The Criterion Collection
Oct 30, 2012 — “I discovered Criterion in the late eighties with the laserdisc of Citizen Kane, which I still watch,” writes director William Friedkin, whose films include The French Connection, The Exorcist, Sorcerer, and 2011’s Killer Joe. “Since switching to DVD and Blu-ray,...
Jan 14, 2008 — As Japan was coming out of World War II, Akira Kurosawa was coming into his own as a filmmaker.
Jul 9, 2007 — The names Hiroshi Teshigahara, Kobo Abe, and Toru Takemitsu loom large among Japanese intellectuals of the late twentieth century. Each in his own right was an artist of peculiar genius, each resisting easy classification in conventional categories: Teshigahara as filmmaker,...
Mar 16, 2007 — The first of his films to be shown outside Japan, Ichikawa Kon’s twenty-seventh feature dramatically raised the director’s profile.
May 24, 2004 — Stray Dog, the ninth film directed by Akira Kurosawa, is a detective story that’s also meant to function as a commentary on the desperate social conditions of postwar Japan: a kind of neorealist cop movie.
Essays
Dec 2, 1991 — Director Akira Kurosawa had wanted to make Throne of Blood for some time. “After finishing Rashomon [in 1950] I wanted to do something with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but just about that time Orson Welles’s version was announced, so I postponed mine.”...
One of the steamiest erotic thrillers ever made; a strikingly raw debut feature; a prescient ecofeminist parable; a moving tale of generational trauma and healing; a freewheeling showbiz drama; a crime thriller set in postwar Japan; and a loving snapshot...
Three indelible tales of Black urban life; a 1960s revenge thriller; a blockbuster biblical comedy; a glittering pre-Code jewel; the most sensual Hollywood noir; six woman-centered features from Japan; and a ravishing vision of a world where humans have forsaken...
The Daily
Jul 13, 2026 — Jurors have honored films from Myanmar, Denmark, Slovakia, Japan, and Greece.