The Criterion Collection
Essays
Apr 26, 1999 — At some point in their lives, probably every sleepless person has switched on the TV in the wee hours of a weekend morning and chanced upon a fishing show. Invariably, a beefy, half-forgotten retired athlete shares a boat with some...
Jun 21, 1994 — From the opening credits of Spike Lee’s seminal film, She’s Gotta Have It, viewers in 1986 were able to recognize the presence of an extraordinary talent. For it was Lee, a graduate of the New York University’s Tisch School of...
Sep 13, 1993 — If, as François Truffaut said, quoting Renoir back in 1958, “The film director’s task consists of getting pretty women to do pretty things,’” then never did he apply himself more faithfully than in Confidentially Yours specifically for Fanny Ardant, not...
Essays
Dec 3, 1990 — Over the years I have had a recurrent nightmare in which I am summoned to a large, unfamiliar building in a middle-European satellite country (Bulgaria, perhaps) to tell the idea of Annie Hall to the Bulgarian Minister of Green Lights,...
Nov 14, 1988 — It is sometimes as important to be in touch with the truths of your own time as it is to be in touch with its metaphors. 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the most influential films ever made, constructed a...
Jul 21, 2026 — James Ellroy is the author of, among other works, the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy (American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood’s a Rover) and the L.A. Quartet novels (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz). He...
Jan 19, 2023 — The frequent collaborators talk about their close friendship, the paths that led them to each other, and the artistic values they share.
Nov 18, 2020 — Born in 1976 in Caserta, Italy, Pietro Marcello attended the Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied painting. His documentary Crossing the Line was presented at the sixty-fourth Venice Film Festival and brought him international acclaim. In 2009, his first...