The Current

An online magazine covering film culture past and present

Joanna Hogg’s Closet Picks
Joanna Hogg’s Closet Picks

The acclaimed director of The Souvenir gushes over her favorite musicals and stocks up on films by Federico Fellini.

Deep Cover: Who’ll Pay Reparations on My Soul?
Deep Cover: Who’ll Pay Reparations on My Soul?

Set against the backdrop of the war on drugs, Bill Duke’s boldly stylized thriller stages a meeting between the idea of noir and the idea of Black film.

By Michael B. Gillespie

Working Girls: Have You Ever Heard of Surplus Value?
Working Girls: Have You Ever Heard of Surplus Value?

Lizzie Borden’s groundbreaking drama scrutinizes the gender and labor relations that structure brothel-based sex work.

By So Mayer

Carole Lombard’s Divine Lunacy
Carole Lombard’s Divine Lunacy

A raucous, fast-talking diva, the actor had a remarkable ability to convey both glamour and silliness, a gift that made her the queen of screwball comedy before her untimely death in 1942.

By Molly Haskell

The Stars in Wong Kar Wai’s Universe
The Stars in Wong Kar Wai’s Universe

Nine writers with roots in the Chinese-speaking world pay tribute to the Hong Kong auteur’s most beloved actors.

Mirror: “All Is Immortal”
Mirror: “All Is Immortal”

The fourth of Andrei Tarkovsky’s seven features is his most oneiric and resistant to interpretation, drawing from the director’s own childhood memories to create a fluid sense of history.

By Carmen Gray

Bringing Up Baby: Bones, Balls, and Butterflies
Bringing Up Baby: Bones, Balls, and Butterflies

Howard Hawks’s madcap battle of the sexes is a reminder of how necessary and sneakily profound silliness can be.

By Sheila O’Malley

Prisoners of Second Avenue

First Person

Prisoners of Second Avenue

For reasons this veteran editor and best-selling author can’t fully explain, an unsung film adaptation of a Neil Simon play has become an abiding domestic comfort many years after he first encountered it.

By Benjamin Dreyer

Pariah: Song of the Self
Pariah: Song of the Self

In Dee Rees’s ambitious and lyrical debut, the inner life of a queer Black teenager and poet is summoned in all its nuances and contradictions.

By Cassie da Costa

The Criterion Channel’s July 2021 Lineup

Channel Calendars

The Criterion Channel’s July 2021 Lineup

Next month brings a twenty-seven-film spotlight on the neonoir thrillers of the post-studio-system era, a survey of art-house animation from around the world, and more.



10 Things I Learned: Visions of Eight
10 Things I Learned: Visions of Eight

The producer of our edition of this ambitious omnibus film about the 1972 Munich Olympic Games details how its dynamic group of international directors came to be involved with the project.

By Matthew Horovitz

Dustin O’Halloran’s Top 10
Dustin O’Halloran’s Top 10

On the heels of the release of his latest album, Silfur, the Emmy-winning composer and pianist shares a selection of his favorite films and some thoughts on the power of a good musical score.

Video

An Inside Look at Brooklyn-Based Artist Juan Miguel Marin’s Meditative Process
Inside Criterion  – 25 Feb 2021