A Soap

Feb 21, 2025 — The pioneer of African cinema carried “the inventive temperament of a dreamer armed with a firm political orientation.”

Oct 30, 2012 — All of them actors? Nearly everyone wears a mask in Roman Polanski’s devilishly clever work of horror.

Jul 24, 2012 — Trained as a musician, Jean Grémillon became one of French cinema’s most lyrical artists. His most beloved films were made during World War II.

Sep 26, 1993 — Kon Ichikawa’s magisterial achievement is a barbed, poignant, and seductive elegy that draws on the skills he acquired over his four-decade career.

Apr 2, 2018 — This week sees the openings of the San Francisco International Film Festival, Locarno in Los Angeles, and DOC10 in Chicago, and I’ll have separate entries on all three events in a couple of days. New York. The BAMcinématek series Tough...

Jan 12, 2016 — In German filmmaker Wim Wenders’s high-strung thriller, adapted from two Patricia Highsmith novels, Dennis Hopper plays sociopathic con man Tom Ripley as a “hopped-up elf from hell” who works his charms on a winsome and guileless Bruno Ganz.

Jun 17, 2022 — This week: Surrealism and cinema, a Cold War “travesty,” talking about Bruno, and walking in Hong Kong.

Aug 17, 2022 — Our late summer reading list includes vital film criticism and new titles on Josephine Baker, Douglas Fairbanks, and more.

Apr 9, 2021 — Uncovering “The Naked City,” Bruce Goldstein’s scintillating chronicle of The Naked City’s groundbreaking New York location shoot, is more than the best “where-they-filmed-it” doc ever made. As Goldstein wittily traces director Jules Dassin’s Gotham roots and influences, this twenty-three-minute documentary—now...

Dec 13, 2016 — Yesterday, we kicked off our Criterion Channel series Spy Games by sharing Graham Greene's review of Jacques Feyder’s Knight Without Armour, a highlight in the lineup. Today, we’re focusing on another title in the series, Sabotage, which marked “the first...