‘My Darling Clementine’ Hits Criterion: John Ford as the Great American Poet of Cinema
What is it in John Ford’s images, and in his darkest film, that makes it feel like one of the few works of American poetry on film?...
Peter Labuza
[TIFF Review] Songs From the North
“Dictatorships are banal” might be the main thesis of Songs from the North, a curious essay film from Soon-Mi Yoo (who contributed a segment to Far From Afghani...
[TIFF Review] The Princess of France
Although his films are rarely filled with the obvious cinematic references that color the works of Tarantino, Matias Piñeiro’s films are a different type of cin...
Robert Bresson’s ‘Pickpocket’ Hits Criterion: An Early Example of the Art House Crime Film
Writing about the films of Robert Bresson usually begins by informing reader that his films must be discussed through a trance of hushed tones and quiet ven...
‘Like Someone in Love’ and ‘L’Eclisse’ Hit Criterion: Public Space, Private Life, and Fractured Romance
The opening shot of Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love is truly one of the most exciting moments the Iranian director has ever put to screen. The image...
[Review] A Summer’s Tale
Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) arrives off a ferry and bustles up the road to the vacation house he will reside in for the next few weeks. He goes out for a quiet dri...
‘Transformers: The Premake’ Examines the Hype Machine of Modern-Day Hollywood
Pre-release hype can often feel over-bearing, and certainly given the amount of ways one can advertise these days, giant tentpole releases can feel less lik...
‘Rock Hudson’s Home Movies’ Hits Criterion: Seeking the Hidden In the Evident
We take a look at the 1992 documentary found in Criterion's release of All That Heaven Allows....
‘Red River’ Hits Criterion: Parsing the Different Forms of Howard Hawks’s Classic Western
Red River is truly one of Howard Hawks’s greatest works, and possibly one of the more surprising films in his career. After all, it’s one of his few films o...
‘Riot in Cell Block 11’ Hits Criterion: The Strange Story Behind a Low-Budget Classic
As the old saying goes, every film is a documentary of its own production. This takes on varying degrees of truth, but it feels especially salient when exam...
