The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jan 11, 1994 — A harrowing nightmare about life in inner-city hell, this 1993 sleeper-hit is a powerhouse filmmaking debut by the Hughes brothers.
Mar 9, 1992 — The ads for Boyz N the Hood, the debut of a 23-year old writer-director named John Singleton, treated the film as if it took place in another galaxy—a mysterious fiefdom far, far away. And so it does, set in a...
Essays
Nov 30, 1991 — Starring Jack Nicholson and Candice Bergen, Mike Nichols’s provocative drama is about sex without relationships and eroticism.
Jan 28, 1991 — The following review, one of the most renowned in the history of film criticism, appeared in The New Yorker magazine on October 28, 1972. It is reprinted with the permission of the author, Pauline Kael. Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in...
Oct 29, 1990 — Luis Buñuel’s ode to obsessive love is injected with the biting subversive wit, symbolism, originality and surreal touches that distinguish his finest achievements.
Mar 7, 2019 — As one of the leading figures of the L.A. Rebellion, a loosely defined movement of filmmakers who were pioneering new forms of African-American on-screen representation in the 1960s and ’70s, Charles Burnett has long been heavily associated with Los Angeles....
Essays
Dec 31, 1999 — As a tour de force of screen acting, Autumn Sonata stands unchallenged as the finest work of Ingmar Bergman’s last few years as a movie director. Fanny and Alexander may have won the Oscars, but Autumn Sonata represents Bergman’s chamber...
The director of Drylongso talks about her fondness for Jean-Pierre Gorin, her love of To Sleep with Anger’s title sequence, and the influence of Sergei Parajanov on her own work.
Feb 5, 2026 — In a collection of behind-the-scenes documentaries now playing on the Criterion Channel, legendary female performers assert their agency over their screen personae and find freedom in the glamour and artifice of their profession.
The Daily
Dec 18, 2025 — At year’s end, we’re reading about the partnership and breakup of Alfred Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann—and much more.