Breaching Closure in Pasolini’s ‘Teorema’
Pier Paolo Pasolini's classic drama, Teorema, grapples with the parable -- the manner of knowing that which always remains just beyond our grasp.
criterion
On Infinity in Miranda July’s ‘Me and You and Everyone We Know’
In a strange kind of way, Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know is about two competing notions of "forever" in relation to love.
Yasujiro Ozu on the Arts of Pachinko, Baseball, and Marriage
Yasujiro Ozu's films can often be described as movies in which nothing happens -- nothing except the revelation of a world, its inhabitants, and a deep understanding of their contradictions.
10 Old-School Halloween Horrors: Blu-rays That Go Bump in the Night
Reader, we've sifted through many of this year's ghastly Blu-ray offerings so that you don't have to. Venture in for watchable goods for your macabre marathons and blood-curdling binges.
The Corrosive Veneer of John Waters’ Polyester
Unlike his earlier provocations, John Waters' Polyester suggests that moral depravity may be liberating for the person willing to embrace it, but it always gives rise to pain elsewhere.
The Towering Humanity in Abbas Kiarostami’s Films
Director Abbas Kiarostami's Where Is the Friend's House?, And Life Goes On, and Through the Olive Trees, packaged in Criterion's "The Koker Trilogy", offer profound life lessons from a modest Iranian village.
The Joy of Being a Woman: Agnès Varda’s One Sings, the Other Doesn’t
Varda's One Sings, the Other Doesn't is challenging and multi-voiced act of art by and about women; "happiness" in unconventional arrangements its most radical gesture.
‘Detour’ and ‘The Big Clock’ Cross Noir with Absurdity
Like a match made in Purgatory, Edgar Ulmer's Detour and John Farrow's The Big Clock are ingenious films with different but self-aware approaches to noir.
Abortion and Difference Feminism in Agnès Varda’s ‘One Sings, the Other Doesn’t’
It is the impossible demand placed on the woman that drives the engine of Agnès Varda's One Sings, the Other Doesn't.
On Despair and the Philosophy of ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’
Franz of Berlin Alexanderplatz doesn't occupy a privileged space of sovereignty over the world. He's not the avatar for divine individuality that we so often take ourselves to be.
The Past You Can’t Escape: Strained Camaraderie in Elaine May’s ‘Mikey and Nicky’
Childhood friends are tricky. They're the friends you leave behind but can never completely escape. Elaine May conveys this with disruptive technique in Mikey and Nicky.
Brigitte Bardot and the Spectacle of the Trial in Clouzot’s ‘La Vérité’
Despite Clouzot's apparent belief that a trial can't summarize a person's life, he has faith in cinema's ability to do so, as he conveys with La Vérité.