The World

Dec 9, 2013 — The critic and WCP executive director offers a personal take on art cinema and a primer on the project’s scope and mission.

Jul 30, 2013 — Guillermo del Toro’s ghostly fable beautifully reflects the director’s fascination with the personal and the political.

Apr 17, 2013 — Four of the great Japanese director’s lesser-known, early films show the coming into being of a political artist.

Jan 15, 2013 — Despite the acclaim, Volker Schlöndorff always felt his adaptation of Günter Grass’s novel was incomplete. Thirty years later, he set to work on his director’s cut.

Nov 13, 2012 — With this frenetic cinematic fresco, Pasolini began his Trilogy of Life and its forays into a world as yet unspoiled by capitalism.

Nov 15, 2011 — Jean Renoir’s masterpiece is a dazzling accomplishment, original in form and style, a comic tragedy, absurd and profound, graced by two of the most brilliant scenes ever created.

Oct 4, 2011 — Pier Paolo Pasolini’s work demonstrates an aversion for the present while simultaneously suggesting the impossibility of escaping it, and thus the need to confront it.

Dec 11, 2009 — This expansive tribute to the iconic Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai was first published on the Criterion Collection’s website in fall 2005, around the time of the Criterion releases of two films starring Nakadai: Kurosawa’s Ran and the less well-known samurai...

Nov 30, 2009 — The following essay was originally written for Criterion’s website in 2005, on the occasion of the DVD release of Powell and Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffmann. We have posted it here to coincide with BFI Southbank’s ongoing Hein Heckroth exhibition...

Jun 15, 2009 — With the arrival of this film, cinema catapulted to the front line of a cultural advance guard that sought to undermine the intractable mass taste promoted by Hollywood, television, and the Brill Building.