South Korea boasts perhaps the most interesting film scene in the world right now, and part of the reason it’s so interesting is that, on the surface, it’s not that interesting.

Things you may not know about Norway, if you are the average semiclueless American: First, it is quite gorgeous, in its spartan, Scandinavian way. Second, Norwegians have a thing about trolls, which function as half folkloric icon, half kitsch mascot. ...

The Criterion Collection recently re-released The Killing, Kubrick’s 1956 calling card, in typically pristine DVD and Blu-ray editions. It is a must-see, most especially if you only know Kubrick from his sprawling, glacial later work.

It seems the only sort of horror more popular than the zombie-apocalypse flick these days is the vampire flick, and on its face, Stake Land (Dark Sky DVD and Blu-ray) looks a bit like a craven cash-grab combo platter of ...

Uncle Boonmee fractures into multiple narratives, broken up into other times and other places and filmed in slightly different styles, united by a soul in common and by this cinematic account. It may not always be clear what’s going on, ...

After years of pushing contemporary Japanese cinema into new realms of wrong with films such as Audition and Ichi the Killer, Takashi Miike reaches back to chanbara, the venerable samurai film that most Americans probably think of when they think ...

The trailer for 2010 South Korean film The Housemaid (MPI DVD) makes it look like the kind of late-night Cinemax “erotic thriller” melodrama of which the world needs no more. But writer/director Im Sang-soon and his film have a lot ...

In the 1970s, the Western was dying. The sociocultural revolutions of the ’60s had left the old white hat/black hat staple of the Hollywood cinema looking quaint, and even Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah couldn’t stave off sclerosis. But as ...

Ever wonder why most movies are between an hour and a half and two hours long? Undoubtedly there’s a commercial element that keeps movie times in that ballpark: Once a film stretches toward the 150-minute mark or beyond, movie theaters ...

The world needs another serial-killer movie like it needs another hitman-out-for-one-last-job movie. Leave it to cult fave Korean director Kim Jee-woon, though, to come up with a twist that makes one of the hoariest screen clichés of the past decade ...

Many film nerds count 1981’s Blow Out as their favorite Brian De Palma flick, and it’s not hard to see why.

“Action-packed double feature,” the keep-case screams over two tiny reproductions of movie posters fit for the cinder-block wall of a drive-in snack bar circa 1975: Dirty Mary Crazy Larry and Race With the Devil. The ostensible hook here, one supposes, ...

Mike Leigh’s work has always encompassed a thoroughgoing realistic approach to contemporary life, exemplified by rich ensemble films such as Naked, Secrets and Lies, and last year’s Another Year. A period piece seemed out of character, let alone one about ...

o far the closest thing to a comprehensive indictment of the companies and practices that allowed, even encouraged, the economic collapse of 2007—and of those in an oversight role who allowed, even encouraged it to happen—to emerge is Charles H. ...

he beauty and clarity of this latest, greatest home-video version of the film doesn’t make me love the film any more, but it makes me enormously grateful for the opportunity to see it this way, probably the best one can ...