For the Children

Nov 8, 2010 — To say that Lars von Trier deals in provocation and controversy is like saying John Ford made westerns: obviously true, but far from giving a measure of the director’s importance. Ever since The Element of Crime polarized critics at Cannes...

Oct 27, 2009 — Who speaks of Howards End these days? Who expounds on the virtues of this magnificent drama, whose traditional style seems almost as distant as its Edwardian setting? Seen today, years past its 1992 release, it strikes one as not only...

Oct 20, 2009 — There’s been no shortage of tributes and farewells to Ingmar Bergman in the two years since his death. Considering the parallels between his tumultuous personal life (five wives, nine children) and the troubled personae of his characters, and since his...

Apr 23, 2001 — In 1955, Jules Dassin, an American director in exile in Paris, made this flat-out perfect piece of cinema. The film came as a redemption for Dassin: a one-time promising young director cranking out B-movies under an MGM contract ("They were...

Dec 29, 2008 — If I had not seen The Lady Vanishes at the age of seven, I might never have become a film critic. I was the fifth child of parents well into middle age: clearly an “accident,” as I was ten-years-plus younger...

Jul 20, 2016 — Duncan Hannah is a New York City–based artist whose paintings have been featured in over seventy solo exhibitions around the world since his debut in 1980. His work has been collected by both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Mick...

Nell Casey is the editor of The Journals of Spalding Gray, An Uncertain Inheritance: Writers on Caring for Family, and the national best seller Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Apr 30, 2025 — Elena Gorfinkel has written a new study of Loden’s groundbreaking feature and curated a season for the BFI.

May 22, 2017 — The intersection of cinema and the performing arts has been a source of inspiration for many of the world’s greatest auteurs. Over on the Criterion Channel, we’re raising the curtain on our latest series, All the Screen’s a Stage, which...

Sep 3, 2025 — Amanda Seyfried (The Testament of Ann Lee), Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone (Bugonia), and Dwyane Johnson (The Smashing Machine) dazzle in Venice.