Criticism and Analysis

All That Jazz (1979)

An artist crucifying himself on screen

Bob Fosse

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

The horrors of a world that declared God dead

Roman Polanski

The Prisoner (1967)

The Twin Peaks of its day

Patrick McGoohan

Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

A state of life that calls for another way of living

Godfrey Reggio

Andrei Rublev (1966)

Solitude in a complete surrender to beauty

Andrei Tarkovsky

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

A funeral to the golden age of the western

Sergio Leone

Pickpocket (1959)

Crime and Punishment in 75 minutes

Robert Bresson

A Matter of Dignity (1958)

The human spirit over all the money in the world

Michael Cacoyannis

Love & Mercy (2014)

A symphony to God

Bill Pohlad

Godzilla (1954)

Nature points out the folly of men

Ishirō Honda

Ballad of a Soldier (1959)

The mark of a true soldier

Grigori Chukhrai

Portrait of Jennie (1948)

The universe, and the muse who inspired it

William Dieterle

Cinderella (1950)

Be kind to nature, and nature will be kind to you

Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske & Wilfred Jackson

Gone with the Wind (1939)

A civilization gone with the wind

Victor Fleming

Wuthering Heights (1939)

Wuthering Heights, reimagined as Hollywood romance

William Wyler

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Facing death, and finding life

Ingmar Bergman

Waterloo Bridge (1940)

Love, another victim of war

Mervyn LeRoy

The Kids Are Alright (1979)

My John, Paul, George and Ringo

Jeff Stein

The Trial (1962)

An indictment of man and the bureaucracy he created

Orson Welles

Marius (1931)

Ishmael, had he never joined the Pequod

Alexander Korda

Footlight Parade (1933)

A story as old as acting and theatre itself

Lloyd Bacon

Angel Face (1952)

A punch-line about double jeopardy

Otto Preminger

The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

The bridge to a lifelong love of stories

Steven Spielberg

Cars (2006)

The Rio Bravo of animation

John Lasseter

WALL-E (2008)

My 2001: A Space Odyssey, at four years old

Andrew Stanton

A Girl in Black (1956)

Happy is the man who sails the Aegean

Michael Cacoyannis

Almost Famous (2000)

The passion you never outgrew

Cameron Crowe

Deliverance (1972)

You are the fifth man in the canoe

John Boorman

Blue Velvet (1986)

There is trouble until the robins come

David Lynch

Paris, Texas (1984)

A David Lynch movie David Lynch never made

Wim Wenders

The Straight Story (1999)

Lynch's most experimental film

David Lynch

The Elephant Man (1980)

The heart of Oliver Twist in the body of Frankenstein's Monster

David Lynch

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Strive to find your own voice

Peter Weir

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Camilla Rhodes IS the girl

David Lynch

In memory of David Lynch, 1946–2025

Turn on the light and the darkness goes

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

Tarantino writing from the heart

Quentin Tarantino

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

What one person is capable of doing to another

Pier Paolo Pasolini

The Gospel According to Matthew (1964)

Better felt on the page than on the screen

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Mamma Roma (1962)

Victims of circumstance, or of ourselves?

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Mirror (1975)

Why Tarkovsky is Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky

Stalker (1979)

The Zone is a gift to the soul of man

Andrei Tarkovsky

Solaris (1972)

What if nature decided to fight back?

Andrei Tarkovsky

Persona (1966)

Deep down, hypocrites we all are

Ingmar Bergman

Megalopolis (2024)

A stick-figure drawing on the refrigerator

Francis Ford Coppola

The Last Waltz (1978)

The best waltz was saved for last

Martin Scorsese

Pierrot le Fou (1965)

Life may be sad, but it's always beautiful

Jean-Luc Godard

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

I just don't know who's to blame

Stanley Kramer

Mon Oncle (1958)

Out with the old and in with the new

Jacques Tati

Jour de Fête (1949)

School for Postmen, stretched to feature length

Jacques Tati

Rio Bravo (1959)

