The Criterion Collection
Essays
Aug 10, 2021 — Hirokazu Kore-eda’s international breakthrough is a bittersweet meditation on mortality, memory, and the movies.
The Daily
Nov 1, 2017 — “If you go to a single production this season, make it this one.” That’s Anthony Tommasini, chief music critic for the New York Times, enthusiastically recommending Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel, an opera inspired by Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film and...
Oct 31, 2006 — The obvious question is: Why are we doing this? And the only answer is that it just seems like the right thing to do. The Criterion Collection is at an awkward age. By Variety and Hollywood Reporter standards, we’re not...
Essays
May 30, 2017 — Lino Brocka brought an invigoratingly personal and socially conscious vision to Philippine cinema with this gritty portrait of Manila barrio life.
Jun 22, 2009 — So much critical ink has been shed over Last Year at Marienbad that one might wonder if the flood of commentary, once receded, would take the film along with it. Alain Resnais’ second feature has been lavishly praised and royally...
Nov 12, 2007 — What is left of Berlin Alexanderplatz, this endless canon of the sublime and the trivial, is thus a perpetuum mobile of the human dance of love and death.
Mar 23, 2021 — “Pleasure,” wrote Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh, “is a safer guide than either right or duty.” Surely this is true when it comes to watching films. While cinema can be edifying, most of us go to the...
Jan 14, 2025 — In his only directorial effort for the big screen, Richard Pryor takes the raw stuff of his life and alchemizes it as art, demonstrating the humor and vulnerability that made him a towering figure in American culture.
Features
Mar 25, 2022 — With its rambling Victorian mansions and seedy charms, the once-exclusive area of downtown Los Angeles was film noir’s favorite neighborhood.
Jul 6, 2021 — Howard Hawks’s madcap battle of the sexes is a reminder of how necessary and sneakily profound silliness can be.