Criterion’s new Blu-ray release of Andrei Tarkovsky’s second feature, Andrei Rublev (1966), not only features a superb restoration of the director’s preferred 183-minute cut, but also a (much weaker) transfer of the original 205-minute version and a comprehensive selection of new and archival supplements which cover the production and meaning of this, the greatest of all historical epics.
Criterion’s Blu-ray presents Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece Stalker in a stunning new restoration which does full justice to its rich imagery and subtle soundscape.
Continuing my dialogue with friend Gordon Wilding about the ways in which our relationship to the movies we watch has changed in recent years … I can look back at the years it took me to “possess” the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, starting in 1975 and ending in the late ’80s – not to mention […]
Criterion’s recent Blu-ray release of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) spurred me to watch the film again for the first time in almost a decade. I originally saw Solaris in London in 1975, my initial experience of Tarkovsky, and while I now recognize that it’s not his best work, I was enthralled. I’ve always liked films […]
As a longtime admirer and fan of Terrence Malick’s work, I’ve been hesitant to write about The Tree of Life because it’s the first of his films that I haven’t loved at first sight. There are many things I liked about it on a first viewing, but there are other things which don’t seem to […]
Continuing my personal tour of Winnipeg’s vanishing downtown movie theatres … In the late ’70s, the city got its first multiplex. In the downtown Eaton Place mall, just across Graham Avenue from the Eaton’s department store, seven very small screening rooms were built just off the second floor food court (average capacity about 65 seats). […]
An exchange between critics and readers in the NYTimes prompts some thoughts about the nature of boredom and why so many people get defensive about “art films”.