The Criterion Collection
Jan 10, 2005 — Seijun Suzuki made a breakthrough with his second feature, a yakuza thriller full of devil-may-care assurance and try-anything imagination.
Oct 4, 2004 — Robert Altman’s political satire, broadcast on HBO in mostly half-hour segments during the 1988 campaign season, is a sort of trompe l’oeil video chronicle of the constantly surprising presidential fight of an obscure Michigan Democratic congressmen.
Essays
Feb 16, 2004 — Henri-Georges Clouzot took the standard ingredients of the Continental-Films detective movies and used them to make something darker and more complex—to make, in fact, the first classic French film noir.
Feb 24, 2003 — Few political films transcend their historic moment quite like Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s depiction of West Germany in 1975, when the anxiety about terrorism eroded basic democratic values.
Nov 11, 2002 — A second Monterey International Pop Festival has for the past month been put in jeopardy by a vicious handful of citizens, cops, and city officials in a small-town drama straight from Peyton Place and The Invaders.
Sep 23, 2002 — In 1940 and 1941, David O. Selznick won back-to-back Academy Awards for Best Picture. In 1942, unsurprisingly, he was depressed. His wife, Irene, persuaded him to seek help, and, less than one year later, hale and hardy, he was eager...
Essays
Mar 11, 2002 — This compendium of visual delights displays director Federico Fellini’s team of performers, writers, and designers at full and exhilarating stretch.
Feb 14, 2002 — Robert Bresson’s second feature is fixed in history as one of the movies that heralded an austere, modernistic way of seeing and feeling.
Jul 9, 2001 — Directed by Bruce Robinson, this eccentric, disquieting satire about Madison Avenue transforms from fevered realism to symbolic fantasy.
Apr 23, 2001 — A majestic synthesis of disparate forms, Sergei Eisenstein’s final film seems to be as much a ballet or a moving painting as it is a movie.