The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jul 11, 2005 — Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short story balances realism and fantasy.
Mar 24, 2003 — Straw Dogs turns on a woman’s rape, and one can’t blame pictures for depicting. But the film shows the woman, after some tart resistance, seeming to enjoy it, and this approaches the apex of what a delicate soul might call...
Sep 23, 2002 — Anticipating reality TV, Rémy Belvaux’s faux cinema verité satire follows a film crew documenting a mass murderer’s rampage.
Essays
Sep 17, 2001 — Jirí Menzel’s war comedy is an absurdist symphony of self-absorption and impotence.
Essays
May 15, 2000 — Horror movies take place in their own territory. The trick is to get us there. It doesn’t matter whether they start with fantastic premises and gothic settings, or with ordinary neighborhoods and daily experience, because the places and assumptions change...
Nov 20, 2006 — It’s been a few weeks since Peter and I started this blog, and we are gratified that the response has been so positive. We debated for a while whether or not I should have hot-linked my email address last week,...
Oct 15, 2050 — Voice-over narration has existed since the beginnings of cinema and has been an integral part of some of the great masterworks of narrative film, from The Magnificent Ambersons to Double Indemnity to Jules and Jim to Taxi Driver. It spans...
Jan 22, 2026 — This visually stunning masterpiece from Kazakh New Wave iconoclast Ardak Amirkulov is one of the few films that looks evil in the eye without flinching.
The Daily
Jan 21, 2026 — New films by Angela Schanelec, Lance Hammer, and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun will premiere in the competition.
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.