The Criterion Collection
On the Channel
Dec 6, 2016 — Photo by Janet Pierson In the late eighties and early nineties, American independent film was coming into its own both artistically and commercially, and John Pierson was at the center of the movement. Once described by the New York Times...
Essays
Nov 22, 2016 — The result of a notoriously troubled production, Marlon Brando’s unorthodox western presents a brooding vision of human futility.
Nov 21, 2016 — By turns hilarious and heartrending, The Squid and the Whale is one of Noah Baumbach’s most autobiographical works. Rooted in his experiences growing up in a hyperliterate household in 1980s Park Slope, this ensemble comedy captures the tempestuous dynamics between...
Short Takes
Nov 18, 2016 — Artists across all mediums have long been obsessed with the challenge of evoking dream states, but film—with its oneiric combinations of light and shadow, and its ability to manipulate time and space—has particularly uncanny access to our nighttime reveries. Whether...
Nov 15, 2016 — Akira Kurosawa lays bare his deepest fears in this visually astonishing interpretation of folklore, myth, and the director’s own dreams and memories.
Nov 14, 2016 — For his first foray into romantic comedy, Paul Thomas Anderson worked closely with Jon Brion on a score that combines melodic orchestration with startling dissonance.
On the Channel
Nov 11, 2016 — This week’s Friday Night Double Feature on the Criterion Channel demonstrates how much suspense a superb director can wring from an intriguing premise without resorting to yelling “boo!” or splashing gore.
Oct 25, 2016 — On their way back to Mumbai, the filmmaking pair dropped in for a chat about their film The Cinema Travellers, which documents the last traveling-cinema exhibitors of the western Indian state of Maharashtra.
Oct 19, 2016 — Martha Karsh, editor of The Beatles A Hard Day’s Night: A Private Archive, published in September by Phaidon, talks about her family’s Beatlemania and assembling a book about the world’s most famous rock band.
Oct 18, 2016 — Guillermo del Toro’s anti–Wizard of Oz refracts the surreal traumas of the Spanish Civil War through the eyes of a young girl.