The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jun 17, 2018 — The stakes are high. An unknown entertainer newly arrived in a foreign country prepares for her first performance, under pressure to make a hit with a restless, rowdy audience. It is a hot night; the crowd exudes a collective humidity,...
On the Channel
May 20, 2018 — A lifelong movie collector remembers the thrill of discovering the granddaddy of all monsters on Super 8.
Essays
May 30, 2017 — Lino Brocka brought an invigoratingly personal and socially conscious vision to Philippine cinema with this gritty portrait of Manila barrio life.
Oct 22, 2013 — This delicately creepy Hollywood horror movie lives up to its reputation as a classic of the genre.
Nov 27, 2008 — An enormous welter of insoluble problems is on display in Luis Buñuel’s classic—the ending solves nothing; the story just begins again.
Sep 17, 2007 — I set out on my first trip to the Toronto Film Festival ready to feast on films and spend relaxed, indulgent, quality time with writers I work with, or hope to work with, as the editorial director here at Criterion....
Features
Aug 1, 2023 — “Do you want me to turn them loose?” This is what cowboy Perce asks a sad-eyed Roslyn in John Huston’s elegiac The Misfits (1961), and that one question about untying the mustangs he and fellow wranglers Gay (Clark Gable) and...
Jul 15, 2022 — In her last significant film role, the art-house icon reveals an emotional vulnerability previously hidden by her ethereal persona.
Sep 17, 2019 — Fusing the melodrama of Douglas Sirk and the ballyhoo of William Castle, John Waters’ sixth feature, Polyester (1981), was a departure from the scrofulous 16 mm mode of production he had made his cult name plying to midnight-movie crowds in...
Jan 22, 2019 — Elaine May is a writer and filmmaker and actor and improviser, but beyond that, she is an artist whose career-long quest for truth has driven her to create work that has taken many forms but always sought to cast aside...