The Criterion Collection
Essays
Sep 24, 2014 — Roman Polanski’s dark vision is the perfect fit for Shakespeare’s grim tale of treachery and ambition.
Sep 23, 2014 — In director Jack Clayton’s hands, Henry James’s tale of the sinister and sensual things hiding behind Victorian decorum becomes one of the screen’s great works of terror.
Jun 17, 2014 — The brutal lessons of Vietnam remained in America’s national consciousness for a generation. September 11 gave us collective amnesia, and they’ve had to be learned again.
Essays
Jun 16, 2014 — Georges Franju evokes the surreal silent serials of Louis Feuillade while constructing his own personal cinematic paradise.
May 5, 2014 — Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole almost requires an honorary expansion of the term film noir. There are no private eyes in seedy offices or femmes fatales lurking in the shadows of neon-lit doorways, no forces of evil arrayed against...
Apr 14, 2014 — Lars von Trier brought his brand of provocation to his widest audience yet with this inquiry into faith and human goodness.
Essays
Dec 16, 2013 — Here at last comes the time of ecstasy, of trances.Those who refuse to their senses the gift of trances shall wither.Brothers in trances, when will freedom come?They threw me out of my land and country.May my star shine. [. ....
Oct 22, 2013 — This delicately creepy Hollywood horror movie lives up to its reputation as a classic of the genre.
Oct 15, 2013 — Georges Franju’s masterpiece is the most chilling expression in cinema of our ancient preoccupation with the nature of identity.
Aug 27, 2013 — Ernst Lubitsch’s World War II–era high-wire act is a profound take on the absurdity cruelty of civilization and a perfect black comedy to boot.