoted inhabitant of the virtual world Second Life. After all, one could call the playful French filmmaker and multimedia artist’s kitty—and alter ego—Guillaume-en-Egypt a trailblazing avatar (when asked...

Jan 21, 2008 — As late as 1970, Alf Sjöberg’s boldly experimental 1951 adaptation of August Strindberg’s play was declared as inaugurating “a new cinematic language.”

Jan 14, 2008 — As Japan was coming out of World War II, Akira Kurosawa was coming into his own as a filmmaker.

Oct 16, 2007 — Ididn’t create the Criterion office’s word-of-the-day bulletin board, but I’m the latest logophile to carry the torch, er, dry-erase marker and update the white board in the kitchen. Occasionally someone will ask me what a certain word means (psocid was...

Jan 16, 2007 — The marvel of Mouchette inheres in the elegance, obstinacy, and capaciousness of Bresson’s double-mindedness.

Nov 21, 2005 — Akira Kurosawa’s late masterpiece is a tragedy fed by Shakespeare, Noh, and the samurai epic; it shows human brutality, warfare, and suffering as if from the eye of a dispassionate God.

Jun 27, 2005 — Ko Nakahira’s Nikkatsu Studio youth flick helped transform postwar Japanese cinema.

Oct 4, 2004 — Robert Altman’s political satire, broadcast on HBO in mostly half-hour segments during the 1988 campaign season, is a sort of trompe l’oeil video chronicle of the constantly surprising presidential fight of an obscure Michigan Democratic congressmen.

Jun 16, 2026 — The debut in 1998 of Lisa Cholodenko’s first feature film, High Art, was a triumph. The intense mastery of its form and the freshness of its narrative created waves of excitement—from the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Waldo...

Apr 26, 2022 — In the opening moments of Arie and Chuko Esiri’s Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) (2020), we first hear—the ceaseless hum of machines at work—and then see: a jumble of multicolored wires. The 16 mm film image is grainy, trembling ever...