The Criterion Collection
Sep 24, 2019 — Bill Forsyth is Scotland’s most famous filmmaker, and Local Hero (1983) is his most famous film—for many, the true subject of Local Hero’s title is the Glasgow-born writer-director himself. The enduring affection and adulation for Local Hero stem from the...
Feb 19, 2018 — Jonathan Demme put an uncompromisingly feminist spin on the law-enforcement procedural with this wildly successful, Oscar-winning drama.
Feb 13, 2006 — John Ford’s biographical drama portrays an imaginary antebellum America with relaxed humor and effortless nostalgic charm while sustaining an underlying note of somber apprehension.
Sep 17, 2009 — Le jour se lève was Marcel Carné’s fourth collaboration with screenwriter and poet Jacques Prévert and their third entry in the poetic realism cinema movement, following their vanguard Drôle de drame and Port of Shadows. Both of those films were...
Sneak Peeks
Feb 26, 2018 — Film scholar Meheli Sen discusses the particular qualities that made Bengali actor Uttam Kumar a star and the perfect leading man for Satyajit Ray’s The Hero.
The dynamic, Tokyo-born star was convincing whether playing a mercenary lone wolf or a heartsick love interest, a hero or a villain, in a sleek suit or samurai robes, and just as comfortable blending in to an ensemble as commanding...
Sep 29, 2014 — The Toronto-based songwriter-producer Austin Garrick is one-half (alongside vocalist Bronwyn Griffin) of the electronic pop duo Electric Youth, whose full-length debut album, Innerworld, was released in September 2014 by Secretly Canadian/Last Gang Records. Garrick’s music is known to fans of...
Essays
Jun 21, 2022 — By centering an empowered Black hero, Gordon Parks reimagined the detective genre and exposed its racial politics.
Nov 16, 2021 — Starting with his first movie, in 1949, the Cantonese folk hero became a pop-culture phenomenon whose personality evolved to suit the times.
Jul 19, 2019 — Who did Agnès Varda want us to believe she was? Why has the idea that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing caught on? And Roger Corman, feminist hero?