The Criterion Collection
Essays
May 4, 2018 — What do we mean when we say a narrative film is poetic? The answer lies in this visionary western from director Jim Jarmusch.
Essays
Mar 21, 2019 — “The world is full of skeptics,” Detour’s Al Roberts struggles to explain, in voice-over, while on-screen we’re pondering Vera’s dead body. “I know. I’m one myself . . .”Even now, closing in on seventy-five years after the Producers Releasing Corporation...
Production Notes
May 25, 2021 — 1. William Lindsay Gresham’s first book—the sordid carnival-sideshow noir Nightmare Alley—was the author’s only considerable literary success. A controversial best seller upon its publication in 1946, the novel was quickly followed by a film adaptation the next year. Gresham would...
Jan 20, 2014 — Aki Kaurismäki pays wry tribute to the starving artist in his sad and funny update of Henri Murger’s classic book.
On the Channel
Dec 16, 2024 — Next year’s programming kicks off with some of our favorite actors, including Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, and David Bowie.
Aug 5, 2017 — “Two gloriously muscled bodybuilders eye each other with distrust, envy and contempt at the gym in Denis Côte’s A Soft the Skin.” That’s one of the moments from the first days of this year’s Locarno Festival that has stuck with...
Essays
Oct 30, 2014 — Tati’s witty visual comedy also functioned as satire of a rapidly modernizing postwar France.
The Daily
Jan 5, 2026 — One of France’s biggest stars took the world by storm before her reputation took a turn.
Features
Nov 23, 2018 — The work of James Agee (1909–1955) remains one of the touchstones of American movie criticism. An extraordinarily versatile writer, he won acclaim as a novelist, a poet, and a screenwriter (his scripts for The African Queen and The Night of the...
Jun 1, 2017 — By turns gritty and lyrical, this portrait of the Syria-Turkey border brings together two pioneers of Turkish cinema.