Just Tell Me What You Want

Feb 18, 2025 — In her mainstream breakthrough, director Joan Micklin Silver envisions New York City through the eyes of a complicated, searching woman trying to figure out her place in the world.

Jul 12, 2023 — The award-winning actor talks about training with Lee Strasberg, her involvement in the Actors Studio, and her on- and off-screen contributions to two of her most important films.

Jun 10, 2020 — Years ago I took a seminar on movie stars led by the writer Wayne Koestenbaum, a glittering episode that closed out a rather colorless stint in graduate school. The syllabus was replete with inspired double bills⁠—Deleuze on Leibniz + Lana...

May 2, 2019 — When I first saw My Brilliant Career, when it was released in New York in 1980, I was ignorant of director “Gill” Armstrong. I assumed she was a man, because at the time I could count the female directors I...

Apr 5, 2019 — Two-Lane Blacktop A longtime Criterion contributor, Kent Jones has written for us on everything from the glories of studio filmmaking to the most daring and cerebral of art-house auteurs. But regardless of the subject he’s set his sights on, he’s...

Mar 9, 2023 — This year’s edition retains that SXSW signature mix of boldfaced crowd-pleasers and fresh discoveries.

Aug 17, 2020 — Louise Brooks, Oliver Stone, James Stewart, Andy Warhol, and more are here to help relieve this year’s summer doldrums.

Apr 10, 2020 — Songbook Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day is the War and Peace of Taiwanese juvenile-delinquent movies. It is also part of a tradition of films that use the process of a character slowly learning a single song as a narrative-building...

Feb 2, 2017 — In her just-released Sundance hit The Lure, Agnieszka Smoczyńska evokes both the decadence and decrepitude of 1980s Poland through the adventures of Silver and Gold, two man-eating mermaid sisters who decide to go terrestrial and soon become a nightclub singing...

May 10, 2016 — Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place imbues the conventions of film noir with a subtle, tense vulnerability that lends a naturalistic weight to the film’s powerful emotional impact.