The Criterion Collection
Nov 19, 2001 — Luis Buñuel’s drama is a seductive work that exemplifies, even as it studies, the perversity of human desire.
Essays
Jan 29, 2001 — In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s drama, the characters abandon their twin faiths, in God and the British Empire, and turn themselves over to more ancient and dangerous powers.
Jan 11, 1999 — This epic reimagining of medieval Russia was the most historically audacious production made in the twenty-odd years after Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible.
Mar 9, 1992 — The ads for Boyz N the Hood, the debut of a 23-year old writer-director named John Singleton, treated the film as if it took place in another galaxy—a mysterious fiefdom far, far away. And so it does, set in a...
Essays
Jan 7, 1991 — Vittorio de Sica remembers the inspirations behind and the making of his classic film.
Essays
Apr 10, 1989 — Two years after The Horse’s Mouth director Ronald Neame cast Alec Guinness in this film, based on a book by James Kennaway.
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...
Essays
May 26, 2026 — Of all the performing arts, stand-up comedy may be the most ephemeral, even more so if the humor is considered dangerous or taboo. Stand-up relies on the charged dynamic between a comedian and an audience, with both sides often bringing...
Features
Apr 17, 2026 — From a distance—looking down, say, from a penthouse office in a glass-paned downtown skyscraper—the U.S. economy of the 1990s and early 2000s could feel almost boring. Between Black Monday in 1987 and the Global Financial Crisis twenty years later, growth...