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Smoking/No Smoking
(1994)
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Susan Sontag
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[A] brilliant, ingenious, hilarious film.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Mosaferan
(1992)
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Susan Sontag
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Trust me, this masterpiece from Iran is unlike anything you’ve seen yet.
Posted May 02, 2024
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The Captive
(2000)
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Susan Sontag
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Atypically movieish (i.e., Hitchcockian) for Ackerman but still adamant, unpredictable.
Posted May 02, 2024
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The Circle
(2000)
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Susan Sontag
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Another marvel from Iran. A relentless, anguishing film.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Hamlet
(2000)
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Susan Sontag
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Witty, intelligent, and most convincing when it’s altogether over the top.
Posted May 02, 2024
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The Wind Will Carry Us
(1999)
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Susan Sontag
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The best-known Iranian director has made another incomparable film.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Beau travail
(1999)
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Susan Sontag
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A dazzling riff on Melville’s Billy Budd. You’ll never forget the final scene, when the amazing Denis Lavant starts to dance.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Humanité
(2000)
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Susan Sontag
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A very ambitious film about looking and about guilt.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Faithless
(2000)
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Susan Sontag
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Ullmann’s best work by far, with one of the greatest film performances ever, by Lena Endre.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Yi Yi
(2000)
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Susan Sontag
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Is Yang as great as Hou Hsiao-hsien? Well, he’s different. See this.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Intimacy
(2001)
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Susan Sontag
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Worth seeing just for the performances. Mark Rylance may be the most gifted English-language actor of his generation.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Moloch
(1999)
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Susan Sontag
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Ravishing, weird, insolent.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Last Resort
(2000)
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Susan Sontag
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A superb British filmmaker, Pawlikowski is equally gifted in fiction (like this film, about the plight in bleakest England of a young Russian émigré and her son) and in documentary.
Posted May 02, 2024
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The River
(1997)
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Susan Sontag
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Nobody pictures despair -- and silence -- like [Tsai Ming-liang], who uses the same actors, often the same apartment location, in film after film.
Posted May 02, 2024
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The Gleaners and I
(2000)
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Susan Sontag
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A thrilling subject, and Varda’s best film since Vagabond.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Journey to the Sun
(1999)
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Susan Sontag
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An important, unaffected film that takes you somewhere you don’t know... and makes you feel and think -- and care.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Waking Life
(2001)
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Susan Sontag
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A melancholy youth ambles almost wordlessly through deep America -- rendered in dancy graphics -- receiving counsel from a parade of uproariously soliloquizing, exquisitely goofy pundits.
Posted May 02, 2024
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The Piano Teacher
(2001)
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Susan Sontag
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Not Haneke’s best film, but Isabelle Huppert is stupendous.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Southern Comfort
(2001)
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Susan Sontag
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You’ll never forget this documentary’s wise hero.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Werckmeister Harmonies
(2000)
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Susan Sontag
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Tarr continues his magistral collaboration with Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, who wrote Sátántangó as well as the source of this film.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Goodbye South, Goodbye
(1996)
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Susan Sontag
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As amazing as [Hou Hsiao-hsien's] stately, subtle, beautiful Flowers of Shanghai.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Through the Olive Trees
(1994)
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Susan Sontag
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Brilliantly made, irresistibly touching.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Joan the Maid
(1994)
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Susan Sontag
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A masterpiece. Rivette, alone among the great filmmakers of his generation, has not changed or lowered his sights. Sandrine Bonnaire isn’t Falconetti, but she is Joan of Arc.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Lamerica
(1994)
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Susan Sontag
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Epic, “realistic,” true -- a great, moral film, and perhaps the saddest film I’ve ever seen.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Sátántangó
(1994)
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Susan Sontag
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Devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours. I’d be glad to see it every year for the rest of my life.
Posted May 02, 2024
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The Puppetmaster
(1993)
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Susan Sontag
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[Hou Hsiao-hsien] is just as marvelous as everyone says.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Naked
(1993)
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Susan Sontag
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I’ve been a Mike Leigh fan since 1977’s Abigail’s Party (as good as Molière). Naked is, I suppose, his deepest film.
Posted May 02, 2024
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Close-Up
(1990)
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Susan Sontag
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Iranian cinema has been the great revelation of the last decade. Close Up is my (and, I’ve heard, Kiarostami’s) favorite of his films.
Posted May 02, 2024
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The Second Circle
(1990)
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Susan Sontag
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There’s no director active today whose films I admire as much [as Aleksandr Sokurov].
Posted May 02, 2024
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The Pigeon Tunnel
(2023)
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Amy Taubin
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Odd connections that have made exquisite corpse–like shapes in my memory bank...among the most pleasurable documentaries...
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Anatomy of a Fall
(2023)
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Amy Taubin
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Justine Triet’s a standout performance...
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros
(2023)
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Amy Taubin
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A four-hour sojourn in the Michelin three-star restaurant of the title...
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Poor Things
(2023)
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Amy Taubin
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Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things [is] a film as dull and overweening as all his others.
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Household Saints
(1993)
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Amy Taubin
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A memorable performance by Lili Taylor and an utterly transcendent ending.
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars
(2023)
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Amy Taubin
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Godard in the end has hope, however fragile...
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Green Border
(2023)
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Amy Taubin
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Generous as that action is, Green Border lays bare, with heartrending clarity, how solidarity is shaped...
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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May December
(2023)
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Amy Taubin
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There’s a bit of Tennessee Williams in May December...
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Fallen Leaves
(2023)
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Amy Taubin
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Kaurismäki [is] a master of indirect connections between his characters and his cinematic signifiers.
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Yambao
(1957)
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J. Hoberman
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Deliriously trashy...fueled by the star’s mad conviction, Yambaó is a movie made for Jack Smith...
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Sensualidad
(1951)
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J. Hoberman
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Feistier than most and strikingly progressive in her class and gender solidarity...
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Aventurera
(1950)
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J. Hoberman
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López is an actress of taste.
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Maria Candelaria
(1944)
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J. Hoberman
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Pictorial big-sky melodrama...
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Salón Mexico
(1949)
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J. Hoberman
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...a classic cabaretera, detailing the self-effacing Stella Dallas–like martyrdom of a dime-a-dance fichera...
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Rio Escondido
(1947)
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J. Hoberman
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Fernández and Figueroa proved equally adept in the nocturnal realm of smoky dives and neon-illuminated back alleys.
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Victims of Sin
(1950)
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J. Hoberman
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A tumultuous product of Mexican cinema's Golden Age, the movie is a perfect storm, the confluence of three huge talents.
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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The Trial
(2023)
|
Leo Goldsmith
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Somber as these proceedings are, what’s most distinctive about the film’s distillation of the trial is its perhaps inevitable element of theater.
Posted Jan 26, 2024
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Transition
(2023)
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Amy Taubin
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Both absurd and courageous...
Posted Jul 14, 2023
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Rule of Two Walls
(2023)
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Amy Taubin
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Rule of Two Walls is unhesitant in showing both pleasure and pain.
Posted Jul 14, 2023
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A Strange Path
(2023)
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Amy Taubin
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Emotionally honest but naive about form and overly dependent on a big reveal at the end, the film made me feel very bad to no particular end.
Posted Jul 14, 2023
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Cinnamon
(2023)
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Amy Taubin
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If there was a more entertaining movie than Bryian Keith Montgomery Jr.’s first feature, Cinnamon, well, I missed it.
Posted Jul 14, 2023
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