Strange

Sep 29, 2003 — In May 1981, in the midst of shooting Lola, Rainer Werner Fassbinder sketched out his next film project: Sybille Schmitz. On the cover, he had written, “Story for a Feature Film*.” The asterisk pointed to this footnote: “It is possible...

Sep 29, 2003 — “Gray literature” is the term German film historians use to describe the material written purely for publicity purposes and made available to the press, but not meant for official publication. Often this gray literature, which is only accessible to film...

Jun 23, 2003 — Ermanno Olmi’s seldom-cited debut feature, the 1958 Time Stood Still, is a wonderful film, but it was the one-two punch of his second and third films that put him on the international movie scene map. Il Posto and I Fidanzati...

Jun 23, 2003 — One of the most unusual features of Italian cinema of the late ’50s and ’60s is the way that it affords us multiple perspectives on the same event, namely the economic boom following the postwar recovery. Where the directors of...

Apr 28, 2003 — The sense of the difficulty of a real assumption of adulthood gives François Truffaut’s final Antoine Doinel film an undercurrent of anguish, despite its surface lightness.

Sep 23, 2002 — Anticipating reality TV, Rémy Belvaux’s faux cinema verité satire follows a film crew documenting a mass murderer’s rampage.

Sep 9, 2002 — With her debut feature, Lynne Ramsay confirmed herself as one of the most distinct and important voices to emerge from the United Kingdom in recent years.

Nov 19, 2001 — Luis Buñuel’s drama is a seductive work that exemplifies, even as it studies, the perversity of human desire.

Oct 15, 2001 — The music in Benjamin Christensen’s classic constantly refers to something deeper, creating a sort of deep pity in preparation for the ending of the film.

Aug 20, 2001 — The strangeness of Ordet is something that no number of viewings, God willing, will rub off. I want to stress this strangeness. That Ordet is a great film, one of the greatest ever made, only a rash or foolish person...