The Criterion Collection
Essays
May 16, 2023 — Inspired by golden-age monster movies and the story of a real-life mass murderer, Peter Bogdanovich’s debut feature evokes the psychic dread of America in the 1960s, a decade defined by long-distance and increasingly high-profile gun violence.
Mar 31, 2016 — At the beginning of Julia Cafritz’s senior year of high school, she saw Peter Weir’s The Last Wave and decided to drop out of high school, skip college, move to Australia, marry Mr. Weir and devote her life to filmmaking....
Apr 7, 2010 — Seth is a cartoonist whose books include It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken, George Sprott (1894–1975), and Clyde Fans Book One. As an illustrator and designer, he has worked on a number of high-profile projects, including Fantagraphics Books’...
Jan 15, 2009 — I have never seen New York look so beautifully grand as it did during my trip to Paris this New Year’s. Maybe I should explain. It was my great fortune to be visiting the City of Light while the intensely...
Nov 11, 2002 — Continued from Anatomy of a Love Festival - Part One The real turn-on, though, was the music—twenty-two hours of it, divided into solid chunks that usually ran more than thirty minutes. Friday night was the epitome of what San Francisco...
Essays
Sep 8, 1998 — In David Lean’s Summertime, in which Rossano Brazzi seduces Katharine Hepburn—an aging, repressed Ohio “working girl” on vacation in Venice—the Continental lover reached his pinnacle and approached his end. In the next decade, he would be embodied by Marcello Mastroianni,...
Apr 14, 2026 — Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) is a film about fear. That may not entirely jibe with its reputation as a biblical parody, but it might be the movie’s secret strength—why it continues to strike a nerve today. Many of...
Jun 27, 2024 — At their best, movies that showcase a sizable collective of virtuosic actors can give you the feeling of a rich ecosystem being brought to life.
Oct 18, 2018 — Separated by more than a decade in Ingmar Bergman’s filmography, these two formally masterful dramas uncover the ugliness of male aggression and brutality.