The Criterion Collection
Features
Jun 4, 2019 — The great Hollywood portrait photographs are like close-ups that never end. Cinema is an art of faces, and the chance to gaze at them, to get lost in them, may be the deepest thrill movies offer. In the darkness of...
Essays
May 24, 2011 — Andrei Tarkovsky belongs to that handful of filmmakers (Dreyer, Bresson, Vigo, Tati) who, with a small, concentrated body of work, created a universe. Though he made only seven features, thwarted by Soviet censors and then by cancer, each honored his...
Essays
Aug 24, 2010 — I n a photograph of Josef von Sternberg from 1937, he looks like a character from one of his own films: a turbaned magus with elegantly trimmed beard and mustache, holding a cigarette as he gazes out obliquely, with the...
Short Takes
Jun 18, 2010 — Terry Zwigoff’s 1995 documentary Crumb, which is coming to the Criterion Collection on DVD and Blu-ray in August, is an almost unbelievably intimate portrait of the underground comics icon Robert Crumb, as well as an examination of his controversial work. And,...
Jun 30, 2008 — The idea of self-fashioning—of deliberately taking the raw materials of one’s body and mind and transforming them into a work of art—has been with us at least since the Renaissance. Yet no one, not even Oscar Wilde, has so rigorously...
Apr 29, 2025 — A gritty look at New York City’s underground economy through the eyes of an immigrant street hustler, Sean Baker’s third feature film demonstrates his gift for combining hardscrabble social realism and mischievous humor.
On the Channel
Jan 30, 2023 — Celebrate Black History Month with a collection of films that survey African American history on-screen, a look at literary legend James Baldwin’s cinematic legacy, and a retrospective devoted to the independent trailblazer Oscar Micheaux.
Feb 1, 2022 — Douglas Sirk’s 1956 masterpiece is a visceral tragedy that lays bare the spiritual malaise of the ruling class.
On the Channel
Aug 8, 2021 — This month on the Channel, dive into the films of John Huston, Jean Harlow, Josephine Baker, and other cinematic icons.
The Daily
May 17, 2021 — Koresky and his mother revisit ten films from the 1980s, a decade abundant with vital performances from female stars.