The forever-superior answer to High Noon

Howard Hawks

My Darling Clementine (1946)

A film you feel you've known all your life

John Ford

A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

Two people still learning how to be parents

John Cassavetes

Casablanca (1942)

A little communication goes a long way

Michael Curtiz

The Roaring Twenties (1939)

A send-off to the golden age gangster film

Raoul Walsh

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Lightning caught in a bottle

Carl Theodor Dreyer

The Rules of the Game (1939)

Everybody has their reasons

Jean Renoir

They Live (1988)

Literally just a documentary

John Carpenter

Stranger Than Paradise (1984)

The inescapable purgatory of boredom

Jim Jarmusch

Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)

The single greatest work of art, across all mediums

David Lynch

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

Not only how to be good, but why

David Lynch

Zazie dans le Métro (1960)

If Keith Moon directed a film

Louis Malle

Moby Dick (1956)

Living and breathing its pages

John Huston

The Naked City (1948)

One story out of the 8 million

Jules Dassin

Patton (1970)

The American equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia

Franklin J. Schaffner

The Exorcist (1973)

A very real evil presence

William Friedkin

Sorcerer (1977)

In the shadow of The Wages of Fear

William Friedkin

Being There (1979)

Peter Sellers' true swan song

Hal Ashby

Ossessione (1943)

An awkward cross between neorealism and noir

Luchino Visconti

El Dorado (1966)

A discount rehash of Rio Bravo

Howard Hawks

The Rules of the Game (1939)

The game never ends, but we do

Jean Renoir

Grand Illusion (1937)

Humanity, however, is reality

Jean Renoir

The Searchers (1956)

Why The Searchers?

John Ford

Westfront 1918 (1930)

A re-enactment of war

G.W. Pabst

Medium Cool (1969)

A cautionary tale that could have been made today

Haskell Wexler

The Informer (1935)

The gravest sin of all

John Ford

The Ogre of Athens (1956)

A truly Greek film, at last

Nikos Koundouros

Medea (1969)

What if the Gods were declared dead?

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Odd Man Out (1947)

Dostoevsky on the streets of Belfast

Carol Reed

The Children's Hour (1961)

When public opinion can't be changed

William Wyler

Valley of the Dolls (1967)

The Showgirls of its day

Mark Robson

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Like waking up to find the sun is gone

Robert Aldrich

La Roue (1923)

Gance laid the bridge to something greater

Abel Gance

Night at the Crossroads (1932)

Why was this even made in the first place?

Jean Renoir

Amarcord (1973)

The most honest depiction of adolescence

Federico Fellini

La Dolce Vita (1960)

Lost souls in an ever-changing Rome

Federico Fellini

Something Wild (1961)

The weight of what lingers

Jack Garfein

Blow-Up (1966)

Antonioni tried to warn us

Michelangelo Antonioni

Summertime (1955)

The film David Lean called his favorite

David Lean

Le Samouraï (1967)

Style and class unlike any other

Jean-Pierre Melville

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

The greatest screen epic of them all

David Lean

War and Peace (1966)

The grandest epic to have ever graced the silver screen

Sergei Bondarchuk

A Woman of Paris (1923)

Chaplin's boldest film

Charles Chaplin

Fantômas (1913)

The birth of the crime drama

Louis Feuillade

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

The masterpiece of F.W. Murnau's career

F.W. Murnau

L'Argent (1983)

Bresson's final film, and his darkest comedy

Robert Bresson

Heaven's Gate (1980)

One of American cinema's greatest tragedies

Michael Cimino

The Red Shoes (1948)

The greatest color film in the history of cinema

Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

Tokyo Story (1953)

The most human film ever made

Yasujirō Ozu

The River (1951)

Renoir's river runs deep

Jean Renoir

The Killers (1946)

Hemingway's iceberg, brought to the surface

Robert Siodmak

Contempt (1963)

A farewell to Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard

Europa '51 (1952)

Europa '51: The Blue Velvet of Italian neorealism

Roberto Rossellini