An astro-psychologist named Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) gets launched into outer space, only to find he's brought all his earthly problems with him. They are stunningly explored in Solaris (1972), Andrei Tarkovsky's meditative sci-fi classic.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 05/23/11

Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Diabolique (1955) was the true first flexing of many of the techniques that Hitchcock implemented five years later, innovations without which we wouldn't have the scary movies we have today.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 05/10/11

From the very first shot—which opens on an absurdly crass horror movie that Jack is dubbing, Co Ed Frenzy, a masked killer's smooth Steadicam point of view capped by a botched and campy shower scream (an ongoing joke turned dark irony)—Blow Out continually indicates De Palma's resolve to compose each shot as if it were an idea.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 04/27/11

Where society fails, filmmakers step in. This is one way to view Kes, Ken Loach's landmark film from 1970 about a working-class boy in northern England and the bird that gives him wings.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 04/11/11

Set in and around an Essex council estate, Fish Tank follows Mia (Katie Jarvis), a troubled teenager who restlessly and often angrily teeters on the verge of childlike love and invention and adolescent loneliness and angst.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 02/23/11

Krzysztof Kieslowski was concerned his films would be unknown outside Poland all his life. The Double Life of Véronique (1991) put an end to that.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 01/31/11

The Atlantic City depicted in The King of Marvin Gardens (1972) is no boardwalk empire—it's a dead end.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 11/23/10

The Night of the Hunter—the Appalachian-gothic noir about a widow-killing preacher (Robert Mitchum) stalking a pair of children down the Ohio River—is, as the new Criterion edition reveals, more than a Charles Laughton film.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 11/17/10