The Criterion Collection
Essays
Aug 2, 2004 — Anna Magnani’s flair for demotic street comedy was transfigured into stylized nobility by sumptuous costuming and Jean Renoir’s formal camera work.
Essays
Jul 9, 2001 — Director Bruce Robinson reminisces about the days that inspired his uproarious black comedy.
Dec 18, 2000 — Elegant humor cloaks despair in Luis Buñuel’s masterwork, wherein greedy characters flee their toxic lives and find refuge in the loneliness of dreams.
Nov 1, 1999 — The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a profoundly beguiling movie about sex, love, and rebellion.
Jun 3, 1991 — Jean Marais on the set of Beauty and the Beast An excerpt from Cocteau: A Biography (1970) by Francis Steegmuller Beauty and the Beast, the first film of Cocteau’s own since The Blood of a Poet, and his finest poem since...
Essays
Feb 11, 1990 — Bob Rafelson’s ultimate road movie is a relaxed masterpiece, a film of laid-back innovation that hasn’t aged one iota since its original release.
Jan 11, 1988 — In Young and Innocent (1937) Alfred Hitchcock uses all the signs in his visual vocabulary to tell one of his favorite stories: fugitive hero unjustly accused of murder. Yet this is also a story of youth and innocence triumphant—a light...
Jul 22, 2025 — In his achingly beautiful debut feature, Kenneth Lonergan captures the dynamics of a sibling relationship shaped by grief, revealing its complexities with narrative economy and deep emotion.
The Daily
May 9, 2025 — Voices come in pairs this week: Jia Zhangke and Zhao Tao, Daney and Rivette, Patrick Bateman and his fans.
Dec 18, 2024 — The bulk of this year’s selections comes from a three-decade stretch from the early 1970s to the late ’90s.