The Work

Oct 6, 2008 — It is pretty much a convention of the hard-boiled gangster picture that most, if not all, of the principal characters wind up dead by the final shot. So it ought not constitute a “spoiler” to note that Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le...

Aug 28, 2007 — Having studied everything but film in college, I never would have imagined that landing a job in the DVD industry would help me get more out of fashion magazines. But sitting in the front office at Criterion, seeing every person...

Nov 16, 2006 — At the Museum of the Moving Image tonight, Peter Cowie is presenting his new book on Louise Brooks, Lulu Forever, and they are digitally screening our new Pandora's Box restoration with the Gillian Anderson score. I don’t think I’ve ever...

Sep 13, 2004 — Fifteen years ago I received a letter from a young film director in Texas, who enclosed a tape of his first film, with the unlikely title It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books. It might as well have...

Sep 8, 1998 — In David Lean’s Summertime, in which Rossano Brazzi seduces Katharine Hepburn—an aging, repressed Ohio “working girl” on vacation in Venice—the Continental lover reached his pinnacle and approached his end. In the next decade, he would be embodied by Marcello Mastroianni,...

Two unflinching reports from working-class America; a Brooklyn-set Dostoevskian family tragedy and gangster drama; an existential crime thriller from a French-cinema legend; a prescient commentary on self-help culture; and five documentaries that wage war against the conformism of modern Japanese...

The legendary actor and director stopped by for a brief visit to the Criterion Closet, where he shared some of his Italian-cinema favorites and talked about his experience working with Agnès Varda.

The actor praises performances by Holly Hunter and Naomi Watts, reminisces about how Paris, Texas changed her understanding of cinema, and talks about Mike Leigh’s films as works of operatic tension.

The CEO and chairman of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group fondly reminisces about working with Jim Jarmusch early in his career, shares why Harlan County USA remains one of the most important documentaries of all time, and celebrates the independent...

The musician and actor talks about what makes Stan Brakhage’s films “very punk rock,” reflects on working with Jonathan Demme, and selects favorite films such as Black Girl and True Stories.