Mean Streets

Mar 22, 2022 — In Robert Aldrich’s epic disaster film, James Stewart leads a pack of temperamentally different men as they struggle to survive in the face of the unknown—a template that would go on to influence Hollywood blockbusters for decades to come.

Sep 22, 2021 — Writer-director John Huston blasted the fusty pieties that pervaded big-studio filmmaking in the post-Code era, whether as the progenitor of film noir with The Maltese Falcon (1941) or the brainy daredevil who threaded critiques of frontier capitalism, gold lust, and...

Jul 20, 2021 — Pedro Almodóvar will open Venice, and Toronto will bring several Cannes favorites to North America.

Apr 9, 2021 — Uncovering “The Naked City,” Bruce Goldstein’s scintillating chronicle of The Naked City’s groundbreaking New York location shoot, is more than the best “where-they-filmed-it” doc ever made. As Goldstein wittily traces director Jules Dassin’s Gotham roots and influences, this twenty-three-minute documentary—now...

Mar 23, 2021 — “Pleasure,” wrote Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh, “is a safer guide than either right or duty.” Surely this is true when it comes to watching films. While cinema can be edifying, most of us go to the...

Feb 19, 2021 — This week’s round takes us from Italy in the 1950s and ’60s to America in the ’70s and Hong Kong in the ’90s.

Dec 29, 2020 — Channel Calendars The stars are aligned for the first month of the New Year on the Criterion Channel. We’re pleased to be kicking off 2021 with a tribute to Jane Fonda, whose greatest hits reflect her multifaceted career as a political activist...

Aug 20, 2020 — The one-of-a-kind actress gave us unforgettable performances in Days of Heaven and Out of the Blue.

Jun 24, 2020 — 1.     In 1996, Martin Scorsese’s mother, Catherine—who costars in his 1974 documentary portrait Italianamerican, one of the five early films by the director collected in our new release—collaborated with author Georgia Downard on Italianamerican: The Scorsese Family Cookbook. Among the...

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...