Taken Heart

Apr 2, 2017 — What defines noir acting? In her latest Dark Passages column, Imogen Sara Smith examines the stylistic variety in some of the genre’s most iconic male performances, including Burt Lancaster in The Killers and Ralph Meeker in Kiss Me Deadly.

Mar 1, 2017 — In his most seductive experiment with cinematic time, Richard Linklater wrestles with the joys and challenges of long-term intimacy.

Feb 23, 2017 — Pedro Almodóvar’s Oscar-nominated breakthrough revels in the complexities of the female psyche.

Feb 3, 2017 — Over on the Criterion Channel, for Super Bowl weekend, we’re showing the first football movie ever made, Harold Lloyd’s crackerjack comedy The Freshman (1925), and the first rugby-football movie ever made, Lindsay Anderson’s heart-pounding drama This Sporting Life (1963). And...

Jan 31, 2017 — Brooklyn-based director Tim Sutton stopped by for a visit and sat down to chat about the films that have inspired his work and the importance of maintaining an outsider’s point of view.

Nov 16, 2016 — The joy of new love collides with the anxieties of everyday life in Paul Thomas Anderson’s off-kilter foray into romantic comedy.

Sep 27, 2016 — This monumental meditation on the Ten Commandments captures the spiritual undercurrents of life in late-Communist Poland.

Sep 13, 2016 — Kenji Mizoguchi achieved the sublime with this structurally complex portrait of artistic ambition and female subjugation.

Jul 5, 2016 — Arthur Hiller’s 1979 comedy pairs Alan Arkin and Peter Falk as unlikely comrades in a madcap farce that lands every laugh.

Jun 21, 2016 — Animated in Czechoslovakia amid a Soviet invasion, the French film Fantastic Planet, the third collaboration between René Laloux and Roland Topor, timelessly renders its surreal sci-fi story of captivity and resistance.