The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jun 3, 2002 — By any standard, The Horse’s Mouth shines as an outstandingly personal work from a decade that often seems the most arid in British cinema. Amid tepid comedies and timid thrillers, it sparkles with conviction and eccentricity—at least that’s how it...
Essays
Apr 29, 2002 — Though set in wartime Soviet Union, Grigori Chukhrai’s drama walks away from the genre of war film, creating a portrait of life and problems behind the lines of battle.
Oct 15, 2001 — The French director’s crime film conveys both the flow and the form of the prison experience.
Essays
Sep 17, 2001 — Jirí Menzel’s war comedy is an absurdist symphony of self-absorption and impotence.
Essays
Sep 18, 2000 — Drenched in mud and rain, Lars von Trier’s breakthrough film inhabits a true twilight zone, bereft of heroes and integrity.
Essays
Aug 28, 2000 — Alberto Lattuada’s gifts for dramatic narrative were joined for the first and last time with Federico Fellini’s flair for cartoonish satire and lyrical sentiment.
Jun 26, 2000 — Kevin Smith writes about his third feature as a sort of penance/valentine for the woman who made him grow up.
Essays
May 15, 2000 — Vagabond has been called Agnès Varda’s Ulysses, and with good reason. The comparison with James Joyce’s era-defining epic novel extends well beyond a recognizable similarity between the two artists. Both writer and filmmaker occupy vanguard positions in the history of...
Essays
May 15, 2000 — In René Clair’s ebullient early talkie, an unsentimental love of humanity permeates every frame.
Essays
Apr 24, 2000 — PREFACE Aman who dozes, his mouth half open, in front of a wood fire, lets slip some secrets from that night of the human body that is called the soul, over which he is no longer master. The sentry of...