The Criterion Collection
Jun 19, 2006 — Decades after its backyard birth, Jack Woods’s DIY horror movie has forged a model of inspiration for succeeding generations of effects artists and low-budget filmmakers.
Sep 29, 2003 — Fassbinder had long dreamed of a “German Hollywood film.” He sought not only success with the audience, but also professionalism. The auteur film in its purest form is an attempt to abolish the division of labor: the filmmaker represents in...
Essays
Feb 22, 1999 — Flipping around the channels of late-night TV in my Tokyo apartment in 1984 I came across what seemed like a B movie from the ’60s. The studio: Nikkatsu. The star: Joe Shishido. The director: Seijun Suzuki. I was not at...
Jan 5, 1993 — All right, I’ll just say it. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the most sublimely irreverent, most jaw-droppingly hysterical movie of the last twenty years. How many films, after all, have Knights who say “Ni!,” filth-eating peasants, and 160...
Dec 29, 2008 — If I had not seen The Lady Vanishes at the age of seven, I might never have become a film critic. I was the fifth child of parents well into middle age: clearly an “accident,” as I was ten-years-plus younger...
May 22, 2012 — These five films chart the unlikely ascendance of a hero of American underground cinema.
Feb 24, 2026 — For this existential noir, Joel and Ethan Coen drew inspiration from crime-fiction master James M. Cain’s lean, hard-boiled style and interest in the quotidian world of work.
The Daily
Feb 27, 2025 — Along with the premieres and parades, this year offers an oddity from Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens.
On the Channel
Jan 16, 2025 — Swoon for big-city romance with our New York Love Stories collection; celebrate Black history with stories of community, creativity, and resistance; or tango with the shady characters of Argentina’s noir thrillers.