The Criterion Collection
Feb 16, 2016 — In Death by Hanging, Nagisa Oshima spins a complex aesthetic web around his documentary-like structure, packing detail, history, politics, and emotion into his surrealist inquiry into capital punishment.
Nov 17, 2015 — Satyajit Ray began his filmmaking career by offering a vision of the young Apu, the character he would go on to follow throughout the three films of his stunning breakthrough epic.
Feb 17, 2015 — It was never, of course, Yasujiro Ozu’s intention that An Autumn Afternoon (1962) should be the final film of his thirty-five-year career as a writer-director. Indeed, before he died on his sixtieth birthday, in December 1963, he had made notes...
Nov 20, 2014 — The two writers chat about Nehme’s new novel.
Nov 17, 2014 — Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable’s effortless banter is pure magic, but Frank Capra’s comedy is rooted in the reality of the times.
Essays
Sep 24, 2014 — Roman Polanski’s dark vision is the perfect fit for Shakespeare’s grim tale of treachery and ambition.
Sep 23, 2014 — In director Jack Clayton’s hands, Henry James’s tale of the sinister and sensual things hiding behind Victorian decorum becomes one of the screen’s great works of terror.
Jul 22, 2014 — Jeanne Moreau’s flighty, enigmatic Jackie in Jacques Demy’s poetic drama is in the great tradition of dreamy Demy heroines.
Jun 19, 2014 — PerformancesTime has added some latter-day ironies to All That Heaven Allows, and not just the revelation that its star Rock Hudson was gay. There’s also the political career of Ronald Reagan, the ex-husband of Hudson’s costar, Jane Wyman—built on the...
Essays
May 27, 2014 — Howard Hawks was both a skillful Hollywood craftsman and a deeply personal artist, and this western of uncommon wit and grandeur is among his greatest and quirkiest films.