The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jul 11, 1988 — Cinema has given us any number of tales of the criminal underworld, and explorations of the mindsets of murderers—yet there’s been nothing quite like Shohei Imamura’s searing work.
The Daily
Feb 22, 2019 — Oscar-nominated songs, the unsung Marielle Heller, Lois Weber, Germans in Paris, and more feature in this week’s round.
Sneak Peeks
Jan 7, 2016 — View a clip from Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance, featuring actor Meiko Kaji in a scene that highlights the film’s dazzlingly choreographed combination of visual beauty and unflinching ferocity.
Jan 5, 2016 — Toshiya Fujita’s two-film saga set exuberant, manga-inspired martial-arts choreography against a backdrop of a Japanese society in transition to unfold a vivid tale of epic vengeance.
Essays
Jun 1, 2017 — Suffused with a quiet radiance, this Kazakh New Wave masterpiece grapples with cultural displacement through an allegorical tale of vengeance.
Essays
Oct 6, 2008 — It is pretty much a convention of the hard-boiled gangster picture that most, if not all, of the principal characters wind up dead by the final shot. So it ought not constitute a “spoiler” to note that Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le...
Jun 17, 2010 — Prolific Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To has directed more than forty films, including Election, Exiled, and Mad Detective. His latest, Vengeance, is currently in some North American theaters, from IFC Films.
Nov 8, 2016 — This adaptation of one of the most influential series in manga history is a delirious mix of breathtaking swordplay and pop vulgarity.
Sneak Peeks
Aug 27, 2014 — In this excerpt from a 1999 interview produced by the Directors Guild of Japan, director Shohei Imamura talks about the personal investigative approach he took to making the 1979 serial killer drama Vengeance Is Mine, for which he viewed himself...
Essays
Nov 25, 2013 — He massages, he gambles, and he’s great with a blade. Who is this blind swordsman, anyway?