Nov 20, 2018 — In this video, the Oscar-winning director of The Shape of Water explains how the mix of terror and lyricism in Charles Laughton’s masterpiece went on to influence his own style.

Jan 25, 2022 — A Victorian-era tale of self-discovery, Jane Campion’s Palme d’Or winner exults in the thrill of female rebellion.

Dec 6, 2019 — Among the many enduring virtues of The Story of Temple Drake—a pre-Code William Faulkner adaptation whose sensational depiction of a hopelessly fallen world, rife with sexual violence and other forms of malice, scandalized audiences upon its release in 1933—is its...

Nov 30, 2009 — The following essay was originally written for Criterion’s website in 2005, on the occasion of the DVD release of Powell and Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffmann. We have posted it here to coincide with BFI Southbank’s ongoing Hein Heckroth exhibition...

Nov 5, 2015 — Director Guillermo del Toro isn’t shy about the wealth of influences that have shaped his dark and fantastical cinematic worlds. In a piece published earlier this month in the Guardian, the acclaimed Mexican filmmaker cited a range of inspirations for...

Feb 7, 2019 — Repertory Picks On Saturday evening, as part of the series A Tribute to Nicolas Roeg, the late, great director’s haunting 1973 masterpiece Don’t Look Now will show at the Brattle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 35 mm. (The film will be...

Oct 8, 2020 — Recognized by the Museum of Modern Art as a “rarity among the young generation of Filipino filmmakers for her muted, serene aesthetic,” Isabel Sandoval has premiered her films at major festivals like Venice, Locarno, London, and Busan. Cahiers du cinéma...

Jun 11, 2018 — Building on a rich lineage of gothic fairy tales and noirish melodramas, this lavishly stylized curio has an ominous beauty all its own.

Sep 6, 2017 — Oscar-winning visual effects artist and film historian Craig Barron takes a close look at the techniques used to create the gothic atmosphere of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca.

Feb 1, 1988 — Charles Laughton’s classic has the feel and the force of an American folk fable; yet, it also mixes rural humor with gothic humor, biblical quotation and Freudian symbolism, and everyday realities with a near-mythic confrontation between the forces of good...