Ella Taylor

Obsessed with the lure of memory and the stigma of social otherness, Terence Davies’s The Long Day Closes inspires this writer to take her own winding journey into the past.

Now playing on the Criterion Channel, this underappreciated gem by British master Carol Reed captures the lively, antic spirit of a bustling section of London’s East End.

Played with icy restraint, the bully at the heart of Irving Rapper’s classic woman’s picture is a prime example of how Hollywood melodramas shaped the archetype of the villainous mother.

Agnieszka Holland challenges romantic notions of civil unrest and revolutionary activism in her magnificently bleak period miniseries Burning Bush, which is now available to stream on the Criterion Channel.

Sergei Bondarchuk pulled out all the stops to bring Tolstoy’s sprawling vision to the screen, and the result remains one of the most extravagant epic films of all time.

One of the crowning achievements of the New Romanian Cinema, Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner combines rigorous realism with breathtaking suspense in its account of women’s oppression during the era of Ceaușescu.

No one has utilized the actress’s elusive minimalism and artful underplaying to more brilliantly complicated effect than French director Olivier Assayas.

The wide-open vistas of Montana are the backdrop for three interlocking stories about women confronting the disappointments of small-town life.

With his unique blend of British realism and romantic fatalism, director Andrew Haigh exposes the quiet desperation at the heart of a long marriage.