Current

An online magazine covering film culture past and present

For the Love of the Con
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 persuasion.

By Terrence Rafferty

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

Hlynur Pálmason’s Top 10
Hlynur Pálmason’s Top 10

The director of Godland pays tribute to Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick, and other filmmakers with an awe-inspiring command of their craft.

Wild Combinations: A Conversation with Matt Wolf
Wild Combinations: A Conversation with Matt Wolf

Combining a passion for preservation with a desire for experimentation, the documentary filmmaker creates portraits of visionary outsiders in a style guided less by narrative than by emotion.

By Hillary Weston

Mean Streets: Rites of Passage
Mean Streets: Rites of Passage

Martin Scorsese’s breakthrough feature—a rare example of a work of personal cinema with broad popular appeal—delivers all the elements of his future career in one spectacular, bravura throw-down.

By Lucy Sante

La cérémonie: Domestic Distubrances
La cérémonie: Domestic Distubrances

In this late-career triumph, French thriller master Claude Chabrol asks what women are capable of when unencumbered by marriage, children, and class propriety.

By Sarah Weinman

The Criterion Channel’s December 2023 Lineup

Channel Calendars

The Criterion Channel’s December 2023 Lineup

Among the gifts under our tree are a spotlight on Parker Posey, retrospectives of Yasujiro Ozu and Ousmane Sembène, offbeat portraits of the animal kingdom by Mark Lewis, and a delightfully downbeat selection of holiday noir.

Bugs Bunny in the Shaolin Temple
Bugs Bunny in the Shaolin Temple

In a string of wildly entertaining films released between the late seventies and the mideighties, Jackie Chan paved the way to his international stardom by turning himself into a real-life cartoon character.

By Alex Pappademas

Chloe Domont’s Top 10
Chloe Domont’s Top 10

The director of Fair Play throws the spotlight on bracingly candid explorations of heartbreaking love and destructive obsession.

Nanny: Troubled Water
Nanny: Troubled Water

With the full force of her imagination, director Nikyatu Jusu examines the complicated nature of Black motherhood, as well as the importance of Black communion as an antidote to racial oppression.

By Angelica Jade Bastién

Blood and Guts in High School
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

Curator Jonathan Ali on the Cutting Edge of Caribbean Cinema
Curator Jonathan Ali on the Cutting Edge of Caribbean Cinema

The programmer of Third Horizon, a series now playing on the Criterion Channel, discusses the challenges of cinematic representation and the need to think beyond its limits.

By Tiana Reid

Video

Caitlin Kuhwald’s Hand-Drawn Portraits Bring Iconic Faces to Life
Inside Criterion  – 13 Sep 2021