The Criterion Collection
Jul 25, 2013 — The look of the dazzlingly evocative The Ice Storm is in large part the work of production designer extraordinaire Mark Friedberg (Far from Heaven, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). In an illustrated audio interview on release of Ang Lee’s...
Essays
Nov 22, 2011 — 12 Angry Men (1957), the first feature film directed by the legendary Sidney Lumet, is a Hollywood classic that, ironically, helped to define an era of filmmaking grounded in the gritty realism and frenetic energy of urban New York. A...
Essays
Aug 2, 2004 — Anna Magnani’s flair for demotic street comedy was transfigured into stylized nobility by sumptuous costuming and Jean Renoir’s formal camera work.
The Daily
Feb 17, 2026 — Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams was the big winner at this year’s Film Independent Spirit Awards.
Essays
Jan 29, 2026 — Jonathan Glazer’s enigmatic second feature explores the terrors of being desperate for love—and the vulnerability, loneliness, and difficulty in understanding other people that might drive this state.
Essays
Sep 23, 2025 — A tale of animal survival in a world deserted by humanity, Gints Zilbalodis’s Oscar-winning triumph casts a hushed spell with its elemental storytelling, immersive visual style, and creaturely subjectivity.
Essays
Jan 21, 2025 — In his first Hollywood film, British director Stephen Frears dives into the nihilistic world of Jim Thompson’s fiction, delivering an adaptation profoundly attuned to the novelist’s sense of ineluctable suffering.
Essays
Sep 24, 2024 — A sceenwriter, novelist, and longtime friend of director Todd Solondz recalls the admiration he felt upon first seeing this audacious ensemble drama, which offers an unflinching, compassionate look at the pain and abjection of being human.
The Daily
Jul 3, 2024 — Pop Shakespeare, 100 years of Disney, and conversations with Isaac Julien and Steven Soderbergh are among this week’s highlights.
Jun 21, 2024 — An underrated figure of Japanese cinema’s postwar era, the director tackled a wide range of subjects over his long career, including corporate double-dealing, government espionage, and various forms of fanaticism.