The Stories

Aug 28, 2007 — Having studied everything but film in college, I never would have imagined that landing a job in the DVD industry would help me get more out of fashion magazines. But sitting in the front office at Criterion, seeing every person...

Mar 10, 2003 — The Swedish director of I Am Curious explains how he fused the themes of eroticism, self-exploration, voyeurism, and nonviolence into a film about the new freedoms of the young. QUESTION: I Am Curious seemed to be a cinematic Tristram Shandy,...

The writer and director reminisces about seeing Black Girl in the cinema with his mom as a child, shares how True Stories and Election influenced his approach to filmmaking, and talks about the emotional truth behind the visual artifice of...

The celebrated actors select favorite movies starring their friends Jason Schwartzman and Jane Fonda, regale us with stories about Omar Sharif and David Lynch, and share their love for films by Hal Ashby and David Lean.

The musician and actor talks about what makes Stan Brakhage’s films “very punk rock,” reflects on working with Jonathan Demme, and selects favorite films such as Black Girl and True Stories.

The Emmy- and Tony-winning actor stopped by our offices to regale us with stories and stock up on some of his favorite Hollywood classics.

Philip Horne is a professor at University College London and the editor of Henry James: A Life in Letters (Penguin, 1999), Thorold Dickinson: A World of Film (with Peter Swaab; Manchester University Press, 2008), and Tales from a Master’s Notebook:...

Erica Wagner was born in New York and lives in London. Gravity, her collection of short stories, was published by Granta in 1997; Ariel’s Gift, a book about Ted Hughes’s “Birthday Letters,” was published by W. W. Norton in 2001;...

May 29, 2026 — We’re revisiting work by Tarkovsky, Pelechian, and Portabella as well as two films with the word Dead in the title.

Jun 9, 2025 — Within the past few days, we’ve lost a vital film historian and a vibrant artist.