The Criterion Collection
Essays
Oct 25, 2012 — The following piece by Sunday Bloody Sunday screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt originally appeared as the introduction to the 1971 U.S. publication of the script. A friend of mine who had started scrubbing at fourteen and went on to be a barmaid...
Sep 17, 2025 — One of the most influential comedies of the 1980s, Rob Reiner’s rock-and-roll satire is a remarkably authentic, lived-in portrait of musicians, their egotism, and the industry that feeds off their stardom.
The Daily
Dec 10, 2022 — Screening the Past returns, Another Screen presents films from Iran, and Céline Sciamma talks about the thirtieth greatest film of all time.
Feb 13, 2018 — With the scrappiest of means, George A. Romero created not only a landmark of independent cinema but also an indelible portrait of America as hellscape.
Mar 18, 2014 — In addition to technical brilliance and a humanist message, Akira Kurosawa’s adventure features one of the director’s strongest female characters.
May 8, 2012 — To start on a personal note: I wrote a book about La haine that came out in November 2005, just as the Paris suburbs (banlieues) erupted in an unprecedented wave of violence. Every night, as in the Bob Marley song we...
Essays
Aug 18, 2011 — Stanley Kubrick’s labyrinthine 1956 heist flick The Killing—an exploded rethink of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle and eventual template for the narrative convolutions of Reservoir Dog—became an instant facet in the jewel that was film noir, even as it refracted...
Short Takes
Feb 28, 2018 — With the Oscars coming up this weekend, we gathered some highlights from an in-depth conversation with five of this year’s most-lauded directors.
Oct 15, 2050 — Voice-over narration has existed since the beginnings of cinema and has been an integral part of some of the great masterworks of narrative film, from The Magnificent Ambersons to Double Indemnity to Jules and Jim to Taxi Driver. It spans...
Feb 24, 2026 — For this existential noir, Joel and Ethan Coen drew inspiration from crime-fiction master James M. Cain’s lean, hard-boiled style and interest in the quotidian world of work.