The Criterion Collection
Essays
Feb 17, 2010 — The feature film debut of British artist Steve McQueen, Hunger dramatizes the final weeks in the life of Irish Republican Army commander Bobby Sands and his death by hunger strike, aged twenty-seven, in 1981. Combining intense formal control and extreme...
May 19, 2026 — “My history’s burning up out here,” Ned Racine (William Hurt) tells his lover in the opening minutes of Lawrence Kasdan’s directorial debut, Body Heat (1981). Ned, a small-time attorney and local roué in his South Florida beach town, recognizes the...
May 21, 2013 — It’s tough to tell where reality ends and fiction begins in Haskell Wexler’s deft chronicle of a turbulent era.
Dec 4, 2012 — Misunderstood by Hollywood, embraced by critics, this fatalistic fantasy remains Terry Gilliam’s ultimate trip.
The Daily
Aug 18, 2025 — Further winners in Locarno include White Snail, God Will Not Help, and Tales of a Wounded Land.
Mar 22, 2022 — In Robert Aldrich’s epic disaster film, James Stewart leads a pack of temperamentally different men as they struggle to survive in the face of the unknown—a template that would go on to influence Hollywood blockbusters for decades to come.
The Daily
Jul 24, 2025 — Along with new work from Arnaud Desplechin and Anne Émond, the festival will present first features directed by Brian Cox, James McAvoy, and John Early.
Jan 28, 2025 — The first of eight collaborations between actor James Stewart and director Anthony Mann centers on a prize rifle that ends up being both a magical object and a cursed one, sending every man who possesses it to a doomed fate.
Apr 13, 2023 — Combining elements of soft-core porn and film noir, one of the most popular Hollywood genres of the 1980s and ’90s captured the fraught aspirationalism and sexual mores of the era.
The Daily
Aug 30, 2018 — A solid first round of reviews for the Venice opener—and for Ryan Gosling’s performance as Neil Armstrong.