The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jun 24, 2025 — The product of a famously tumultuous production, William Friedkin’s nerve-jangling adaptation of the classic suspense novel The Wages of Fear infuses the mechanics of genre with rough-hewn realism and the New Hollywood’s renegade spirit.
Mar 18, 2025 — In what he described as his “first serious drama,” Charlie Chaplin channeled the influence of modernist literature, foreign cinema, and his European travels into a work of striking formal sophistication.
Feb 19, 2025 — Gus Van Sant’s lyrical exploration of addiction and faith—adapted from an autobiographical novel by James Fogle—influenced cinematic drug depictions throughout the nineties and helped to initiate a wave of American independent filmmaking.
Feb 11, 2025 — Jean-Luc Godard’s first English-language narrative feature is a postapocalyptic fantasy that shifts from antic humor to tragic grandeur while challenging deep-rooted assumptions about what a Shakespearean movie should be.
The Daily
Jun 21, 2024 — We open with an Italian neorealist classic, steer through ’70s-era paranoia, and wrap with a blast of gnarly rock ’n’ roll.
Essays
Jun 18, 2024 — In this stylish erotic noir, Lilly and Lana Wachowski delight in destabilizing our genre and gender expectations, laying the foundation for the trans sensibility that runs through all their work.
The Daily
Apr 16, 2024 — Two programs running parallel to Cannes announce a diverse array of world premieres.
The Daily
May 12, 2023 — This week: Swiss anarchists, Spanish analogue filmmakers, Warren Sonbert, and Jerzy Skolimowski.
May 25, 2022 — Mira Nair’s sumptuous second feature explores migration, rebellion, and romance across racial borders in the American South.
Mar 1, 2022 — The first film I saw at last year’s Morelia International Film Festival opens on the image of a freshly dug grave. Shovelfuls of earth fall into the open pit as two doctors stand above it, lamenting the loss of yet...