The Human Experience

Jan 19, 2018 — Two marvels of midcentury social commentary now streaming on the Criterion Channel show how progress can be a one-step-forward, two-steps-backward process.

Feb 19, 2016 — The filmmaker, who began his career as a stage director and designer before shifting his focus to movies, swung by for a chat about his new film and his lifelong affinity for the macabre.

Nov 5, 2014 — A review of the American auteur’s posthumously published novel

Mar 11, 2008 — There’s no real rhyme or reason to explain which Criterion films I end up watching. For example, I saw Breathless over the holiday break after Abbey convinced me to give Godard a chance. Then I watched The Seventh Seal in...

Sep 29, 2003 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder dedicated his final energies to bringing the lost, gray years of postwar Germany back to life.

May 12, 2026 — Sorting through critics’ most-anticipated titles, catching up with interviews and profiles, and more.

May 7, 2025 — An absorbing fifty-three-minute meditation on a massive construction project opens in New York on May 14.

Mar 25, 2025 — Unfettered by the precepts of bourgeois morality and the nuclear family, the characters in Alan Rudolph’s romantic drama struggle to find happiness as they navigate love’s whims and ambiguities.

Dec 4, 2024 — Before she won acclaim as a pioneering director, the Hollywood icon made her name as a powerfully vivid actor who brought grit and toughness to films by such masters as Raoul Walsh, Nicholas Ray, and Michael Curtiz.

Oct 24, 2024 — The director of such classic political docudramas as On the Bowery and Come Back, Africa defied the conventions of nonfiction filmmaking with his innovative approach to collaboration and performance.