Summer with Hope

Jul 8, 2022 — This week: Juliette Binoche’s work with Krzysztof Kieślowski and Claire Denis, post-Berlin School German cinema, and Tom Cruise’s “immaculate superstardom.”

May 28, 2021 — This week: Anarchy on screen, a pre-Code barroom brawl, an essay on Julie Dash, and conversations with Jia Zhangke and Sergei Loznitsa.

Jun 10, 2020 — Years ago I took a seminar on movie stars led by the writer Wayne Koestenbaum, a glittering episode that closed out a rather colorless stint in graduate school. The syllabus was replete with inspired double bills⁠—Deleuze on Leibniz + Lana...

Apr 3, 2020 — Conversations with Frederick Wiseman and Quentin Tarantino and rediscoveries of forgotten critics and an Arab filmmaker are among this week’s highlights.

Mar 6, 2020 — This week: Kelly Reichardt chats with Bong Joon-ho and Olivier Assayas, Jia Zhangke tells the story behind his debut feature, and more.

Feb 13, 2018 — With the scrappiest of means, George A. Romero created not only a landmark of independent cinema but also an indelible portrait of America as hellscape.

Nov 18, 2010 — In Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, terror and tenderness grapple with each other as profoundly as the words HATE and LOVE when they’re tattooed, one per hand, across the knuckles of the sadistic preacher Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum)....

Apr 20, 2010 — In 1992, I went to Paris to see some movies that weren’t turning up on these shores, at least not as quickly as I wanted them to. At the time, it meant something particular to be going to Paris to...

Sep 24, 1992 — It was in 1947 that Vladimir Nabokov began writing what he described as “a short novel about a man who liked little girls.” Completed in 1954, the manuscript was rejected as pornographic by at least four New York publishers. Nabokov...

Jul 17, 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...