The Complex

Sep 15, 2016 — From its formal and technical complexity to its potent social commentary, Mizoguchi’s early-career masterpiece The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum offers a rich learning experience for directors seeking to hone their craft.

Jul 18, 2018 — Alan Rudolph is a pioneer in the American independent film movement. He has directed nineteen narrative features and one feature-length documentary. His films have been presented in major international festivals for forty years and are noted for their fluid style,...

Nov 5, 2019 — What began as an artificially stoked-up controversy has led to a vital statement on the present and future of cinema.

Aug 28, 2025 — Made for public television, this moving vérité documentary about three terminally ill cancer patients is one of the purest expressions of the director’s career-long preoccupation with human fragility.

Feb 19, 2025 — Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke reteam to prove once again that few can make talk livelier or more engaging.

Nov 26, 2019 — Bette Davis gets the first laugh in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950), and a little over two hours later, she gets the last laugh too. The film opens at the dinner for something called the Sarah Siddons Award...

Oct 13, 2016 — From its diffusely structured narrative to its innovative cinematography, this radical western is a showcase for Robert Altman’s iconoclastic style.

The writer and director selects a pair of feminist films by Dorothy Arzner, shares why Chantal Akerman and David Lynch are her filmmaking idols, and praises how Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales portray complex dynamics between women and men.

Aug 24, 2017 — Professor Jeff Smith illustrates how, under the constraints of a low budget and compressed shooting schedule, Rainer Werner Fassbinder arrived at a minimalist approach that blended seamlessly with his subject matter.

Dec 17, 2025 — This January, savor multiple levels of nostalgia with a survey of ’90s cinema’s riffs on the ’70s, or turn a new page with a collection of films about dreamers seeking fresh starts in life.