The Classic

Aug 14, 2019 — There is a scene in Henry King’s State Fair (1933) that ranks among the most poetic moments in all of 1930s American cinema. There is not much to it, just a family driving through the dusk in their rattling pickup...

Mar 25, 2019 — In early 2007 the UCLA Film & Television Archive received a call from Hollywood Film and Video announcing that the lab was, sadly, closing—and clearing its vaults in two days’ time. Anything left was doomed to the dumpster. The next...

Jul 17, 2018 — Without doubt, Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape struck a nerve when it was released in 1989. Astonishingly, it still does today. Among the most storied of American independent films, it debuted at the U.S. Film Festival (soon to be renamed the...

Apr 25, 2017 — After a string of ill-fated productions, Francis Ford Coppola channeled his feelings of self-doubt in this deeply personal take on S. E. Hinton’s beloved novel.

Apr 24, 2017 — Music has always been a central character in the films of Wim Wenders. Ranging from the classic rock of the Kinks in his debut feature, Summer in the City, to the melancholy twang of Ry Cooder’s guitar in Paris, Texas,...

Apr 14, 2017 — Did You See This? The just-announced 2017 Cannes Film Festival lineup is a wealth of riches, with new work from Arnaud Desplechin, Abbas Kiarostami, Todd Haynes, Michael Haneke, Noah Baumbach, and Lynne Ramsay, plus a mystery-shrouded Twin Peaks revival. Bright...

Feb 17, 2017 — Did You See This? In a wide-ranging and moving new interview with online film magazine Bright Wall/Dark Room, Guillermo del Toro discusses the political power of art, the election of Donald Trump, and the way that film “exists in a...

Jun 3, 2016 — This August will bring two new Criterion releases to the United Kingdom: Dont Look Back, D. A. Pennebaker’s intimate 1967 portrait of Bob Dylan, and Arthur Hiller’s 1979 madcap classic The In-Laws. Head over to Amazon to check out our...

Feb 29, 2016 — For a program on our forthcoming release of Howard Hawks’s 1939 romantic adventure drama Only Angels Have Wings, we sat down for an interview with film critic and historian David Thomson. In our conversation with him, Thomson shared his formative...

Sep 26, 2014 — For this week’s festival of free films on Hulu, we put French bombshell Brigitte Bardot in the spotlight. The gorgeous actor, singer, and model burst onto the scene with Roger Vadim’s scandalous 1956 romp And God Created Woman, and was...