The Criterion Collection
Jan 21, 2008 — In September 1997, I saw Agnès Varda introduce a brand-new 35 mm print of her first feature film, La Pointe Courte (made in 1954), to an admiring audience at Yale University. More astonishing than the luminous black-and-white images was Varda’s...
Aug 18, 2003 — The two versions of Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist romance offer case studies in Hollywood and European sensibilities as they existed in the early 1950s.
Essays
Jan 11, 2011 — Jean-Pierre Melville’s film Army of Shadows (1969) gives a dramatic account of the extreme dangers faced by the French who resisted the German occupation of 1940–1944. The time of the story is unspecified, but it is probably 1943, late enough...
Sep 10, 2009 — Is That Hamilton Woman, starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier at their most heart-stoppingly beautiful and mutually enraptured, one of the most romantic movies ever made because or in spite of the fact that it was designed as propaganda? It...
Sep 3, 2007 — It came from nowhere, it’s always been here—or so Stranger Than Paradise might seem.Jim Jarmusch had completed his first feature, Permanent Vacation, in 1980 and spent the next four years working on his second. Screened a few times as a...
The Daily
Jan 8, 2026 — We can look forward to new films by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, David Fincher, Greta Gerwig, Lee Chang-dong, Ulrike Ottinger, and many, many more.
The Daily
Feb 25, 2025 — In the run-up to the Oscars, Sean Baker calls on independent filmmakers to band together as a community.
Jan 14, 2025 — In this digressive, intensely interior masterpiece, Jean Eustache mines the dramas of his past romances while also capturing the disillusionment of young Parisians in the aftermath of May 1968.
Nov 8, 2016 — This adaptation of one of the most influential series in manga history is a delirious mix of breathtaking swordplay and pop vulgarity.
The Daily
Dec 23, 2025 — Head into the holidays with roundtables to watch, articles to read, and podcasts to listen to.