The Watch

Jul 15, 2019 — After premiering at Cannes in 1980, Franco Rosso’s Babylon was suppressed both in its native England and abroad for fear that it would inflame racial tensions, a fate that resulted in decades of obscurity. But over the years this reggae-fueled drama has...

Apr 20, 2019 — The latest installment of the Criterion Channel’s Meet the Filmmakers series, in which we invite artists to create documentary portraits of directors they admire, sets out for a stroll with an underappreciated American master: Charles Burnett, the poetic realist behind...

Apr 14, 2019 — In the Criterion Channel’s ongoing series Adventures in Moviegoing, we invite renowned artists to open up about their personal journeys as cinephiles, and also to guest-program a series of their favorite films, so they can share their movie love directly...

Mar 27, 2019 — From the beginning of his career, Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas has strived to find a balance between careful planning and the spontaneity of the moment. For our edition of his feature debut, Japón, an existential tale that follows the spiritual...

Mar 20, 2019 — Anatomy of a Gag Harold Lloyd may not have had the melancholy disposition of his silent-clown competitors Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but he knew how to introduce elements of menace and peril into his comedies in a way that...

Mar 13, 2019 — Ingmar Bergman was a master of both screen and stage, and in his 1975 version of The Magic Flute, he merged the two mediums to enchanting effect. He couldn’t have chosen more inspiring material to showcase his gift for capturing...

Oct 9, 2018 — In a world vulnerable to authoritarianism, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s television epic stands as an example of how an artist can speak to a broad audience about revolutionary politics.

Jul 10, 2018 — The martial-arts film was never the same after King Hu got his hands on it, reinventing the genre with subtle editing and dazzling choreography.

Jun 7, 2018 — “Film was a sort of rarified, special thing you might luck into,” says Marlon James, recalling his first encounters with the art form as a child in Jamaica. Growing up in Kingston in the 1970s, he got his cinema education...

May 4, 2018 — What do we mean when we say a narrative film is poetic? The answer lies in this visionary western from director Jim Jarmusch.