The Criterion Collection
Jul 8, 2013 — With its marvelous, distinctive camera work, Kenji Mizoguchi’s searing drama is as technically remarkable as it is humane.
Sep 18, 2012 — Marcel Carné’s theatrical spectacle set in early nineteenth-century Paris is an operatic work about passion and artifice.
Nov 25, 2010 — Five Easy Pieces is not a statement about America but a closely observed report. Or, perhaps, a confession.
Cinema history is dotted with thunderous works of art that announced their makers’ brilliance right out of the gate.
Essays
Mar 15, 2004 — This Japanese classic’s guiding passion is hunger, and its central image—a gaping black hole in the earth—is that of an all-consuming maw.
Sep 29, 2003 — Fassbinder had long dreamed of a “German Hollywood film.” He sought not only success with the audience, but also professionalism. The auteur film in its purest form is an attempt to abolish the division of labor: the filmmaker represents in...
Dec 23, 2019 — Fear and desire lie at the heart of Peter Strickland’s cinema, whether he’s exploring those themes through the sonic, the sexual, the sartorial, or some diabolical combination of all three. With his masterful sense of film technique, the British director...
Dec 17, 2017 — “He’s joking all the time if he feels he has an audience,” Barbet Schroeder said of Idi Amin in a 1976 New York Post interview.I think we know the type.Ugandan dictator Amin, the subject of Schroeder’s 1974 documentary General Idi Amin Dada: A...
Aug 27, 2017 — This month, two captivating masterworks make their way to the United Kingdom in their Criterion editions: Lord of the Flies, Peter Brook’s provocative 1963 tale of savage youth, and The Music Room, Satyajit Ray’s radiant 1958 portrait of a fallen...
In Theaters
Jun 1, 2016 — Repertory PicksThis week, as part of a complete survey of Robert Aldrich’s career (running through mid-August), the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will screen the director’s explosive 1955 noir masterpiece Kiss Me Deadly. Based on Mickey Spillane’s pulp novel...