† This is the Life

Dec 31, 2017 — 2016 set in motion a series of collapses on so many fronts it seemed like some terrible dream. But in 2017, it began to sink in that, no, this is our new reality. Perhaps in 2018 we’ll decide that it...

Jul 19, 2017 — Todd Haynes will receive the Pardo d’onore Manor, the Locarno Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award, on August 7. The festival will also screen Haynes’s 1991 film Poison (image above). Jean-Marie Straub will receive his Pardo d’onore Manor on August 11.For...

Mar 20, 2012 — Even more than with most documentaries that set out to record events as they happen, there was a lot of luck involved in producing The War Room (1993). When they turned their attention to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992,...

Nov 22, 2019 — Critics are praising the French New Wave icon’s joyous and reflective final film, which hits theaters in New York this week.

Feb 19, 2019 — A master at adapting literary classics for the screen, Luchino Visconti made a bold choice in emphasizing the homoerotic undertones in Thomas Mann’s novella.

Oct 29, 2009 — In the spirit of the season, we asked a select coven of horror mavens (including a couple of our own) to write about their favorite Criterion scarefests. Chuck StephensEquinox: The Eyebrows of Mr. Asmodeus There are myriad ways into Equinox,...

Oct 16, 2014 — This past August, on the occasion of Volker Schlöndorff’s being selected for a Silver Medallion award by the Telluride Film Festival, Criterion’s Peter Becker talked with the German filmmaker about his long career. A short version of the conversation was...

Feb 25, 2025 — In the run-up to the Oscars, Sean Baker calls on independent filmmakers to band together as a community.

Nov 8, 2024 — This week offers revivals of overlooked films by Antonioni and Alan Rudolph and conversations with Garrett Bradley and Paulo Branco.

Nov 1, 2022 — A film of rich colors, mournful silences, and haunting symmetries, Wong Kar Wai’s masterpiece is a meticulously constructed memory box that invites fetishistic dissection.