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
Once Upon a Time: Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner
One of the most passionately analyzed shows in television history is a mind-bending investigation of free will and modern surveillance culture, told with an audacious blend of symbolism, philosophy, and avant-garde surrealism.
Total Action: A Conversation with Darol Olu Kae
Drawing on his global understanding of Black expressive culture, the director of I Ran from It and Was Still in It and Blur creates freewheeling narrative structures that explore the intricacies of time, loss, and collective memory.
Julie Klausner’s Top 10
The writer, performer, and creator of the television show Difficult People pays her respects to comedy legends who shaped her sense of humor and highlights movies that unnerve her.
Terror on the Airwaves
In the 1970s, up-and-coming mavericks like Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter honed their craft by bringing a taste of the grindhouse to the small screen.
Death Is a Highway
Classics of highway horror, like Road Games, The Appointment, and Race with the Devil, present the open road as a dangerous landscape and automobiles as single-minded killing machines.
Deeper into Horror
To get you in the mood for Halloween, we invited a group of six writers and filmmakers to tell us about horror movies on the Criterion Channel that they feel deserve more attention.
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein
In one of his most personal films, the Oscar-winning director imbues Mary Shelley’s gothic tale with elements of family melodrama and traces of his own Catholic upbringing.
God Laughs: Stanley Kubrick’s Cinema
Throughout his enormously influential body of work, the great director explored the conflict between humankind’s obsession with control and our capacity for error and failure.
The Silence of the Lambs: Reckoning with Jame Gumb
The serial killer in Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning film remains a powerfully influential and dominant trans film image with a complicated legacy that cannot be taken lightly.
Christiane F.: Up Against the Wall
Uli Edel’s harrowing tale of youth rebellion is one of cinema’s greatest Berlin films, a visceral urban portrait that captures the city’s doom and decadence during the Cold War era.
The Criterion Channel’s November 2026 Lineup
This month’s programs include spotlights on Nicolas Cage and Gene Tierney and a collection gathering work from directors who honed their imaginations making music videos.
The Shout: Sound and Fury
Blending elements of psychological thriller, social satire, and psychedelic film, Jerzy Skolimowski’s Cannes-award-winning classic uses its audacious sound design to evoke the terror of English civilization.
