Spotlight
Under the Influence
In this ongoing series of videos, contemporary filmmakers talk to us about the movies that have had a lasting impact on their work.
Current
An online magazine covering film culture past and present
Joao Rosa’s Experimental Approach to Designing Gummo
The creative director of Miami-based studio EDGLRD, which he cofounded with filmmaker Harmony Korine, describes the process of creating the cover artwork for Criterion’s recently released Gummo edition.
Starring Ida Lupino
Before she won acclaim as a pioneering director, the Hollywood icon made her name as a powerfully vivid actor who brought grit and toughness to films by such masters as Raoul Walsh, Nicholas Ray, and Michael Curtiz.
Paper Moon: Partners in Crime
In this tragicomic road movie about a Bible-selling con man and his precocious young charge, Peter Bogdanovich brings Depression-era America to vivid life without sentimentality or nostalgia.
The Shape of Water: A Touch of the Unknown
Combining sci-fi magic and a distinctly human sense of intimacy, Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning film reimagines an oppressive era in American history through a tale of romantic fate.
Out of the Blue’s Teenage Wasteland
Dennis Hopper’s bleakly nihilistic drama struggled to find an audience after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980, but time has revealed it to be one of the most hardcore films about disaffected youth ever made.
Funny Girl: A Feeling Deep in Your Soul
William Wyler’s adaptation of the Broadway musical celebrates the indomitability of vaudeville legend Fanny Brice, embodied by Barbra Streisand in an incandescent and remarkably vulnerable performance.
Ray Yeung’s Top 10
The director of All Shall Be Well chooses a selection of films that reflect the joys and sorrows of life and explore themes of love, grief, ambition, and sacrifice.
The Criterion Channel’s December 2024 Lineup
Spend the holiday season with the Pope of Trash, the Master of Suspense, MTV Productions’s turn-of-the-century thrills, and Columbia Pictures’s pre-Code button-pushers.
Scarface: Gangster Style
Filled with expressionistic shadows and pungent details of life in the criminal underworld, this seminal tale of money and violence was among director Howard Hawks’s favorite of his own films.
The Psychosocial Dread at the Heart of Japanese Horror
From Kaneto Shindo to Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the masters of the genre over the past half-century have tapped into a deep well of cultural anxiety, exploring everything from the sins of their nation’s feudal past to the dangers of new technologies.
Lionel Rogosin, Between Empathy and Outrage
The director of such classic political docudramas as On the Bowery and Come Back, Africa defied the conventions of nonfiction filmmaking with his innovative approach to collaboration and performance.
Misogyny Incarnate: The Unspeakable Truth of The Entity
This once-maligned horror film is an unsparing exploration of sexual violence, remarkably centered on a complex, fully realized female protagonist, played courageously by Barbara Hershey.
