The Criterion Collection
Walter Chaw is the senior film critic for FilmFreakCentral.net, with bylines in the New York Times, LA Weekly, the New York Post’s Decider.com, and NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. His book on the films of Walter Hill is due in...
Geoffrey O’Brien’s books include The Phantom Empire; Sonata for Jukebox; The Fall of the House of Walworth; Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows: Writing on Film, 2002–2012; Where Did Poetry Come From: Some Early Encounters; and Arabian Nights of 1934.
The Daily
Jul 24, 2026 — Names on our minds this week: Mike Mills, Jean Renoir, Ronee Blakley, and Luchino Visconti.
On the Channel
Jul 17, 2026 — Channel Calendars This month on the Criterion Channel, crank up the volume on our playlist of (actually good) rock biopics that go beyond cliché to explore the elusive place where inspiration sparks and musical legends are born. Our Southern Gothic...
The Daily
Jul 17, 2026 — Some early reviews raise a few objections, but for the most part, Nolan is wowing critics with his grandest vision yet.
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...
The Daily
Jul 6, 2026 — Karlovy Vary hosts the world premiere of a new restoration of the Czech director’s 1988 tragicomedy.
Jun 30, 2026 — The distinction between social and political cinema is not always clear. The former category, which focuses on realistic portrayals of the everyday lives and struggles of the working class, generally includes the films of Italian neorealism and British social realism,...
Jun 23, 2026 — The only favor I ever asked of a twink was for tickets to see John Waters introduce two of his films. I was the sole trans filmmaker enrolled in my school’s program, and I felt it was my right to...