If I Were for Real

Oct 15, 2015 — Coming off the success of John, her latest acclaimed stage production, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Annie Baker is more in demand than ever.

Dec 28, 2014 — In person, Sam was a blunt-nosed nonconformist, small of stature but forever leading with his Cuban cigar.

Oct 21, 2013 — As a film star, John Cassavetes embodied the kinetic, wild-eyed, insanely grinning villain. He seemed born to the role, with his volatile energy and dynamic outbursts, luminous yet curiously deadened eyes, wide-gaping mouth (David Thomson has likened it to a...

Jun 17, 2013 — The silent legend practices slapstick with clockwork precision in his most iconic, astonishing comedy.

Feb 27, 2013 — More than eighty films into his career, Kenji Mizoguchi made this emotionally devastating masterpiece, from a story by Ogai Mori.

Jan 18, 2012 — Poto and Cabengo: Three-Part Harmony Jean-Pierre Gorin’s three Southern California movies are so militantly unclassifiable that terms like documentary or essay film seem as hopelessly out of sync with the recalcitrant and frequently exhilarating works themselves as a Marxist harangue in...

Feb 24, 2026 — For this existential noir, Joel and Ethan Coen drew inspiration from crime-fiction master James M. Cain’s lean, hard-boiled style and interest in the quotidian world of work.

Sep 18, 2024 — We’re reading or anticipating new books from Pedro Almodóvar, Al Pacino, Werner Herzog, and Cher.

Aug 11, 2017 — With his controversial new film Nocturama opening in theaters, French director Bertrand Bonello spoke with us about what inspires him as an artist and how he blurs the line between realism and abstraction.

May 17, 2017 — Welcome to the first entry of the Daily at the Criterion Collection. For those of you who don’t know me, since 2003 I’ve been gathering links to essential—or simply fun—reading, news stories, and items of interest into a sort of...