The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 8, 1999 — In The Third Man—probably the greatest British thriller of the postwar era—director Carol Reed and screenwriter Graham Greene set a fable of moral corruption in a world of near-Byzantine visual complexity: the streets and ruins of occupied Vienna. It is...
Essays
Dec 2, 1991 — Director Akira Kurosawa had wanted to make Throne of Blood for some time. “After finishing Rashomon [in 1950] I wanted to do something with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but just about that time Orson Welles’s version was announced, so I postponed mine.”...
Sep 22, 1997 — I ?rst read The English Patient in one gulp, sitting in a room on 77th and Columbus the morning after I’d ?nished a sweltering summer of ?lming in New York. When I put the book down, it was dark, and...
Jan 22, 2026 — This visually stunning masterpiece from Kazakh New Wave iconoclast Ardak Amirkulov is one of the few films that looks evil in the eye without flinching.
The Daily
Dec 1, 2025 — One of the most vital playwrights of our era was also an award-winning screenwriter.
The Daily
May 6, 2025 — A two-part, thirty-film retrospective opens in New York before traveling to Berkeley, Harvard, Toronto, and Vancouver.
Sep 6, 2023 — Poor Things and The Beast are critical favorites, Ferrari comes alive when the big race is on, and verdicts are split on The Killer.
Apr 25, 2023 — Steve McQueen’s monumental, five-film portrait of London’s West Indian community is a howl of endorsement for political resistance and a vivid indictment of institutional malaise.
Jul 22, 2022 — Entwined with the evolution of American culture, boxing movies have used the microcosm of the ring to tackle issues of race, class, gender, and labor.
Features
Jul 7, 2021 — In the 1990s, Hong Kong was home to a staggering number of the most gifted and charismatic actors in the world. It’s impossible to imagine the films of Wong Kar Wai—or the global art-house phenomenon they generated—without these extraordinary performers;...