The Look

Jun 26, 2012 — Hiroshi Inagaki’s action epic is as responsible for creating Toshiro Mifune’s legendary cinematic persona as the films of Kurosawa.

May 9, 2012 — The paradox of the biopic is that the need to give fictional characters the kind of messy, defining behavior that makes them ring true—makes them, in the vocabulary of development, “relatable”—is usually overlooked when an actual life is condensed into...

Oct 25, 2011 — The film is made up of a succession of small visions, observed and executed with apparent ease but thought through with such exquisite care and attention that the experience becomes overwhelming.

Apr 26, 2011 — In anticipation of Criterion’s release of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator next month, and in honor of the one hundredth entry in his DVD of the Week column on his New Yorker blog, The Front Row, Richard Brody has begun a weeklong...

Feb 22, 2011 — It wasn’t intended. No one could have predicted it. But Sweet Smell of Success turned out to be a terminus where several movie genres and subgenres converged and curdled, producing a uniquely delicious perfume of everlasting cynicism. Inhale deeply. And...

Oct 29, 2009 — In the spirit of the season, we asked a select coven of horror mavens (including a couple of our own) to write about their favorite Criterion scarefests. Chuck StephensEquinox: The Eyebrows of Mr. Asmodeus There are myriad ways into Equinox,...

Feb 16, 2009 — Through the story of thunderously, wondrously henpecked men and a determined woman’s romantic zeal, David Lean’s comedy depicts private and social revolution.

Feb 12, 2007 — Bicycle Thieves is truly one of my favorite films. I could watch it over and over again, and in truth, I have.

Oct 23, 2006 — The New Zealand director’s debut feature is a bridge between her tentative, probing film school works and her subsequent female character studies.

Sep 26, 2005 — “They were down for each other.” If one wanted to pitch the concept of Bad Timing in six words, this comment by its director, Nicolas Roeg, couldn’t be bettered.