The Criterion Collection
Short Takes
Aug 21, 2015 — It’s no longer a normal workday when Patti Smith stops by the office. The singer-songwriter, visual artist, poet, and best-selling scribe was here today to shoot an interview about Dont Look Back, D. A. Pennebaker’s legendary Bob Dylan documentary, which...
Aug 3, 2015 — On film noir’s unparalleled roster of resonant titles—Kiss of Death, Out of the Past, and Where Danger Lives, to name three—none is more emblematic or iconographically cogent than Night and the City. Juxtaposing two of noir’s essential, virtually ontological qualities,...
Jun 17, 2015 — From a shrewd adaptation by André Gregory and Wallace Shawn, Jonathan Demme fashions a visually inventive dreamscape out of an Ibsen classic.
Jan 6, 2015 — Kihachi Okamoto's The Sword of Doom is likely to strike the unalerted viewer as an exercise in absurdist violence, tracking the career of a nihilistic swordsman from his gratuitous murder of a defenseless old man to his final descent into...
Aug 7, 2014 — Performances Today, the idea that comedian-actor-writer Lily Tomlin possesses dramatic versatility is so received that one might not realize how unexpected it was for audiences to see her in a serious role in Robert Altman’s Nashville in 1975. At that...
Sneak Peeks
Jul 8, 2014 — For our release of Howard Hawks’s Red River, we asked the legendary director and writer Peter Bogdanovich to share his thoughts on the film, which he ranks as one of his favorites. (He once called it “the best epic western...
Jun 25, 2014 — You can hear from John, Paul, George, and Ringo themselves in In Their Own Voices, a piece on Criterion’s new special edition of A Hard Day’s Night consisting of audio recordings of the Beatles talking about the movie during their...
Apr 4, 2014 — Did You See This?• Harvey Milk commemorated • The great movie critic James Baldwin • Seriously beef up your Orson Welles memorabilia. • Taking inspiration from Cléo • A Crimean film festival • Doris Day turns ninety! • French critics...
Sneak Peeks
Jan 10, 2014 — It’s impossible to watch the unforgettable climax of Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and not wonder, How’d they do that? Spoilers ahead: In the scene, Toshiro Mifune’s ruthless warrior, modeled on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, finally gets his comeuppance in the form...
Oct 4, 2013 — Did You See This?• Guillermo del Toro goes to Springfield and enters a Cabinet of Curiosities. • Call Lena Dunham—there’s a new girl in town. • The art of the vamp • A glimpse of the latest from Costa-Gavras •...