The Criterion Collection
Sneak Peeks
Nov 19, 2012 — Legendary production designer Dante Ferretti is known to moviegoers everywhere for the elaborate and period-precise but fanciful worlds he has created for such films as Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire, and Martin...
Oct 9, 2012 — British wartime audiences ate up these rule-breaking costume pictures—entertainments for a populace seeking escapism.
Short Takes
Dec 22, 2011 — Last year, we told you about Daniel Eagan’s rigorous, informative, and very entertaining book America’s Film Legacy, a guide to the titles chosen for the National Film Registry, which was instituted following 1988’s National Film Preservation Act. The tome is...
A leading figure of the Japanese New Wave, this radical filmmaker tackled taboos and politically charged subjects with stylistic flair and striking symbolism.
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.
Feb 29, 1988 — Marx Brothers aficionados have argued for years over the relative merits of A Night at the Opera and the “purer” Marx movies such as Duck Soup. Certainly there’s no comparison on a point-by-point basis: Duck Soup is a classic of...
Apr 26, 2022 — In the opening moments of Arie and Chuko Esiri’s Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) (2020), we first hear—the ceaseless hum of machines at work—and then see: a jumble of multicolored wires. The 16 mm film image is grainy, trembling ever...
Sep 28, 2021 — Melvin Van Peebles takes aim at Hollywood’s way of representing race in this blistering satire about a white man who wakes up one morning to discover that he has turned Black overnight.