The Criterion Current

Big Changes to My Criterion

2018-04-23T12:46:15-04:00

Heads-up: My Criterion is going offline temporarily at the end of the month. We’ll let you know when it comes back, new and improved, later this year.

The Virgin Suicides: “They Hadn’t Heard Us Calling”

2018-04-20T09:44:52-04:00

Sofia Coppola adapts Jeffrey Eugenides’s acclaimed novel with an impressionistic style that evokes the private melancholy of female adolescence.

[The Daily] Back in a Bit

2018-04-22T11:51:12-04:00

We’re going to be doing a little renovating around here, so this will be the last Daily post for about a week or so. It’ll be worth the wait. You’ll see. In the meantime, let’s have a quick look at the week ahead, then remember Nelson Pereira . . .

[The Daily] Art of the Real 2018

2018-04-22T10:08:33-04:00

This year’s Art of the Real, the fifth, running from Thursday through May 6 and co-presented by MUBI and the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York, “offers a survey of the most vital and innovative voices in nonfiction and hybrid . . .

[The Daily] Varda, Bazin, and More

2018-04-21T10:03:42-04:00

Let’s catch up with the new issue of cléo journal, this one dedicated entirely to the work of Agnès Varda. When the journal launched five years ago, it took its name from Varda’s 1962 classic, Cléo from 5 to 7. “While Varda films with a style . . .

The Sounds of Dead Man

2018-04-20T15:32:49-04:00

Earlier this year, Jim Jarmusch dug up original footage of Neil Young recording the score for Dead Man, which we used to create a program on our new release.

New UK Releases for April 2018

2018-04-18T14:18:20-04:00

This month, two sparkling comedies head to the United Kingdom in their Criterion editions: The Awful Truth, Leo McCarey’s 1937 Oscar-winning screwball classic, and Edouard Molinaro’s subversive 1978 farce La Cage aux Folles. Head over to . . .

[The Daily] Goings On: Trnka, Haroun, and More

2018-04-20T11:56:51-04:00

“Jiri Trnka didn’t craft his puppet-cartoon shorts and features merely to imitate life,” writes Michael Sragow for Film Comment. “His endlessly original and inventive movies incorporate life, or transcend it. Trnka insisted that he was ‘local,’ . . .

This Week on the Criterion Channel

2018-04-19T17:12:54-04:00

In Satyajit Ray’s psychologically rich character study The Hero, Bengali film star Uttam Kumar draws on his real-world celebrity to play Arindam Mukherjee, a matinee idol on the brink of his first flop. When Mukherjee boards an overnight train . . .

The Color of Pomegranates: Parajanov Unbound

2018-04-20T09:19:40-04:00

Soviet filmmaker Sergei Parajanov explored his Transcaucasian roots in this visually spectacular and wonderfully strange ode to the Armenian poet Sayat-Nova.

[The Daily] In the Works: Zanussi, Lowery, and More

2018-04-20T09:54:14-04:00

Krzysztof Zanussi is currently in post-production on Ether, “a psychological drama with a Faust-inspired motive, set at the beginning of the 20th Century in Galicia, about a military doctor experimenting with science in order to get power over . . .

[The Daily] Interviews: Denis, Benning, and More

2018-04-20T08:14:33-04:00

“Although her oeuvre to date is wide-ranging,” writes Melissa Anderson at 4Columns, Claire Denis’s “most celebrated films are those that probe, usually elliptically, the legacy of French colonial rule in Africa, as seen in Chocolat (1988), her . . .

Repertory Pick: Young Love in Colorado

2018-04-19T14:23:23-04:00

Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom plays in a complete retrospective of the director’s work in Fort Collins, Colorado, this weekend.

[The Daily] Goings On: Cronenberg, Friedkin, and More

2018-04-19T12:47:30-04:00

Following yesterday’s news that David Cronenberg will be heading up the International Jury at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival in July, the Venice International Film Festival has announced that Cronenberg will receive the . . .

[The Daily] Cannes Adds Eleven Films

2018-04-19T11:45:40-04:00

This morning, the Cannes Film Festival posted an announcement listing eleven new films that had been added to this year’s lineup. Then the announcement was yanked. Radio silence for hours. Now the announcement’s back up again. So let’s have a . . .

[The Daily] Goings On: Ebertfest and More

2018-04-18T12:29:41-04:00

First up, some festival news. Joining Cate Blanchett, who’ll be presiding over the Jury of the seventy-first Cannes Film Festival (May 8 through 19), will be Chang Chen, who made his acting debut in Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (1991) . . .

