The Way of the World

Nov 15, 2016 — Akira Kurosawa lays bare his deepest fears in this visually astonishing interpretation of folklore, myth, and the director’s own dreams and memories.

Jan 6, 2003 — “No one would claim that Lubitsch’s German films were more important than his American ones (cf. Fritz Lang).” This was Richard Roud’s response to my piece “Ernst Lubitsch: German Period” in his Cinema: A Critical Dictionary. One could indeed ask...

May 15, 2014 — It wouldn’t be hyperbole to say that Overlord features some of the most unbelievable images in the entire Criterion Collection. This is because of the way director Stuart Cooper integrated archival footage from World War II battles into his fictional...

Nov 22, 2011 — The title of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore refers to the ivy-covered prep school attended by the film’s central character, Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman). Max, with his bushy eyebrows and imposing glasses, loves his school beyond reason and is Rushmore’s number one...

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 10, 2019 — In this landmark melodrama, director Ritwik Ghatak channeled his grief over the destruction of his beloved homeland, Bengal, in the wake of the Partition of India.

Sep 17, 2017 — Michael Pearce’s debut feature, Beast, is a “multi-layered, complex account of a fatal attraction between two complicated and fragile souls, Moll (Jessie Buckley) and Pascal (Johnny Flynn),” writes Kaleem Aftab for Cineuropa. “The action takes place on Jersey, where the...

Apr 24, 2015 — Atypical in style and subject, Yasujiro Ozu’s early crime dramas show a future master brilliantly experimenting with camera and editing.

Jun 15, 2018 — Coming up at the turn of the seventies, Philippine filmmaker Lino Brocka made a name for himself directing nine studio movies—many of them melodramas and romances that proved popular with local critics and audiences—in the span of just two years....

Jun 16, 2014 — Georges Franju evokes the surreal silent serials of Louis Feuillade while constructing his own personal cinematic paradise.