The Criterion Collection
Features
Dec 30, 2013 — Charlie Chaplin’s comedy has a secret ingredient that has bound us to him forever.
Short Takes
Mar 19, 2012 — Some people have called us “film school in a box,” but this is the real deal. The essential film school introductory textbook, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s Film Art: An Introduction, is coming out in its tenth edition in the summer,...
Essays
Jun 14, 2011 — The dance along the artery The circulation of the lymph Are figured in the drift of stars —T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets The year is 1954: a fabulous bit of film history is about to unfurl. Grips are...
Apr 12, 2011 — After Army of Shadows, Melville and I stayed in touch . . . One day, he announced: “I’m going to make a new film. You’re not composing the score for it; I’ve contacted Michel Legrand . . .” Of course, I was disappointed....
Apr 12, 2011 — A nightmare from which no one awakes, Claire Denis’ White Material (2009) takes place in a nameless African country teetering on the brink of all-out civil war. It is the veteran French director’s toughest work, unsparing with its characters and...
Dec 7, 2010 — In 1981, it seemed to me that a new era of fantastic cinema was upon us.
Mar 23, 2010 — In myriad inventive ways, Terrence Malick’s philosophical drama shows us how nature and culture are always intertwined.
Apr 21, 2008 — Juan Antonio Bardem combines neorealism with noir thriller to create a new dialect that would forge a new Spanish cinematic language.
Essays
Jul 9, 2001 — With its dunderhead millionaires, erudite bums, effulgently dysfunctional families, and beneficent providence, My Man Godfrey is the Depression comedy par excellence. It is also, superficially at least, a movie about the Depression. A suicidal millionaire regains his zest for living...