The Criterion Collection
Sep 18, 2006 — Released in 1973, in the dying days of General Franco’s forty-year dictatorship, The Spirit of the Beehive soon established itself as the consummate masterpiece of Spanish cinema. Yet, strangely, many of the gifted artists who collaborated on Víctor Erice’s first...
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.
Jun 27, 2005 — Ko Nakahira’s Nikkatsu Studio youth flick helped transform postwar Japanese cinema.
Essays
Apr 15, 2002 — Jean-Pierre Melville’s first-class crime picture may be the most elegantly rigorous movie ever made about a cockeyed heist.
Oct 15, 2001 — The French director’s crime film conveys both the flow and the form of the prison experience.
Essays
Apr 6, 1993 — Robert Altman’s darkly witty, gleefully close-to-bone satire of Hollywood is also a return to the infinitely sly and supple virtuosity that marked his great work of the ‘70s.
The Daily
Mar 12, 2026 — A selection of fine writing on this year’s Academy Award nominees.