The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jul 9, 2001 — Director Bruce Robinson reminisces about the days that inspired his uproarious black comedy.
Essays
Apr 10, 1989 — Two years after The Horse’s Mouth director Ronald Neame cast Alec Guinness in this film, based on a book by James Kennaway.
Sep 26, 2023 — In this vibrant, music-filled portrait of an artist and his community, director Luis Valdez gathers what little is known about rock-and-roll idol Ritchie Valens and fuses it with a lived-in understanding of what it is to be Chicano.
Jan 21, 2022 — In a series of tautly constructed dramas that imbue the everyday struggles of married life with suspense and tragedy, filmmaker Asghar Farhadi has proven himself a remarkable observer of the social, moral, and personal dimensions that shape contemporary Iranian society....
Sep 15, 2020 — When Claire Denis’s Beau travail (1999) first appeared on American screens, the critic Stephen Holden used a striking phrase to capture its embracing of bold opposites: “voluptuous austerity.” His characterization, widely quoted since, illuminates the film on many levels, and...
Essays
May 27, 2020 — “A filmmaker shows what his career will be in his first 150 feet of film,” François Truffaut once wrote. He was talking about Jean Vigo at the time, but he might as well have been talking about Martin Scorsese, whose...
Tech Corner
May 14, 2020 — Restoration Spotlight I was just coming of age as a moviegoer when digital video hit the big screens, around the turn of the twenty-first century. At the time, I remember being every bit as entranced by the gritty horror of...
Features
Mar 9, 2020 — “My objective is to create my own world, and these images which we create mean nothing more than the images which they are.” Andrei Tarkovsky More than three decades after his passing, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky retain their ability...
Production Notes
Oct 2, 2019 — 1. Local Hero was the first film soundtrack that Dire Straits singer and guitarist Mark Knopfler ever composed and performed, and the album was so successful that it reportedly made more money than the film. The final song in the...
May 18, 2018 — Improvising to Jim Jarmusch’s film in real time, Neil Young created a rich parallel environment that sounds like a force of nature.