The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jun 4, 2001 — Mad with images of nature in rebellion, Luis Buñuel’s 1964 film is a droll vision of Eden during the Fall starring a sumptuous Jeanne Moreau.
Apr 23, 2001 — A majestic synthesis of disparate forms, Sergei Eisenstein’s final film seems to be as much a ballet or a moving painting as it is a movie.
Essays
Apr 23, 2001 — In 1955, Jules Dassin, an American director in exile in Paris, made this flat-out perfect piece of cinema. The film came as a redemption for Dassin: a one-time promising young director cranking out B-movies under an MGM contract ("They were...
Essays
Feb 19, 2001 — Leaving the theater after the tumultuous world premiere of Do the Right Thing at Cannes in May of 1989, I found myself too shaken to speak, and I avoided the clusters of people where arguments were already heating up. One...
Essays
Jan 29, 2001 — Invisible monsters suck out your brains! And that’s just for starters.
Essays
Sep 18, 2000 — Drenched in mud and rain, Lars von Trier’s breakthrough film inhabits a true twilight zone, bereft of heroes and integrity.
Essays
Jul 17, 2000 — Designed to steam viewers’ glasses, Roger Vadim’s directorial debut boldly announced the arrival of Brigitte Bardot.
Jun 26, 2000 — Kevin Smith writes about his third feature as a sort of penance/valentine for the woman who made him grow up.
May 15, 2000 — Herk Harvey described to me a strange outdoor ballroom he had seen rotting on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. . . and said he’d like to make a film about creatures rising from the lake and doing a...
Essays
May 15, 2000 — Horror movies take place in their own territory. The trick is to get us there. It doesn’t matter whether they start with fantastic premises and gothic settings, or with ordinary neighborhoods and daily experience, because the places and assumptions change...