The Criterion Collection
Nov 14, 2017 — Donna Deitch combined tropes of lesbian pulp romance with the sheen of mainstream filmmaking in her beloved debut feature.
Oct 7, 2015 — It’s night in the desert. Mike (River Phoenix), a teenage hustler given to bouts of narcolepsy, and Scott (Keanu Reeves), a slumming preppy prince, are huddled over a campfire. “I just want to kiss you, man,” says Mike softly. The...
Essays
Nov 22, 2009 — “The most concrete emblem of every economic cycle is the dump,” writes Naples native and best-selling Italian muckraker Roberto Saviano somewhere near the conclusion of his extraordinary 2006 “nonfiction novel” Gomorrah, a seethingly cogent and literarily constructed indictment of the...
Dec 6, 2007 — It’s been one of those weeks. First we learned we’d made a mastering error on our Mala Noche edition. Then the first run of the new collectors’ set Ingmar Bergman: Four Masterworks shipped with the wrong disc—the Essential Art House:...
Short Takes
Oct 20, 2009 — It’s been only four years since the last film in his Death Trilogy, but Gus Van Sant is already journeying back to the land of the dead. Variety reports that the director will be teaming up with Bret Easton Ellis...
Essays
Feb 23, 2004 — With his drama about a Sicilian bandit, Francesco Rosi developed the style and method that would make him, during the sixties and seventies, the greatest political filmmaker of his time.
Features
Sep 17, 2017 — Matteo Garrone’s gritty portrait of the Neapolitan Mafia draws on a lineage of Italian crime films dating back to Francesco Rosi’s trailblazing Salvatore Giuliano.
Apr 23, 2026 — Julio Torres is a writer, director, and comedian from El Salvador. He is a two-time Peabody Award winner for HBO’s Los Espookys and Fantasmas, and earned four Emmy nominations for his work on Saturday Night Live. Torres made his feature...
Dec 17, 2025 — Spike Lee captures the democratic spirit and the galvanizing, near-spiritual feeling of togetherness at the heart of David Byrne’s acclaimed stage production.
Nov 2, 2021 — Federico Fellini’s earliest masterpiece is a story of despair and optimism, cruelty and salvation, that occasioned the director’s ascent to stardom.