The Criterion Collection
Essays
Feb 1, 1999 — Rob Reiner’s directorial debut documents a recent moment in the band’s checkered history—one that only coincidentally represents a brief decline in the sine wave of their careers.
Essays
Feb 1, 1999 — After finishing Diabolique, heralded French director-screenwriter Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907–1977) confessed that all he had intended was to make a picture that would “amuse myself” and please a young girl who hid under the covers and asked her father to frighten...
Essays
Jan 11, 1999 — In 1910 Sir William Mackenzie hired Robert Flaherty to prospect the vast area east of the Hudson Bay for its railway and mineral potential. Over the course of several years and through four lengthy expeditions Flaherty had frequent contact with...
Essays
Jan 11, 1999 — David Lean followed his prodigious adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations with this brilliant crystallization of Dickens’ Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy’s Progress. It deploys the cinema’s special powers of dash and immediacy to convey all the venturesomeness and...
Essays
Jan 11, 1999 — It was quite a surprise to learn that David Lean had not read Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations before he embarked on his film version in 1945. The closeness of the adaptation, the understanding of the characters, make one swear it...
Jan 11, 1999 — This epic reimagining of medieval Russia was the most historically audacious production made in the twenty-odd years after Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible.
Essays
Nov 23, 1998 — Paul Morrissey’s cult classic has obvious appeal for the lover of Grand Guignol—but it equally addresses the thoughtful.
Essays
Oct 18, 1998 — 1986 was not a good time to make a film which attempted to capture the Punk spirit. Deep into second-term Reagan/Thatcher, American and British pop culture were infected with cynicism, hopelessness, immobility. So when Alex Cox came over with his...
Essays
Oct 12, 1998 — Inspired by the stranger-than-fiction true story of identical twin gynecologists, David Cronenberg’s psychological thriller is a melancholic meditation on our very existence.
Essays
Aug 25, 1998 — Abeautiful woman is mysteriously beating the bejesus out of a drunk when he suddenly pulls at her hair and it comes off. The now totally bald woman continues smacking him around with her shoe until he falls to the ground....