The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty

Sep 14, 2016 — Asian-cinema expert Tony Rayns unpacks the significance of Zatoichi’s name and the strict social hierarchy that the character so gleefully upends.

Sep 12, 2016 — During a research mission to Spain, Criterion web producer/researcher Valeria Rotella takes a day trip to the medieval desert town of Chinchón, where Orson Welles is rumored to have shot Chimes at Midnight and The Immortal Story.

Jul 19, 2016 — Time is both inescapable and irretrievable in Alain Resnais’s boldly disorienting masterpiece, which stars Delphine Seyrig as a widow haunted by her memories of World War II.

May 17, 2016 — Juxtaposing a vision of a stark, primitive existence on a remote Japanese island with that country’s vast twentieth-century modernization, Kaneto Shindo reveals Japan’s postwar paradoxes and makes a case for its essential, immutable character.

Nov 17, 2015 — Max von Sydow has spent the past six decades cultivating one of cinema’s most illustrious careers, and now, at eighty-seven, the Swedish actor “may be on the verge of becoming a pop-culture icon,” writes Terrence Rafferty in the Atlantic.

Jun 22, 2015 — Terry Gilliam touches down in the real world for the first time with this fanciful tale of blurred class boundaries in New York City.

Jul 30, 2014 — A friend and longtime scholar of Jacques Demy ruminates on the great director’s career, as well as the port hometown they shared—which would become a magical movie location.

Feb 24, 2012 — The writer reflects on the decades-long creative collaboration and friendship between his father, playwright and television writer Elihu Winer, and John Voelker, judge and author.

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...

Sep 18, 2000 — Drenched in mud and rain, Lars von Trier’s breakthrough film inhabits a true twilight zone, bereft of heroes and integrity.