Out of the Dark

May 23, 2018 — About halfway through Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation (2016), Dr. Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni) finds himself in a patch of woods in the middle of the night, crying. It’s a surprisingly vulnerable moment for a protagonist who is usually all business. We’re...

Oct 23, 2012 — After winning an Oscar, John Schlesinger used his newfound artistic freedom to make a personal film in which homosexuality is treated as groundbreakingly ordinary.

Jan 17, 2012 — At once a political epic and a radical gesture in personal filmmaking, Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic is an unexpected, unlikely triumph. It was a film that Hollywood didn’t want to make—every studio in town turned it down—that went on to secure...

Aug 16, 2011 — “It is my best film. I always loved it. I always believed in it. It is real cinema, done for cinema—like art for art.” That was Roman Polanski’s view of Cul-de-sac in 1970, four years after its release and just...

Nov 16, 2008 — Chungking Express (1994) was the Masculin féminin of the 1990s, a pop-art movie about cool twentysomethings looking for love in the city that has replaced Paris as the center of the world-cinema imagination. What Jean-Luc Godard did for “the children...

Sep 22, 1997 — I ?rst read The English Patient in one gulp, sitting in a room on 77th and Columbus the morning after I’d ?nished a sweltering summer of ?lming in New York. When I put the book down, it was dark, and...

Jan 5, 2026 — One of France’s biggest stars took the world by storm before her reputation took a turn.

Sep 14, 2022 — Always innovating, Godard was one of the most vital and influential figures in the history of cinema.

Sep 6, 2022 — Here’s an overview of how some of the contenders are faring with critics in Venice.

Sep 29, 2017 — One of the most elusive artists in American cinema opens a window onto his private life and creative methods in this revelatory documentary.