The Criterion Collection
The Daily
Jun 14, 2021 — Audiences immediately connected with the character actor who could hint at a deviant intent a behind an amiable smile.
Nov 17, 2015 — Satyajit Ray began his filmmaking career by offering a vision of the young Apu, the character he would go on to follow throughout the three films of his stunning breakthrough epic.
Essays
Aug 12, 2014 — The emotional culmination of a brilliant career in film, John Cassavetes’s unruly masterpiece is an enigmatic character study and a direct investigation of the nature of love.
Essays
Jul 21, 2014 — Anouk Aimée’s beguiling chanteuse, the title character of Jacques Demy’s romantic debut feature, is the figure from whom the director’s entire cinematic world springs.
Essays
Sep 25, 2012 — No mere jigsaw movie, David Fincher’s thriller is also a nuanced character study, a satire of corporate culture, and a film about filmmaking.
Joshua Clover’s most recent book is Riot.Strike.Riot: The New Era of Uprisings (Verso), about (among other things) the way the character of political struggle changed around the time of Straw Dogs, and why. This piece was originally written for the...
The Daily
Jul 14, 2026 — News of his “sudden and unexpected” passing has drawn a flood of appreciation and genuine affection.
Jul 14, 2026 — One of the funniest and most affecting scenes in 1970s Hollywood cinema is also one of the most quietly radical—no small feat in a decade of movies marked by wiggy experimentation, explosions of brutal and cathartic violence, and shaggy new...
Jul 14, 2026 — The legacy of Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game has become inextricably entangled with a defining trope of AIDS-era mainstream queer representation: the revelation that exposes the gender identity of a transgender character. By the time of the American release of...
Jul 14, 2026 — On October 30, 1992, the Provisional Irish Republican Army set off two bombs as part of an ongoing campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland. One, a small explosive planted alarmingly close to the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing...