Free Cinema

Mar 31, 2021 — It has seemed to me for a long time that there is far too little screaming about Albert Brooks. It has seemed that way to all of his staunchest fans, who secretly relish being among the evolved few who know...

Mar 22, 2021 — Here’s what the critics have been saying about the winners of the two main competitions.

Jan 28, 2021 — The 2021 edition is a nationwide celebration of fresh talent.

Nov 19, 2020 — For most of my life, makeover sequences in film comedies held an irresistible allure. The mousy young woman who realizes her own inner and outer (but mostly outer) beauty after receiving the attentions of the right man (or the right...

Oct 1, 2020 — Few directors capture bodies in motion with the sensuous intensity that Claire Denis brings to her work. In some of the most memorable scenes in her filmography, she invites viewers to linger in moments where her characters lose themselves in...

Aug 17, 2020 — Deep Dives Baseball’s back in America—as of this writing, anyway—though for much of spring and early summer the Major League season hung in the balance as negotiations between the owners and the players’ union approached a peak of acrimony. Being...

Jul 6, 2020 — The latest short film to take the spotlight on the Criterion Channel, Marnie Ellen Hertzler’s Dirt Daughter emerged from the collaboration of a vibrant community of artists. Not only was it produced by the innovative collective the Eyeslicer, which supports...

Apr 22, 2020 — One of the true dark glories of the Czechoslovak New Wave, The Cremator (Spalovač mrtvol, 1969) is the most popular and indelible work by the underappreciated Juraj Herz and remained a firm favorite of the director’s among his many films....

Apr 22, 2020 — Deep Dives The Forest for the Trees, by German filmmaker Maren Ade, is one of the deepest depictions of loneliness on-screen. After serving as a television producer and shooting two shorts, Ade made this first feature, based on her own...

Dec 3, 2019 — As the title card comes up, the movie has already begun, with a frontal view of a dilapidated plantation house, its ivied columns sporadically lit up by a raging storm. Spectators at the time of the film’s release who were...