Best Movies: Cannes Film Festival - Official Selection on Criterionchannel
Since we live in a society, interacting with authority is inescapable. Terrestrial Verses depict fairly mundane day-to-day interactions– getting a birth certificate, settling a traffic violation, or attending a job interview– but through nine vignettes framed with a static camera, aimed at a person trying to negotiate with someone more powerful just outside the frame, […]
Like people, places have things that change and things that remain the same. Most of us keep our thoughts about our hometowns to wistful conversations and the recesses of our memory, but Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho instead captures Recife in Pictures of Ghosts. It’s a meandering tour, shifting from topic to topic, place to […]
The sunniest installment of Éric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons series is a sly, slow burn of a character study. Everything looks sensuously beautiful in the honey-toned French sunshine, except for the ugly egotism of Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud), the full extent of which is gradually revealed over the film’s runtime to amusing — if […]
We’ve heard of films within a film, but it’s crazy how many layers Through the Olive Trees operates in. Writer-director Abbas Kiarostami completes his metanarrative journey in the Koker trilogy through a slice-of-life comedy about a couple in the periphery of the previous installment And Life Goes On. As the young man Hossein repeats his […]
In this film-within-a-film, we and a fictional version of actress Maggie Cheung are brought through the disorienting experience of French filmmaking. The film’s washed-up director wants to remake the classic silent film Les Vampires to revive his career. But as with all plans, everything inevitably goes wrong. On top of depicting the regular chaos of […]
The basic idea of experimental drama Blind Chance is the butterfly effect. It’s as if writer-director Krzysztof Kieślowski just wanted to tell this concept through the simple act of catching a train, albeit in film form, by starting with the train, and following with three vastly different outcomes of what Witek came to be. Because […]
Filmed in 1970s Manila, at the height of dictatorship in the Philippines, Manila in the Claws of Night is above all else a political statement—against tyranny, yes, but more significantly, against imperialism, capitalism, and class divide. It’s a weighty film, but director Lino Brocka, with help from cinematographer Mike de Leon, balances his potent ideas […]
Why should anyone watch a decades-old biopic about a centuries-old Armenian troubadour that relies not on dialogue, not on a straightforward narrative, but on scenes that are cryptic as hell? The Color of Pomegranates won’t be for most viewers, but even without the historical context, cinephiles will appreciate the artistic vision Sergei Parajanov crafted alongside […]
In a few seconds, a mistake can change your life forever. Insomnia is centered on a Swedish detective trying to solve a murder while trying desperately to cover a mistake made from the difficult mix of the fog and human exhaustion, but in doing so, his guilt, shame, and suspicion that no one would believe […]
What Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher intentionally refuses to give you by way of plot or resolution, it more than makes up for in sharp visuals, a beautifully sparse score, and an unscratchable feeling of restlessness. It’s a downer for sure, watching 12-year-old James hounded by guilt as he navigates the mundane bleakness of his everyday life. […]
Sometimes, in life, we’re forced to be with people we don’t immediately get along with, like in the classroom, the workplace, or, if you’re unlucky, in a jail cell. Down by Law is black-and-white drama focused on three men in a jail cell, two of them outright hating each other, but not as much as […]
The film for which Kristen Stewart became the first American actress to win the César Award. The Twilight star turned indie prodigy plays next to another award favorite, Juliette Binoche, as her assistant. When rehearsing for the play that launched her career many years earlier, Binoche’s character, Maria, blurs the line between fiction and reality, her […]
By all appearances, Eliza and Louis have a charming marriage. They’re casual and good-humored in the morning and full of passion in the evening. So when Eliza finds a love note addressed to her husband one day, naturally, she freaks out. She enlists the help of her eccentric family and sets off to Manhattan, where […]
Even if you aren’t familiar with Akira Kurosawa classics like Rashomon and Seven Samurai, Madadayo works as a portrait of a great man who seemed to feel nothing at the end of his career other than gratitude. Made up of long, wholesome conversations between real-life Japanese academic Hyakken Uchida (Tatsuo Matsumura) and his former students, […]
A woman joins some acquaintances on a sailing trip only to get caught in a storm. They are rescued by a seemingly empty cruise ship and struggle to make sense of the mysteries that unfold. Definitely one of those “The less you know the better” type of films. If you like well-written creepy thrillers with […]
Don’t be fooled by the “romcom” label on Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Beyond romantic flings and meet-cutes, Martin Scorsese’s fourth feature film is a poignant exploration of a middle-aged woman’s journey to independence. When Alice (Burstyn) is suddenly widowed, she decides to pick up where she left off as a singer and heads to […]
Jane Campion’s biographical drama about the poet John Keats derives its name from one of the latter’s greatest love sonnets: Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art… / Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath/ And so live ever—or else swoon to death. Keats remains one of the most celebrated and adored Romantic […]
