The Criterion Collection
May 14, 2013 — Delmer Daves’s classic western is psychologically probing, magnificently shot, and fascinatingly ambiguous.
Essays
Apr 23, 2013 — Who is Pierre Etaix and where has he been all your life? This is the story of a filmmaker who was vanished, banished, skipped over. It’s as if one of those invisible cubicles mimes are always getting themselves shut in...
Apr 16, 2013 — With its idiosyncratic humor, killer soundtrack, and middle finger to Reagan-era politics, Alex Cox’s film was the perfect cult hit for the golden age of the video store.
Essays
Apr 9, 2013 — This essay by novelist, playwright, and culture critic Gary Indiana originally appeared in the 1992 book Everything Is Permitted: The Making of “Naked Lunch.” Burroughs’s work tends to affect people like a Rorschach test. It separates cultural conservatives from avant-gardists,...
Essays
Mar 18, 2013 — Using a 1958 murder spree as a narrative springboard, Terrence Malick fashioned a fractured fairy tale about American innocence lost.
Dec 4, 2012 — Misunderstood by Hollywood, embraced by critics, this fatalistic fantasy remains Terry Gilliam’s ultimate trip.
Oct 23, 2012 — After winning an Oscar, John Schlesinger used his newfound artistic freedom to make a personal film in which homosexuality is treated as groundbreakingly ordinary.
Short Takes
Oct 22, 2012 — Television legend Sonny Fox has been the talk of the town lately. The eighty-seven-year-old, Brooklyn-born Emmy winner—who produced the PBS series featured in our box set The Golden Age of Television—has been making the rounds in the New York area...
Essays
Jul 17, 2012 — Down by Law, released in 1986, was Jim Jarmusch’s third movie. Unlike its predecessors, Permanent Vacation (1980) and Stranger Than Paradise (1984), it did not take off from a semi-documentary view of downtown Manhattan. It was shot entirely on location...
Jun 11, 2012 — Charlie Chaplin’s transcendent, visionary comedy is made up of one iconic moment after another.