The Criterion Collection
Short Takes
Sep 25, 2017 — Highlights from this year’s stellar Toronto International Film Festival lineup echoed a handful of classics from our collection.
Jun 12, 2017 — Informed by his work in theater and his travels through rural America, Nicholas Ray brought an outsider’s perspective to genre filmmaking in his debut feature.
May 22, 2017 — Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer “makes the absurd, amazing The Lobster seem like a warm and cuddly experience by comparison,” declares Jessica Kiang at the Playlist. “A film of clean hands, cold heart, and near-Satanic horror, it...
Essays
Feb 5, 2017 — Kirsten Johnson interrogates the thorny ethics of nonfiction filmmaking in her intriguingly elliptical blend of essay, travelogue, and memoir.
Essays
Dec 14, 2016 — Pseudodocumentary collides with pure fantasy in Federico Fellini’s intricately layered portrait of his adopted home.
Essays
Apr 27, 2016 — In Phoenix, Christian Petzold sets his nuanced melodrama of postwar German-Jewish identity within a starkly realist aesthetic, making newly fascinating use of his enduring interest in the tensions between the real and the artificial.
Apr 14, 2014 — Lars von Trier brought his brand of provocation to his widest audience yet with this inquiry into faith and human goodness.
Feb 5, 2014 — Performances We don’t often talk about documentaries as featuring performances. But consider the highly performative people at the centers of Grey Gardens, General Idi Amin Dada, and last year’s The Act of Killing, or even the seemingly more modest souls...
Features
Dec 22, 2013 — The author reflects on his interactions with the great filmmaker.
Aug 27, 2013 — Ernst Lubitsch’s World War II–era high-wire act is a profound take on the absurdity cruelty of civilization and a perfect black comedy to boot.