The Criterion Collection
Feb 6, 2017 — In the inaugural installment of his new column, archivist Michael Chaiken examines the Nobel Prize–winning icon’s unique artistic process through a collection of ephemera.
Essays
Feb 5, 2017 — Kirsten Johnson interrogates the thorny ethics of nonfiction filmmaking in her intriguingly elliptical blend of essay, travelogue, and memoir.
Feb 3, 2017 — Over on the Criterion Channel, for Super Bowl weekend, we’re showing the first football movie ever made, Harold Lloyd’s crackerjack comedy The Freshman (1925), and the first rugby-football movie ever made, Lindsay Anderson’s heart-pounding drama This Sporting Life (1963). And...
Jan 19, 2017 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder plays a working-class gay man hoodwinked by his uppity bourgeois lover in this unsparing portrait of queer culture in 1970s West Germany.
On the Channel
Jan 1, 2017 — The Korda brothers’ voluptuous fantasy Jungle Book—directed by Zoltán, produced by Alexander, and art-directed by Vincent—captures that mood-swinging moment in late childhood when the adult world seems to be unbearably corrupt and nothing could be more exhilarating than escaping to...
Nov 15, 2016 — Akira Kurosawa lays bare his deepest fears in this visually astonishing interpretation of folklore, myth, and the director’s own dreams and memories.
Features
Oct 4, 2016 — This account of a visit to the Beyond the Valley of the Dolls set is excerpted from an issue of the University of California, Los Angeles, newspaper.
Sep 1, 2016 — Balancing epic scale with lyrical intimacy, Orson Welles inflects the spirit of Shakespeare’s history plays with his own zest for cinematic invention.
Short Takes
Aug 18, 2016 — Beloved Hollywood veteran Arthur Hiller passed away yesterday at the age of ninety-two. In a career that spanned five decades and more than thirty films, he demonstrated remarkable versatility, with credits ranging from Neil Simon comedies (The Out-of-Towners, Plaza Suite)...
Jul 20, 2016 — In his staggeringly ambitious masterwork A Touch of Zen, Chinese filmmaker King Hu imbues dynamic scenes of combat with balletic grace and audacious stylistic experimentation.