May 13, 2019 — One Scene The Piano Teacher is one of my favorite films, and a rare novelistic adaptation that doesn’t suffer from comparison with its source material. This is especially impressive given how good a source it has: Elfriede Jelinek’s 1983 novel...

Jul 27, 2009 — We enter Roman Polanski’s harrowing Repulsion as if in the middle of the story, but it’s actually the beginning of the end. Polanski unceremoniously drops us into a beauty salon where a pampered matron takes to task our heroine, a...

Sep 26, 2010 — The Thin Red Line, arguably the greatest war film ever made, ended two decades of silence from Terrence Malick, cinema’s wandering auteur. The silence wasn’t entirely self-imposed, since during this time he tried to launch a few productions—including a tale...

Feb 27, 2023 — The Golden and Silver Bears sparkled, but many of the true gems were to be found in the Encounters program.

Jun 18, 2026 — Over the course of his first three documentaries—Helvetica (2007), Objectified (2009), and Urbanized (2011)—Gary Hustwit established a clean and clear cinematic language that he used to describe the complex and often contradictory systems of thinking that designers use to shape...

Jun 17, 2013 — The author recounts the story of his friendship with the great filmmaker.

Nov 26, 2024 — Combining sci-fi magic and a distinctly human sense of intimacy, Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning film reimagines an oppressive era in American history through a tale of romantic fate.

Mar 18, 2022 — Ukrainian cinema, suspense vs. dread, and the opposite of synesthesia are on our minds this week.

Sep 26, 2017 — The sexual pedagogy of a masochistic music instructor takes center stage in this shocking study of art, control, and repression.

Jan 28, 1991 — The following review, one of the most renowned in the history of film criticism, appeared in The New Yorker magazine on October 28, 1972. It is reprinted with the permission of the author, Pauline Kael. Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in...