The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 22, 2011 — 12 Angry Men (1957), the first feature film directed by the legendary Sidney Lumet, is a Hollywood classic that, ironically, helped to define an era of filmmaking grounded in the gritty realism and frenetic energy of urban New York. A...
Feb 22, 2011 — It wasn’t intended. No one could have predicted it. But Sweet Smell of Success turned out to be a terminus where several movie genres and subgenres converged and curdled, producing a uniquely delicious perfume of everlasting cynicism. Inhale deeply. And...
Dec 18, 2000 — Elegant humor cloaks despair in Luis Buñuel’s masterwork, wherein greedy characters flee their toxic lives and find refuge in the loneliness of dreams.
Jun 29, 2015 — This work of hallucinatory lyricism was one of the final and freest expressions of the rule-flouting New Wave movement in Czechoslovakia.
Features
Nov 21, 2024 — Dennis Hopper’s bleakly nihilistic drama struggled to find an audience after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980, but time has revealed it to be one of the most hardcore films about disaffected youth ever made.
Jul 25, 2024 — During a tumultuous period in New York’s history, movies like Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, and Shaft found excitement and squalor in one of the city’s most infamous tourist attractions.
The Daily
Jun 21, 2023 — The Method, riffs on pop culture, and a fist fight with Lawrence Tierney all figure in this month’s roundup on new and noteworthy titles.
The Daily
Oct 11, 2019 — Highlighted this week are an alternative history, the state of the documentary, and the influence of Antonioni and Pialat.
Interviews
Apr 2, 2019 — Mike Leigh’s endless fascination with human behavior is palpable in every one of the films he’s made over the course of his nearly fifty-year career. With an acute sensitivity to rhythm, character, and setting, he extracts extraordinary moments from the...
The Daily
Feb 26, 2019 — He gave us some of the greatest musicals ever made and followed up with winning comedies, romances, and thrillers.