[Cannes Review] Mr. Turner
On their surfaces, Mike Leigh and J.M.W. Turner — the artist at the center of his latest film, Mr. Turner — couldn’t seem more like polar opposites. The 19th-ce...
Peter Labuza
[Cannes Review] Timbuktu
Abderrahmane Sissako can no longer be called one of the greatest African directors of our time; he has become, simply, one of the greatest directors of our time...
[Cannes Review] Grace of Monaco
A tracking shot slowly moves around a blonde princess on a Hollywood set. We follow the applause as she leaves for the final time and into her dressing room, le...
‘Master of the House’ Hits Criterion: Exploring Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Marriage Experiment
As much as we'd love to believe certain myths, no filmmaker has simply waltzed into making a masterpiece without cutting their teeth beforehand. Jaws may ha...
‘The Freshman’ Hits Criterion: A Short Take On Three Early Harold Lloyd Short Films
Thanks to the work of the Harold Lloyd Entertainment and Janus Films, Lloyd’s 1925 comedic masterpiece The Freshman is the latest film to join the Criterion Collection in a fantastic new Blu-Ray. The college set, football-obsessed feature is one of Lloyd’s consistent works, showing off both his skills as a master of elongated gag set pieces as well as the character’s down to Earth pathos. Like the release of Safety Last!, Criterion has also included three recently restored shorts with new orchestral scores that demonstrate aspects of Lloyd’s comic forte from a slightly earlier period in his career....
‘The Hidden Fortress’ Hits Criterion Blu-ray: Akira Kurosawa’s Politics of Space
If the contemporary experience of watching Akira Kurosawa has been colored by commentary describing his work as “channeling meaning towards a single destina...
‘King of the Hill’ Hits Criterion: A Look at Steven Soderbergh’s Studio Debut
No matter what “period” of his career you search, one of Steven Soderbergh's main interests has always been the concept of transaction. How does A become B ...
‘Thief’ Hits Criterion: Michael Mann and the Cinema of Flow
With Michael Mann's directorial debut getting The Criterion Collection treatment, we look at how it's a film of flows, one both about and made through them....
Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project Hits Criterion: A New Lens on the Globe
It is strange to think that even now, in an age with seemingly infinite access to the entire world of cinema, many of our viewings are quite limited in thei...
‘Tokyo Story’ Hits Criterion Blu-ray: Questioning a Canonical Classic
When the Criterion Collection announced that Yasujirô Ozu’s towering 1953 work, Tokyo Story, would be coming to Blu-ray, my first reaction was “shit.” Not t...
