The Criterion Collection
Essays
Dec 4, 1995 — While Carol Reed’s psychological noir is the most compassionate of movies, it’s a poetic summary of twentieth century harshness—of what can be called the inhuman condition.
Nov 28, 2016 — PerformancesAny paean to noir seductress nonpareil Gloria Grahame—mine included—can’t hope to surpass this encomium from Boyd McDonald, one of her most ardent and articulate devotees. Saluting Grahame’s performance in In a Lonely Place (1950) in his essential 1985 compendium, Cruising...
Aug 19, 2014 — Alfonso Cuaron, a filmmaker congenitally allergic to creative constriction, made his most liberated movie with this erotic, moving, often funny threesome tale.
Features
Jul 31, 2017 — What is the defining characteristic of the femme fatale? Critic Imogen Sara Smith explores the range of this film noir archetype through a handful of classic performances.
The Daily
Sep 3, 2025 — Amanda Seyfried (The Testament of Ann Lee), Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone (Bugonia), and Dwyane Johnson (The Smashing Machine) dazzle in Venice.
Interviews
Sep 16, 2022 — The trailblazing and idiosyncratic filmmaker discusses her two newly restored shorts, her childhood in Detroit, and her decision to leave the movie industry behind.
The Daily
Jan 7, 2018 — The updates to the entry on Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread are still rolling in, and one of the most recent ones links to Sheila O'Malley’s cover article for the new issue of Film Comment. “Unlike other clichéd Great Men...
May 19, 2017 — “Kornél Mundruczó’s Jupiter’s Moon is a messily ambitious and over-extended movie with some great images,” writes the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw: “[L]ike his previous picture White God it leaves behind the somewhat torpid realist mannerisms of his even earlier films such...
Feb 25, 2013 — When an ethnographic filmmaker and a sociologist joined forces, they helped change the course of nonfiction cinema.
Nov 25, 2010 — Five Easy Pieces is not a statement about America but a closely observed report. Or, perhaps, a confession.