The First Beautiful Thing

Mar 11, 1993 — Released the year before Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars, Nicolas Roeg’s terrestrial space opera is devoid of matte shots, models, or pyrotechnics, and it leaves us not wondering at the stars but grieving for ourselves.

Jul 18, 2024 — A pioneer of the 1980s downtown New York arts scene, the director of Sleepwalk talks about navigating her creative life in the city and the inspiration she has taken from mythology, fairy tales, and cinéma fantastique.

Jul 3, 2024 — Pop Shakespeare, 100 years of Disney, and conversations with Isaac Julien and Steven Soderbergh are among this week’s highlights.

Feb 19, 2019 — A master at adapting literary classics for the screen, Luchino Visconti made a bold choice in emphasizing the homoerotic undertones in Thomas Mann’s novella.

Mar 13, 2012 — In the becalmed atmosphere of today’s Hollywood, it’s hard to imagine the tumult that greeted The Last Temptation of Christ when it was released in 1988. Brilliantly directed by Martin Scorsese, this adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’s imaginative retelling of the...

Oct 18, 2022 — Drawing from Latin American folklore, Jayro Bustamente conjures an intimate, supernatural tale that engages with Guatemala’s history of violence.

Sep 5, 2025 — We’re listening in this week on conversations with Charlie Kaufman, Alice Diop, and Zeinabu irene Davis.

Sep 10, 2018 — One of the pleasures of programming a new short-and-feature pairing every week on the Criterion Channel is getting to celebrate the artistic freedom that short films offer emerging artists. With tighter run times and smaller budgets, the form comes with...

Apr 19, 2016 — In Whit Stillman’s second feature, cousins Fred and Ted Boynton (Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols) navigate an occasionally hostile culture and their own late transitions to adulthood.

Sep 29, 2023 — The week brings conversations with Hal Hartley, Todd Haynes, Christine Vachon, Pedro Costa, Wang Bing, and Rita Azevedo Gomes.