The Criterion Collection
Aug 2, 2017 — Dustin Guy Defa’s first feature, Bad Fever, was named one of the best films of 2012 by the New Yorker. His short films Person to Person and Family Nightmare premiered at Sundance and won awards at the Berlinale, SXSW, and...
Jun 20, 2014 — Peter Weir’s sun-dappled, sexually charged nightmare about a disappearance in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Australia still unnerves due to its radical lack of resolution.
Oct 25, 2013 — “I’ve been asked to select ideal Halloween viewing from Criterion’s extensive catalog,” writes the novelist, critic, broadcaster, and all-around horror maven Kim Newman. “In the interests of not incriminating myself, I’ve stayed away from releases I’ve had a hand in...
Lisa Morton is a screenwriter and author whose books include The Cinema of Tsui Hark (2001), Savage Detours: The Life and Work of Ann Savage (2010), and The Art of the Zombie Movie (2023). Her film writing includes articles about...
Kim Morgan is a film writer and screenwriter whose work has appeared in Sight and Sound, Filmmaker magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the New Beverly Cinema blog, as well as her own blog, Sunset Gun. She cowrote...
Geoffrey O’Brien’s books include The Phantom Empire; Sonata for Jukebox; The Fall of the House of Walworth; Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows: Writing on Film, 2002–2012; Where Did Poetry Come From: Some Early Encounters; and Arabian Nights of 1934.
Kim Newman is a novelist, critic, and broadcaster. His books include the Anno Dracula series and Nightmare Movies. He is a contributing editor to Sight & Sound and Empire magazines and writes for Video Watchdog.
Essays
Oct 28, 2025 — An adaptation of a classic pulp novel by William Lindsay Gresham, Guillermo del Toro’s first foray into film noir is an intensely evocative exploration of how human impulses can give rise to monsters.
Production Notes
May 25, 2021 — 1. William Lindsay Gresham’s first book—the sordid carnival-sideshow noir Nightmare Alley—was the author’s only considerable literary success. A controversial best seller upon its publication in 1946, the novel was quickly followed by a film adaptation the next year. Gresham would...
Short Takes
Mar 5, 2018 — On the anniversary of his birth, we look back on the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini, one of the most radical figures of Italian cinema.