The Criterion Collection
Mar 23, 2021 — “Pleasure,” wrote Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh, “is a safer guide than either right or duty.” Surely this is true when it comes to watching films. While cinema can be edifying, most of us go to the...
On the Channel
Feb 25, 2021 — Channel Calendars Giddy up, movie lovers! This month on the Channel, our Black Westerns series leads the charge, highlighting films that have challenged the myths of the Old West to tell the stories of African Americans on the frontier. And...
Essays
Jan 26, 2021 — Larisa Shepitko was born in eastern Ukraine in 1938. Her mother was a schoolteacher; her father, who left the family, fought in World War II. Her mother raised her and her two siblings on her own, and the moment Larisa...
The Daily
Dec 4, 2020 — A landmark week for the industry has us looking back to past periods of tumult and change.
Nov 5, 2020 — Performances Whenever I think of the iconic Bengali actor Supriya Choudhury, the first thing I recall is not her face—with its high cheekbones and large, kohl-rimmed eyes that often drew comparisons to Sophia Loren’s—but her voice, disembodied, tearing through the...
Oct 30, 2020 — In his tension-filled, black-comic Oscar winner, Bong Joon Ho masterfully mixes tones and subverts genres in order to shine a harsh light on the mechanisms that maintain class inequality.
Oct 28, 2020 — More than anything, Claudine felt like a reprieve; the film, directed by John Berry and released in 1974, gave audiences a compelling alternative depiction of Black life from those about Black drug lords and mafia dons fighting over real estate...
Features
Oct 26, 2020 — The very first romantic kiss between men on American television happens in Marlon Riggs’s groundbreaking film Tongues Untied. That kiss is between two Black men, and one of them is Riggs himself. As of this writing, if you look up...
Essays
Oct 13, 2020 — I know I need somethingOr someone. From “Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day” (1978), by Nikki Giovanni While the screen is still dark, Gladys Knight’s voice drifts in, in a strong, sincere belt: “How can I / Work out this...
The Daily
Sep 15, 2020 — For some, this nineteenth-century love story “never catches fire,” but for others, it’s “one of the finest films of the year.”