Way Out West

Jul 12, 2026 — Channel Calendars This month on the Criterion Channel, crank up the volume on our playlist of (actually good) rock biopics that go beyond cliché to explore the elusive place where inspiration sparks and musical legends are born. Our Southern Gothic...

Oct 29, 2024 — From Kaneto Shindo to Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the masters of the genre over the past half-century have tapped into a deep well of cultural anxiety, exploring everything from the sins of their nation’s feudal past to the dangers of new technologies.

Jul 11, 2024 — Metrograph’s series celebrates the legacy of one of the most notorious cinema clubs in London.

Jul 2, 2024 — Self-destruction is not only an aesthetic but its own subject matter in Sam Peckinpah’s deeply elegiac western, a towering masterpiece that examines American power and greed.

Dec 15, 2021 — The Film Independent Spirit Awards usher in a fresh round of contenders, while critics across the country vote for their favorites.

Aug 17, 2021 — D. A. Pennebaker turns his camera on Stephen Sondheim and the cast of his breakthrough musical in this revelatory documentary about artists at work.

Feb 10, 2020 — The ragman’s son became one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, working most memorably with Wilder, Minnelli, and Kubrick.

Sep 20, 2019 — In the winter of 1981, when I was young, I fell madly in love with a handsome poet. About two weeks into our affaire de cœur, we went to the Thalia on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to see...

Apr 19, 2018 — With a mix of improvisation, balletic physicality, and slapstick humor, Hollywood master Leo McCarey crafted the most sublime of screwball comedies.

May 25, 2017 — In Tuesday’s dispatch to the Village Voice from the Cannes Film Festival, Bilge Ebiri wrote about one of the best films he’d seen so far, The Rider, “directed by Chloé Zhao (whom I interviewed). It follows a young rodeo cowboy...