The Criterion Collection
Paul Coates is a professor emeritus of film studies at Western University, Ontario. Previously, he taught at Georgia, McGill, and Aberdeen, and his books include The Story of the Lost Reflection (1985), The Gorgon’s Gaze (1991), Lucid Dreams: The Cinema...
Aug 26, 2025 — Alice Wu’s feature debut is a romantic comedy in which the most compelling relationship is the one between a young queer Chinese American woman and her long-widowed mother.
Sneak Peeks
Apr 26, 2019 — In conceiving the journey of Lonesome Rhodes—the protagonist of the 1957 satire A Face in the Crowd, a southern drifter who rises to become a national TV celebrity and political power broker—director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg went on...
Apr 9, 2018 — Ingrid Bergman’s work in her native Sweden was an early showcase for her dazzlingly precocious talent and emotional depth.
On the Channel
Feb 12, 2018 — Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro shares heartfelt appreciations for eleven of his favorite films in the collection.
Sneak Peeks
Oct 17, 2013 — Christiane’s countenance is one of the most memorable in all of horror cinema—yet you barely get to see the real face of the actor playing her. Edith Scob is an ethereal force in Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face as...
Oct 16, 2013 — Georges Franju deftly balances fantasy and realism, clinical detachment and operatic emotion, beauty and pain, all presided over by Edith Scob’s haunting, haunted eyes.
Oct 15, 2013 — Georges Franju’s masterpiece is the most chilling expression in cinema of our ancient preoccupation with the nature of identity.
Short Takes
Oct 29, 2009 — In the spirit of the season, we asked a select coven of horror mavens (including a couple of our own) to write about their favorite Criterion scarefests. Chuck StephensEquinox: The Eyebrows of Mr. Asmodeus There are myriad ways into Equinox,...
Jul 21, 2026 — Harry Dean Stanton’s Jerry Schue doesn’t get on-screen until a full hour of Ulu Grosbard’s Straight Time (1978) has passed. Unlike Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man, Stanton’s character hasn’t been discussed, chewed over, anticipated, and foreshadowed for...