The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 2, 2008 — To see the gorgeous Fanfan la Tulipe is to go back in time twice over: to the film’s eighteenth-century French setting and to the international cinema world of more than fifty years ago, when this genial action farce was initially...
Mar 14, 2005 — A director is naturally a man like everyone else. Yet his life isn’t normal. For us, seeing is a necessity. For a painter, too, the problem is to see. But while the painter has to discover a static reality, or...
May 26, 2026 — Women’s hands dance over typewriter keys. The percussive racket they make, like the tapping of an unruly chorus line, takes the place of music during the opening credits of The Office Wife (1930), which appear over a montage of female...
Apr 21, 2026 — It’s all a bit confusing. Point Blank is based on a novel called The Hunter by Richard Stark, one of several pseudonyms adopted by Donald E. Westlake. The book was republished as Payback in 1999 to tie in with a...
The Daily
Feb 3, 2026 — Her passing has sparked an outpouring of appreciation for the hilarious ways she found to cut loose.
Nov 18, 2025 — Though the first two decades of the Iranian filmmaker’s career have long been underappreciated, this fertile period yielded philosophical and restlessly innovative works that reinvigorated both documentary and narrative-fiction cinema.
The Daily
Sep 9, 2025 — Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley enthrall critics with their portrayals of parents mourning the loss of a child.
On the Channel
Aug 19, 2025 — This month’s programming celebrates the centenary of the great American filmmaker Robert Altman, the career of Oscar-winning actor Jodie Foster, and much more.
Jun 12, 2025 — The acclaimed crime writer joins a producer of the 1999 adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley to discuss the cinematic incarnations of Patricia Highsmith’s shape-shifting, quintessentially American antihero.