[The Daily] In the Works: Spielberg, Almodóvar, and More

2018-04-18T09:51:44-04:00

“Almost every Steven Spielberg movie has its antecedent in a TV show, a movie serial or a comic book,” wrote Michael Sragow when he spoke with Spielberg for Rolling Stone in 1981. “The one he feels [Raiders of the Lost Ark] is closest to is . . .

[The Daily] Remembering Juraj Herz—and More

2018-04-18T09:14:11-04:00

Before we lost Milos Forman and Vittorio Taviani over the weekend, the Slovak Spectator reported that Juraj Herz, the Czech actor and director best known for his 1968 film The Cremator, had passed away at the age of eighty-three. Just last . . .

[The Daily] Tribeca 2018

2018-04-18T07:17:30-04:00

The seventeenth Tribeca Film Festival opens tonight in New York with Love, Gilda, Lisa D’Apolito’s portrait of beloved comic actress Gilda Radner, and screens around one hundred more features before wrapping on April 29. Throughout the festival . . .

On the Channel: In Search of Ozu

2018-04-17T12:14:43-04:00

Filmmaker Daniel Raim took a pilgrimage to Japan to get his own firsthand look at some of the most iconic objects in the world of Yasujiro Ozu.

The Awful Truth: Divorce, McCarey Style

2018-04-17T09:54:07-04:00

With a mix of improvisation, balletic physicality, and slapstick humor, Hollywood master Leo McCarey crafted the most sublime of screwball comedies.

[The Daily] Interviews: Panahi, Denis, and More

2018-04-17T09:48:18-04:00

Up at the top, that’s Behnaz Jafari and Jafar Panahi in Panahi’s 3 Faces, which is slated to premiere in Competition in Cannes next month. Film Comment points us to an interview with Panahi in the latest issue of World Policy Journal conducted . . .

[The Daily] Cannes 2018: ACID Lineup

2018-04-17T09:07:29-04:00

The past couple of days have seen lineup announcements from Critics’ Week and Directors’ Fortnight, and of course, last week, the main event, the Cannes Film Festival presented the bulk of its lineup for the seventy-first edition running from . . .

[The Daily] Directors’ Fortnight 2018 Lineup

2018-04-17T05:57:45-04:00

Following lineup announcements from the Cannes Film Festival and Critics’ Week, the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, or Directors’s Fortnight has presented the slate for its fiftieth edition, running from May 9 through 19. “As per the tradition of . . .

A Life at the Pictures: A Conversation with Lynne Ramsay

2018-04-13T12:30:37-04:00

Just before the release of her new film You Were Never Really Here, Lynne Ramsay spoke with us about her early moviegoing life in Glasgow, the version of herself that emerges on set, and the mind-expanding power of chess.

[The Daily] Books: Godard, Kael, and More

2018-04-16T11:46:48-04:00

From Éditions Matière comes Contrebandes Godard 1960-1968, a collection of promotional materials inspired by comics and the Situationists for the films Godard made during those years, unpublished since but now gathered and commented on by . . .

[The Daily] Goings On: Guitry, Miyagawa, and More

2018-04-16T09:09:36-04:00

New York. The Tribeca Film Festival opens on Wednesday, and later in the week, we’ll be taking a look at two series opening on Friday, The Puppet Master: The Complete Jiri Trnka at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: . . .

[The Daily] Cannes 2018: Critics’ Week Lineup

2018-04-16T06:09:06-04:00

La Semaine de la Critique, or Critics’ Week, has announced the lineup for its fifty-seventh edition, running from May 9 through 17 in Cannes. The opening film will be Paul Dano’s Wildlife, and I gathered a first round of reviews when it . . .

[The Daily] Vittorio Taviani, 1929–2018

2018-04-15T07:12:04-04:00

La Repubblica’s Alessandra Vitali is among the many Italian journalists reporting on today’s passing of Vittorio Taviani at the age of eighty-eight. In 2013, Ryan Gilbey, writing for the Guardian, declared that Taviani and his brother, Paolo, . . .

[The Daily] Milos Forman, 1932–2018

2018-04-14T05:27:56-04:00

“Milos Forman, the anti-authoritarian director who left his native Czechoslovakia for creative freedom in the U.S. and captured Oscars for the masterpieces One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, has died.” Duane Byrge for the Hollywood . . .