A Free Soul

Jan 21, 2025 — In his first Hollywood film, British director Stephen Frears dives into the nihilistic world of Jim Thompson’s fiction, delivering an adaptation profoundly attuned to the novelist’s sense of ineluctable suffering.

Dec 19, 2023 — Year’s end brings new translations of Serge Daney and Jean Cocteau and new books on Francis Ford Coppola and Jia Zhangke.

Jun 21, 2022 — By centering an empowered Black hero, Gordon Parks reimagined the detective genre and exposed its racial politics.

Jan 17, 2020 — Of all the weird scenes that populate seventies science-fiction cinema, the most bizarre might be in 1971’s The Omega Man. Based on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, the film imagines a world in which fallout from a distant war has...

Oct 9, 2019 — This year’s program has taken NYFF attendees to Soviet Russia, Lebanon, Chile, back home to the Big Apple, and behind bars.

Jun 27, 2019 — Sergei Bondarchuk pulled out all the stops to bring Tolstoy’s sprawling vision to the screen, and the result remains one of the most extravagant epic films of all time.

Mar 22, 2019 — The Criterion Channel launches on April 8, and we’re excited to share our first month’s lineup! The April calendar of thematic programming highlights an eclectic mix of classic and contemporary films from Hollywood and around the world, many not streaming anywhere...

Jan 17, 2018 — “My appreciation for his inspiring and innovative cinema grows deeper as the years go by,” writes Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa in an essay that Jonathan Rosenbaum’s posted on his site, “Reflections on Kiarostami’s Two-Way Mirrors.” A new and expanded edition of their...

Dec 7, 2017 — “After mining the American soul (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, The Master) as brilliantly as any working director has in the last fifty years,” begins Robert Abele at TheWrap, “Paul Thomas Anderson moves to 1950’s England for Phantom Thread,...

Dec 6, 2017 — “There’s topical, there’s timely, and then there’s The Post, which feels less like a historical thriller set in 1971 than it does an exhilarating caricature of the year 2017,” begins David Ehrlich at IndieWire. “While Steven Spielberg’s latest film rivetingly...