The Criterion Collection
Aug 30, 2019 — In 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, after being censured for its invasion of Manchuria. Despite this, the majority of Japanese people remained avid consumers of American movies and Western fashion, which exasperated the militarists in power. A...
Jun 17, 2013 — The silent legend practices slapstick with clockwork precision in his most iconic, astonishing comedy.
Essays
May 26, 2003 — Embracing the world while pretending to sneer at it, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s crime film is rich, deep, and wily.
Sep 13, 2016 — Kenji Mizoguchi achieved the sublime with this structurally complex portrait of artistic ambition and female subjugation.
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.
Jan 30, 2024 — A kaleidoscopic work of literary adaptation, Dee Rees’s fourth feature film is anchored in a powerful fraternal bond between two men from opposite sides of the color line.
The Daily
Jul 30, 2017 — “Everybody knows what’s wrong with Hollywood—the vacuous parade of tentpole blockbusters; the refusal to diversify both in front of and behind the camera; the confusion in the face of disruptions by Netflix and Amazon; the single-minded lust for the 13-year-old-male...
The Daily
Jul 6, 2017 — We open today’s round, considerably briefer than yesterday’s, with Ridley Scott double feature—of sorts. Movie City News alerts us to an article by Scott himself that originally appeared in the August 1979 issue of American Cinematographer: “I felt that Alien...
Oct 2, 2015 — We were delighted when Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos and his wife, the actress Ariane Labed, dropped by for lunch in the Criterion kitchen on Monday.
Essays
Dec 3, 2008 — Gliding on silvery reels of steel, and tricked out with Lars von Trier’s panoply of visual effects, the film ravishes with its elaborately storyboarded tunnel vision.