The Criterion Collection
The Daily
May 21, 2017 — We begin with Leslie Felperin in the Hollywood Reporter: “A debut feature from Lea Mysius, who only graduated from Paris’ La Femis film school a few years ago, Ava is a sensual, accomplished but awkward study of teen female sexuality,...
May 21, 2017 — Sea Sorrow, premiering Out of Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, is Vanessa Redgrave’s directorial debut. “A heartfelt, formally messy documentary about the international refugee crisis, the movie is largely a plea for compassion and action,” writes Manohla Dargis in...
The Daily
May 20, 2017 — “To fans of the mononymous Barbara—the delicate-voiced, emotionally acute French chanteuse adored by everyone from Jacques Brel to François Mitterand—Mathieu Amalric’s mega-meta, dreamily blurred biopic-within-a-film may seem a bemusing tribute to a national icon,” writes Guy Lodge at the top...
The Daily
May 20, 2017 — “Custody of a white horse is one of several bones of contention between Bulgarian locals and visiting German laborers in Valeska Grisebach’s Western, a dispute that takes on the most classic symbolic dimension of the traditional oater,” begins Guy Lodge...
The Daily
May 19, 2017 — We’ll get to the film at hand in a moment, but first—and just briefly—there’s no getting around the controversy that’s all but dominated the first couple of days at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It began, really, when the festival...
The Daily
May 18, 2017 — “Todd Haynes’s films, intellectually rigorous and often profoundly moving, are fractured stories in which alienated, beautiful characters try to find love (or a certain likeness) in the delicate folds of real life,” begins David Ehrlich at IndieWire. “All of this...
On the Channel
Apr 27, 2017 — The capstone to Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski’s brilliant career, the Three Colors trilogy explores the principles of the French Revolution—liberty, equality, and fraternity—through a series of intricately layered human dramas, culminating in 1994’s Oscar-nominated Red. This gorgeously photographed meditation on...
On the Channel
Apr 24, 2017 — Best known for his starring roles in Juno and Superbad, Michael Cera has spent much of his career making us laugh. But when it comes to the films he watches for pleasure, his taste veers toward the serious and contemplative....
On the Channel
Apr 17, 2017 — The illustrious résumé of Tatsuya Nakadai doubles as a snapshot of Japanese cinema in its golden age. Starting in the 1950s, the wildly prolific actor made a career out of shape-shifting, amassing credits in a wide range of films that...
On the Channel
Mar 23, 2017 — Acclaimed author Jonathan Lethem wears his movie love on his sleeve in genre-hopping novels like the noir-inflected Motherless Brooklyn and the darkly satiric Chronic City, which opens with its protagonist paying a visit to the Criterion Collection. The cinematic inspirations...