Deep Dives

Six writers celebrate the 120th anniversary of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu’s birth by highlighting underacknowledged elements of his artistry and lesser-known gems in his oeuvre.

The great but underrated Hollywood star Irene Dunne made her transition to screwball comedy by playing the scandal-courting author at the heart of Theodora Goes Wild.

With an inscrutable aesthetic that feels stumbled upon as much as developed, Michael Laughlin’s cult B movie is a delirious mix of science fiction, horror, and American pastoral archetypes.

This underappreciated 1968 film is a feast of dark delights, filled with vengeful ghosts, psychically linked identical twins, obsessed mad scientists, creepy priests, and seemingly sentient skeletons.

A playfully philosophical drama, My American Uncle has been largely forgotten, yet it is the most down-to-earth of the French master’s exhilarating engagements with modernist aesthetics.

Working with meager budgets and few resources, Michael Sporn created a graceful, pared-down aesthetic that was distinctive in the realm of children’s entertainment.

A collage of home-movie footage dating from the 1920s to the 1960s, Alan Berliner’s The Family Album raises questions about how we understand and imagine American life in that era.

Made in the 1990s, The Salt Mines and The Transformation take an unflinching look at the bigotry and economic hardships faced by a community of trans sex workers of color.

One of the first recognized female filmmakers to hail from the UK, Wendy Toye delivers the strongest, most chilling vision in this underappreciated omnibus film, which features Orson Welles and Alan Badel.

Despite the studio system’s stifling conditions, Buster Keaton’s follow-up to The Cameraman remains a testament to the funnyman’s singular style.

Residents of a neglected Hawaiian island fight against eviction and mistreatment in this consciousness-raising documentary from 1981, now playing on the Criterion Channel.

Few films have captured the recklessness and melancholy of youth more vividly than this underappreciated short film, made the same year as Teshigahara’s widely acknowledged masterpiece, Woman in the Dunes.

A domestic ritual inspires feelings of resentment, nostalgia, and aesthetic passion in this short documentary from 1981.

A noirish tale of closed-door dealings and systemic corruption, I Will Buy You is the anti-sports movie that feels most like baseball in 2020.

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.

The director of Toni Erdmann burst onto the international festival circuit in 2003 with a piercing, unsettlingly funny look at the life of an idealistic schoolteacher.

British cinema’s mad genius Ken Russell dispenses with history, chronology, genre, and taste in this wild reimagining of the great composer’s life.

The arrival of sound proved an enormous challenge for the geniuses of silent comedy. But Harold Lloyd, with his unflappable determination, finally made a successful transition.

In one of his most underrated gems, now playing on the Criterion Channel, the Bengali master explored the futility of words and the power of a look.

David Lynch took his obsession with lost American innocence into bizarre new territory in the cartoon series DumbLand, originally made for his website and now available on the Criterion Channel.

A showcase for some of Boris Karloff’s most nuanced acting, this beguiling horror gem is perfect Halloween viewing.

Before John Cassavetes and his core group of actors became famous for their unflinching melodramas, they converged in this tough and dirty Italian gangster film.

Building on a rich lineage of gothic fairy tales and noirish melodramas, this lavishly stylized curio has an ominous beauty all its own.

Two of the earliest films to depict the bombing of Hiroshima show how politics shapes national mourning.