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Writing Women in the 1930s

At a time when women were understood to be the primary audience for movies, Hollywood studios built vehicles for actresses that doubled as showcases for the industry’s many brilliant female screenwriters.

By Imogen Sara Smith

The Italian Art of Violence

With their virtuosic celebrations of death, giallo films reflect the air of paranoia and fear that haunted Italian society in the 1960s and ’70s, a period when the country was undergoing dramatic, violent changes.

By Samm Deighan

Unforgotten Ancestors: Il Cinema Ritrovato 2024

This year, Bologna’s annual feast of restorations and rediscoveries showcased one of the most ambitious masterpieces of the silent era, the melodramas of Japanese filmmaker Kozaburo Yoshimura, and other treasures of film history.

By Imogen Sara Smith

Neza Calling: Punk at the Margins of Mexico City

In the late 1980s, filmmakers Gregorio Rocha and Sarah Minter set out to capture the rebellious subculture of youth in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, a slumlike suburb synonymous with the worst failures of urban expansion in Mexico.

By Will Noah

Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Human-Scaled Artistry in The Savages

The great actor creates an unforgettable portrait of a man worn down by the world in Tamara Jenkins’s darkly funny and deeply moving family drama.

By Isaac Butler

The Criterion Closet 40

The monumental forty-film box set CC40 celebrates forty years of the Criterion Collection with an electrifying mix of classic and contemporary films, and presents them with all their special features and essays.

By Peter Becker

My Own Private Idaho’s Outsider Twist on Shakespeare

Made in an era when self-consciously postmodern takes on the Bard were popular, Gus Van Sant’s melancholy road movie mines the ambiguously queer tensions in the history play Henry IV.

By Shonni Enelow

How the Movies Captured Times Square’s Grimy Golden Age

During a tumultuous period in New York’s history, movies like Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, and Shaft found excitement and squalor in one of the city’s most infamous tourist attractions.

By Nathaniel Rich

The High-Wire Energy of Great Ensemble Acting

At their best, movies that showcase a sizable collective of virtuosic actors can give you the feeling of a rich ecosystem being brought to life.

By Isaac Butler

The Evolution of Synth Soundtracks

A collection on the Criterion Channel charts the evolution of the synthesizer—from its infancy in the 1950s to its maturity in the 1980s—and its transformative impact on film music.

By Danz CM

Rediscovering Yasuzo Masumura at Karlovy Vary

An underrated figure of Japanese cinema’s postwar era, the director tackled a wide range of subjects over his long career, including corporate double-dealing, government espionage, and various forms of fanaticism.

By Farran Smith Nehme

Great Adaptations: Columbia in the 1950s

Perhaps the most hard-to-categorize of the great Hollywood studios came into its own with a string of critically acclaimed films based on popular books and plays, including Born Yesterday, A Raisin in the Sun, and From Here to Eternity.

By Imogen Sara Smith

Night and the Cities

From After Hours to Mikey and Nicky to Collateral, movies centered on the twists and turns of a single night give filmmakers the chance to boldly experiment with cinematic time and space.

By Jessica Kiang

Thoughts Transcending Time and Distance: Makoto Shinkai’s Voices of a Distant Star

In this early-career gem from one of the most beloved Japanese animation directors of all time, an extravagant sci-fi narrative is anchored by the transcendent power of young love and poignant observations of modern life.

By Jonathan R. Lack

Trash and Treasure at the Razzies

What makes a “bad” movie anyway? By surveying the bombs, disasters, and secret masterpieces (dis)honored at the Golden Raspberry Awards, we can learn much about American cinema’s prevailing standards of taste.

By Mark Asch

Cinema Revolutionary: Fernando de Fuentes in Morelia

The subject of a revelatory retrospective at last year’s Morelia International Film Festival, this groundbreaking director ushered in Mexican cinema’s golden age with vibrant explorations of the nation’s folk traditions and revolutionary past.

By Imogen Sara Smith

Becoming Hou Hsiao-hsien

Though the Taiwanese director began working in commercial genres, even his earliest mainstream films contain the seeds of the inimitable style that would establish him as one of the world’s most important filmmakers.

By Sean Gilman

A Year’s Worth of Essential Reading

We’re ringing in the new year with a look back at a selection of the most exciting pieces we published in 2023.


Room Tone 2023

Look back on the collaborations that defined our year, captured in this compilation of moments that our crew shared with the artists, critics, and scholars who talked with us about the movies.

By Daniel Reis

Deep Dives

Deeper into Ozu

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.

For the Love of the Con

The best movies about con artists highlight something their makers share with the fraudsters they depict: an intuitive sense of people’s desires and a talent for ruthless manipulation.

By Terrence Rafferty

Don’t Fence Her In: On Women of the West

A string of important midcentury westerns, including Johnny Guitar and Rancho Notorious, elevated women from their traditionally marginal role in the genre to more potent and central positions.

By Imogen Sara Smith

Blood and Guts in High School

John Fawcett’s 2001 cult classic Ginger Snaps—a highlight of the Criterion Channel’s High School Horror collection—uses the werewolf trope to explore the psychosexual anxieties of female adolescence.

By Farihah Zaman

Linda Darnell’s Tough and Timeless Women

Despite being one of the most mesmerizing performers of 1940s Hollywood, Darnell struggled throughout her career to be seen as more than a great beauty.

By Mayukh Sen