The Criterion Collection
Essays
Sep 6, 1999 — The subject of loneliness and the observation of the isolated person has always interested me. Even as a child, I couldn’t help but notice those who didn’t fit in for one reason or another—myself included. In life, and for my...
Essays
Dec 31, 2000 — Those who felt that Scandinavian cinema had passed into retirement along with Ingmar Bergman should be startled by Insomnia. This immaculately constructed psychological thriller sets a benchmark for other Scandinavian directors to match, and is one of the most unusual...
Jan 29, 2026 — A resounding critical and popular success upon its release, Héctor Babenco’s adaptation of a literary masterpiece by Manuel Puig was an unprecedented cinematic fusion of a radical politics of sex with a sexual politics of revolution.
Jan 22, 2026 — A singular achievement in Arab film history, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s sweeping political epic is a memorial to the lives lost in the struggle for Algerian independence.
Feb 27, 2024 — Hollywood legend Raoul Walsh’s first movie for Warner Bros. is an epoch-spanning tall tale that takes inspiration from the New York City of his childhood and closes out a run of influential gangster films he inaugurated in the silent era.
Aug 23, 2022 — Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut, a western depicting Black cowboy heroes, allowed two of the industry’s most significant Black stars to reorient themselves as artists.
Jun 26, 2019 — Boasting the longest, most versatile career of any Czechoslovak New Waver, the late master made films mixed with deep compassion and an antiauthoritarian spirit.
Sep 13, 2018 — The imitation of nature becomes a devotional act in Terrence Malick’s cinema, which reaches sublime heights in this exploration of childhood, memory, and grief.
Jan 15, 2013 — Despite the acclaim, Volker Schlöndorff always felt his adaptation of Günter Grass’s novel was incomplete. Thirty years later, he set to work on his director’s cut.
Jun 15, 2009 — With the arrival of this film, cinema catapulted to the front line of a cultural advance guard that sought to undermine the intractable mass taste promoted by Hollywood, television, and the Brill Building.