The Criterion Collection
Essays
Feb 1, 1988 — Based on the novel by W.T. Burnett, this heist film set in a nameless midwestern city offered moviegoers in 1950 a new view of crime.
Jan 4, 1988 — The Secret Agent (1936) came to life in the prime of Alfred Hitchcock’s British period. It arrived between the popular triumph of The 39 Steps and the box-office rejection of Sabotage, a more daringly downbeat work. Secret Agent partakes of...
Essays
Oct 12, 1987 — Akira Kurosawa’s thrilling Cinemascope epic is set squarely within the traditions of the Japanese film genre known as the “Chambara.”
Essays
Dec 11, 1986 — If events had turned out differently, Orson Welles’s second film might well be widely regarded as “the greatest film of all time.”
The musician, producer, and composer praises the sonic world of Brian De Palma’s movies, shares why he thinks The Color of Pomegranates is the most beautiful film ever made, and discusses what The Game taught him about the interplay between...
Two unflinching reports from working-class America; a Brooklyn-set Dostoevskian family tragedy and gangster drama; an existential crime thriller from a French-cinema legend; a prescient commentary on self-help culture; and five documentaries that wage war against the conformism of modern Japanese...
The actor and producer shares what he’s learned from close collaborators like Steven Soderbergh and Gus Van Sant, talks about the impact of You Can Count on Me, and recalls a favorite moment from Double Indemnity.
From the rise of the Hollywood teen comedy to the emergence of France’s cinéma du look, the filmmaking trends of this wild decade yielded some unforgettable classics.
Whether they shock, delight, or inspire, the final sequences in these films all leave a lasting impression.