The Criterion Collection
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...
Essays
Jun 21, 2010 — A new man is being born, fraught with all the fears and terrors and stammerings that are associated with a period of gestation. —Michelangelo Antonioni Red Desert came out in 1964, almost twenty years after the end of the war,...
Nov 21, 2005 — Why would ambitious filmmakers simply film an opera? Many admirers of the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger have assumed that their decision to make The Tales of Hoffmann, in 1950, was in some way an admission by the...
Essays
Jun 16, 1992 — Of the 18 movies made by the filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, none was as personally and artistically fulfilling as The Tales of Hoffmann. This dazzling screen adaptation of the Offenbach opera—a visual, sonic, and sensual delight—marked...
Jul 23, 2014 — For our new special edition of the Norwegian thriller Insomnia, director Erik Skjoldbjærg and star Stellan Skarsgård sat down for a casual and candid conversation about the making of the film. In this excerpt, Skjoldbjærg talks about their first meeting, and Skarsgård discusses his initial...
The actor talks about showing Seven Samurai to all of his children, celebrates Katrin Cartlidge's performance in Naked, and shares why City Lights never fails to make him cry.
Nov 19, 2025 — Joachim Trier’s family drama stars Stellan Skarsgård as a renowned film director and Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as his estranged daughters.
The Daily
Mar 29, 2019 — Fresh assessments of the work of Chris Marker and Stanley Kubrick, an interview with Kent Jones, and that stellar year for American cinema, 1999.
Essays
Dec 31, 2000 — Those who felt that Scandinavian cinema had passed into retirement along with Ingmar Bergman should be startled by Insomnia. This immaculately constructed psychological thriller sets a benchmark for other Scandinavian directors to match, and is one of the most unusual...
Mar 18, 2025 — This stellar entry in one of cinema’s greatest monster franchises combines science fiction’s age-old exploration of human arrogance with the full force of cinematic imagination.