Special Effects

Jul 15, 2022 — This week we head back to 1981 with Reverse Shot, to the 1970s with Straub-Huillet, and to the 1960s with Marco Bellocchio.

May 26, 2022 — Shimmy into summer with our centennial tribute to Judy Garland and two career-spanning series dedicated to queer filmmakers Ulrike Ottinger and Terence Davies.

Apr 29, 2022 — Channel Calendars This month on the Criterion Channel, we’re celebrating the career of one of our favorite contemporary American filmmakers—the independent, inquisitive, and ever-eclectic Richard Linklater—with a retrospective of beloved hits and lesser-known gems selected by the director himself. Take...

Apr 19, 2022 — Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist fable deploys barbed humor and surreal flourishes to depict class solidarity and human kindness in postwar Italy.

Jan 28, 2022 — 1. In 1995, director Lars von Trier contacted Thomas Vinterberg, whom he considered the most promising young Danish filmmaker. (Vinterberg had then not yet made his first feature film, The Biggest Heroes, but had directed two well-regarded shorts, Last Round...

Jan 7, 2022 — Travel this weekend with Stanley Kubrick, David Bowie, Sarah Maldoror, Lana Wachowski, and Tsai Ming-liang.

Nov 23, 2021 — The End In the end, it should not have come as any kind of surprise. When Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo dethroned Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) as the greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound magazine’s international poll of...

Nov 16, 2021 — Tsui Hark’s epic martial-arts saga revolutionized Hong Kong cinema by presenting a complex portrait of modern Chinese history and setting a gold standard in action choreography.

Nov 3, 2021 — 1. Jack Arnold was a prolific genre director over the course of his many years as a filmmaker. He started as a cinematographer in the Army Signal Corps during World War II, and after the end of the war started...

Oct 26, 2021 — In the run-up to Friday’s opening, Wright has put together a delectable issue of the Observer New Review.