Current

An online magazine covering film culture past and present

The Trial: Crime of the Century
The Trial: Crime of the Century

In the film he once called his best, Orson Welles found a cinematic language equal to Franz Kafka’s distinctive effects, creating a vertiginous experience that accentuates the writer’s subterranean perversity.

By Jonathan Lethem

Andrew Bujalski’s Top 10
Andrew Bujalski’s Top 10

The writer-director of Computer Chess and Support the Girls lets his eye and heart wander freely through our collection, and gives us a list of some films he admires.


Drylongso: A Refuge of Their Own
Drylongso: A Refuge of Their Own

Cauleen Smith’s debut feature celebrates the bond between two young Black women and the ways that they imaginatively, collaboratively choreograph their lives in the face of their common vulnerabilities.

By Yasmina Price

Into the Groove: A Conversation with Susan Seidelman
Into the Groove: A Conversation with Susan Seidelman

Beloved for her stylistic range and her vibrant portraits of New York City, the director discusses the feminist spirit that runs throughout her work and the collaborations that bring her films to life.

By Hillary Weston

“The House Is the Monster”: Roger Corman’s Poe Cycle
“The House Is the Monster”: Roger Corman’s Poe Cycle

In the great American writer’s Gothic tales, Corman found themes that inspired him to riff, invent, and create immersive cinematic environments.

By Geoffrey O’Brien

Bo Widerberg’s New Swedish Cinema: Another Sweden
Bo Widerberg’s New Swedish Cinema: Another Sweden

While frequently drawing from the depths of his private life, the writer-director also sought to shake Swedish cinema out of a state of complacency by engaging with the country’s turbulent social landscape.

By Peter Cowie

The Criterion Channel’s September 2023 Lineup

Channel Calendars

The Criterion Channel’s September 2023 Lineup

This month’s programming dives into the sinister side of adolescence, the pleasures of the open road, and the best of period noir.

Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart: Family Style
Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart: Family Style

For the first of several domestic melodramas in his filmography, Wayne Wang drew on the influence of Yasujiro Ozu and the talent within his own San Francisco community to explore the relationship between a mother and her daughter.

By Brian Hu

Hip-Hop’s Big-Screen Breakthrough
Hip-Hop’s Big-Screen Breakthrough

As the influence of the New York–born cultural movement began to spread across the country, cinema gave audiences a deeper sense of the sounds and styles that had emerged from it.

By Craig D. Lindsey

The Replacements: AI in the Movies
The Replacements: AI in the Movies

Over the past half-century of sci-fi cinema, the theme of artificial intelligence has foregrounded our anxieties about sex, reproduction, and labor in the modern world.

By Gregory Zinman

Elvis’s Adventures in Hollywood
Elvis’s Adventures in Hollywood

Over the course of thirty-one feature films, one of the world’s most revered rock-and-roll icons developed a charismatic persona all his own—and created moments of surprising dramatic depth.

By Sheila O’Malley

Video

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