First Comes Love

Apr 22, 2024 — Fiercely committed to the possibilities of political art, the trailblazing director talks about how her intersectional understanding of feminism imbues her films, three of which are now playing on the Criterion Channel.

Mar 15, 2024 — Brussels celebrates Chantal Akerman, Hirokazu Kore-eda remembers Ryuichi Sakamoto, and there are some intriguing projects in the works.

Feb 14, 2024 — Portraits of Stanley Kubrick and Agnès Varda, a memoir from Ed Zwick, and a history of Blaxploitation are among the highlights.

Oct 19, 2023 — Her entrance in the film is impossible to forget. She swings into the scene to serve a patron some coffee, holding a cup in one hand and a book in the other. Her diamond-shaped face is obscured, but her aura...

Jul 25, 2023 — A master class in dramatic tension and pacing, Carl Franklin’s neonoir masterpiece explores the desperate energy and desperate deeds that fuel real crime.

Jul 6, 2023 — The accomplished actor excelled at playing ordinary men facing down life’s most outrageous absurdities.

Jan 10, 2023 — In its ambivalence toward its provocative themes, John M. Stahl’s groundbreaking exploration of racial identity demonstrates the insolubility of Hollywood’s representational conundrum.

Jan 9, 2023 — The films in the Criterion Channel collection Free Jazz chronicle the development of a deeply experimental music that has baffled and enthralled listeners in equal measure.

Oct 28, 2022 — The role of the vampire has given talented actors throughout film history—from Bela Lugosi to Catherine Deneuve—the chance to embody physical and moral extremity.

Oct 26, 2022 — Deep Dives Every elliptical pleasure of Michael Laughlin’s Strange Behavior (a.k.a. Dead Kids, 1981)—the flattened post–Twilight Zone affect, the tableaux evoking Technicolor footage faded like old Polaroids, a host of cross-pollinated genre kinks—suggests outmoded code that’s been surreptitiously updated. Embracing...