The Criterion Collection
Mar 16, 2015 — Director and star Robert Montgomery suffuses his moody 1947 New Mexico–set noir with palpable postwar anxiety and expressive fatalism.
Essays
Aug 30, 2022 — A lyrical study of a farming community in Ethiopia, Jessica Beshir’s debut feature reckons with the consequences of the region’s reliance on the cash crop khat.
Essays
Jul 20, 2021 — Dismissed as gossip-column fodder in its time, Jacques Deray’s cooly enigmatic villa thriller is an exploration of masculine vanity and feminine disillusion.
Short Takes
Oct 29, 2009 — In the spirit of the season, we asked a select coven of horror mavens (including a couple of our own) to write about their favorite Criterion scarefests. Chuck StephensEquinox: The Eyebrows of Mr. Asmodeus There are myriad ways into Equinox,...
Sep 14, 2021 — A staple of 1980s British cinema, Neil Jordan’s crime drama considers the slippery characters that inhabit the London underworld.
Features
May 26, 2011 — Last month, a new art-house theater opened here in Austin, the Violet Crown Cinema. (Our city has several pet names, and one of them is the City of the Violet Crown. Why it’s called that has been completely lost to...
Nov 8, 2022 — In her first film that places a male character front and center, Jane Campion trains her unsparing gaze on the brutality of patriarchal power and the pain of repressed homoerotic desire.
Aug 13, 2007 — Samuel Fuller knew how to handle a gun from his army days, and this experience colored all of his filmmaking, which he began at the age of thirty-six.
The Daily
Feb 28, 2025 — We’ve gathered some of the best writing on each of the nominees for Best Picture Oscar.
Aug 20, 2024 — In the late 1980s, filmmakers Gregorio Rocha and Sarah Minter set out to capture the rebellious subculture of youth in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, a slumlike suburb synonymous with the worst failures of urban expansion in Mexico.