The Criterion Collection
May 22, 2006 — Barbara Kopple’s detailed analysis of a Kentucky mine workers’ strike is a virtual hub of urgent themes, formal tendencies, political debates, and material practices that define post-sixties documentary in America.
Mar 10, 2003 — The Swedish director of I Am Curious explains how he fused the themes of eroticism, self-exploration, voyeurism, and nonviolence into a film about the new freedoms of the young. QUESTION: I Am Curious seemed to be a cinematic Tristram Shandy,...
Aug 20, 2001 — I have known Torben Skjødt since 1983. His debut video Englefjæs—which I thought to be very accomplished—was presented during a film week in Silkeborg. A debut work, yes, but made with a self-assured maturity by a self-taught creator of images....
Essays
Aug 28, 2000 — In what is arguably his most popular and enduring feature, W. C. Fields nails the American tendency to inflate one’s importance.
The actor praises the melancholy tenderness of A Canterbury Tale, shares his admiration for Derek Jarman’s creative genius, and selects favorites like Sweetie and L’humanité.
The writer-director of So Much Tenderness and This Time Tomorrow shares her love for the magnetic monstrousness of Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven, praises the visual grammar of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and talks about “impossible...
Jun 22, 2022 — The long, quietly tense opening minutes of L’eclisse offer a blueprint for filmmakers looking to craft a devastating breakup scene.
Mar 9, 2015 — François Truffaut’s adultery drama is at times corrosively funny and at others frighteningly tense, but it’s always incisive and humane.
Jun 30, 2026 — The distinction between social and political cinema is not always clear. The former category, which focuses on realistic portrayals of the everyday lives and struggles of the working class, generally includes the films of Italian neorealism and British social realism,...
The Daily
Jun 18, 2026 — We’re wrapping the week with top docs, Black writers, screwball comedies, and appreciations of Raoul Peck and Jafar Panahi.