The Criterion Collection
Short Takes
May 25, 2017 — The vast majority of Cannes top-prize recipients have been either European or American, which makes it all the more worthwhile to note those winners that come from historically underrepresented nations. At the 1997 ceremony, Iran’s flourishing film culture enjoyed a...
On the Channel
May 25, 2017 — In visually daring phantasmagorias like Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro transfixes audiences with a unique brand of gothic storytelling that interweaves the personal and the historical. In addition to being one of our most inventive...
May 24, 2017 — The Cannes Film Festival always kicks up a flurry of announcements of projects in the works. Now that we’ve just passed the halfway mark, let’s have a look at some of the more interesting titles we’ve heard about so far.“Robert...
Short Takes
May 24, 2017 — Cannes kicked off the 1980s with a Palme d’Or win for a giant of Japanese cinema entering the final stages of his career. Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (the title of which literally translates as “shadow warrior”) follows a small-time thief who...
Short Takes
May 24, 2017 — For my top-prize pick from the 1970s, I’ve chosen a film that enjoyed great commercial success while also stirring up international controversy. Though it was one of the highest-grossing German films of the decade, Volker Schlöndorff’s adaptation of Günter Grass’s...
Short Takes
May 23, 2017 — Continuing my trip through Cannes history, today I’m focusing on one of the most celebrated works of Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni, who became an international sensation partly thanks to the booing and heckling he endured at the Cannes premiere of...
May 22, 2017 — Abel Ferrara’s “visits to Cannes almost invariably turn into special occasions, whether he's hosting an off-fest screening of an incendiary Dominique Strauss-Kahn film à clef or, in 2008, offering his opinion of the Bad Lieutenant remake,” writes Ben Kenigsberg at...
May 22, 2017 — To toast the seventieth anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, which has been in full swing since last Wednesday, I’m spending this week looking back on a top-prize winner from each decade of the festival’s history, dishing up details on...
On the Channel
May 10, 2017 — Whether evoking the pain of first love or investigating the challenges of the contemporary immigrant experience, Tunisian-French filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche depicts human behavior in all its unruly complexity. In 2007, his gift for infusing rich, classically structured narratives with documentary-like...
May 1, 2017 — Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 Rumble Fish captures rebellious youth in all its existential angst, following gang leader Rusty-James (Matt Dillon) as he navigates troubled relationships with his near-mythical older brother (Mickey Rourke), his on-and-off girlfriend (Diane Lane), and his drunkard...