The Imp

Jul 14, 2026 — In May of 1962, when Martin Ritt arrived in the Texas Panhandle town of Claude to begin filming Hud, he may have sensed that his career was about to change. Hud would be Ritt’s ninth feature but his first personal...

Jun 23, 2026 — “Ozone Hole over Baltimore?” queries a panicky 1992 headline in the Baltimore Sun. Sure, as the article clarifies, the Maryland metropolis, eternal home base of trash icon John Waters, is no more vulnerable to ozone depletion than any other city...

Jun 18, 2026 — Over the course of his first three documentaries—Helvetica (2007), Objectified (2009), and Urbanized (2011)—Gary Hustwit established a clean and clear cinematic language that he used to describe the complex and often contradictory systems of thinking that designers use to shape...

May 27, 2026 — Is it possible to look without trying to grasp the object of one’s gaze? Traditional ethnographic documentaries, much like the written ethnographies that preceded them, have attempted to explain a given culture to those who don’t belong to it, assuming...

Feb 20, 2024 — I have, over time, become wary of and impatient with the word authentic, especially when it’s too casually and blithely deployed, as it often is these days, to defame or diminish someone or something based on arbitrary standards of what...

Nov 21, 2023 — The decades have flown by, but Mean Streets (1973) has not become the least bit dated, even though we know how the careers of all the principals have evolved in the years since, not to mention that the world just...

Sep 21, 2023 — Like the nuclear family, the internet shapes us whether or not we choose to relate to it. In 38, the final short in a triptych by filmmakers Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew, a woman approaching middle age becomes obsessed with...

May 25, 2022 — Combining the expressive power of a great storyteller with the skill of a master craftsman, Sean Phillips is an artist we’ve come back to time and time again at Criterion. From Sweet Smell of Success to On the Waterfront to...

Apr 26, 2022 — Bertrand Tavernier was well known as one of the world’s great champions of cinema, in addition to being a great filmmaker himself. He was also a lifelong student and fan of jazz music and had been wanting to make a...

Mar 28, 2022 — Rosine Mbakam’s documentaries are exercises in reconfiguring relations of power. Her first three nonfiction features are all portraits of Cameroonian women, each of whom is invited to participate in coconstructing a cinematic space of testimony, candor, and expressive autonomy. Filmed...