The Criterion Collection
May 30, 2012 — Our video series featuring filmmakers and friends Robert Downey Sr. and Paul Thomas Anderson discussing the films in the Eclipse set Up All Night with Robert Downey Sr. wraps up with an installment focusing on the most successful film of...
May 24, 2012 — Robert Downey Sr.’s stream-of-consciousness Two Tons of Turquoise to Taos Tonight is a film that could use some explaining. Downey and friend P. T. Anderson are not interested in doing that, however, in this third part of our exclusive online series...
May 22, 2012 — In this second part of our exclusive online series in which directors and compadres Robert Downey Sr. and Paul Thomas Anderson look back at the films featured in the Eclipse set Up All Night with Robert Downey Sr., the two...
May 22, 2012 — These five films chart the unlikely ascendance of a hero of American underground cinema.
May 17, 2012 — Robert Downey Sr. and Paul Thomas Anderson have been close friends for years. (You can see Downey in a memorable cameo as a record producer in Anderson’s 1997 film Boogie Nights.) Last month, the two directors came to the Criterion...
This maverick director—one of the most audacious filmmakers to make his breakthrough in the 1970s—is known for his sprawling ensemble casts, richly layered narratives, and searing assessments of American culture and politics.
Short Takes
Feb 5, 2010 — Robert Altman: The Oral Biography (Knopf) begins with an epigram that pretty well sums up Altman’s attitude toward “truth” and “realism” in cinema and life. “I don’t think anybody remembers the truth, the facts,” the great filmmaker said. “You remember...
Essays
Jan 26, 2010 — Roberto Rossellini’s second postwar film was released in the United States as Paisan, and one can understand why the distributors wanted to use a title familiar to many Americans as meaning “friend” or “countryman” for a work that is at...
Oct 12, 2009 — Man is Not a Bird: Flying Away The term “independent cinema” has lost its punch in recent years, from overuse and misapplication. One need only look to the films of Dušan Makavejev for a reminder of its true meaning. This...
A singular, iconoclastic artist and philosopher, Bresson illuminates the history of cinema with a spiritual yet socially incisive body of work.