The Criterion Collection
Sep 28, 2015 — Rarely has schizophrenia been closer to the surface of American cinema than in the transitional period of 1968–71. Hollywood had just abandoned its censorship code after nearly thirty-five years, and the behemoth studios were heaving and rattling into oblivion or...
Criterion Designs
Sep 24, 2015 — The French Lieutenant’s Woman is a film with the look of a lush period piece and the structure of postmodern metafiction. When it came time to design the cover, we wanted something that would emphasize the ways the film makes...
Aug 10, 2015 — When they starred together in The French Lieutenant’s Woman in 1981, Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons were not yet the movie icons we know them as today. Though Streep had already won a best supporting actress Oscar for Kramer vs....
Sneak Peeks
Jul 20, 2015 — The Black Stallion is more than just a family adventure film; it’s a spectacular visual achievement. This is partly thanks to the brilliant craft of cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, who worked closely with director Carroll Ballard so that they could tell...
Short Takes
Jul 8, 2015 — Steve Blauner, one of the founders of BBS, the production company that produced Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show, The King of Marvin Gardens, and more, died last month at age eighty-one. We were lucky enough to sit down...
Jul 7, 2015 — Our recollections of Robert Siodmak’s 1946 movie The Killers are apt to center on three primary elements: Ernest Hemingway’s story, so literally brought to the screen in the film’s opening scenes; Ava Gardner, carrying the full weight of that late-forties...
Jun 24, 2015 — PerformancesThe late character actor Michael Jeter had a profound effect on me as a child, but as with so many things, I didn’t realize it until I was an adult. Twenty-five years ago this month, I saw my first Tony...
Sneak Peeks
Jun 2, 2015 — Having made such urgent, ripped-from-the-headlines, international dramas as Z, The Confession, State of Siege, and Missing, it stands to reason that the Greek director Costa-Gavras is often referred to as a political filmmaker. But in this excerpt from a wide-ranging...
Jun 1, 2015 — A legionnaire turned fruit seller misses out on Germany’s economic miracle in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s breakthrough melodrama.
May 29, 2015 — A shocking chapter of Soviet Czechoslovakian history is dramatized in Costa-Gavras’s controversial follow-up to Z.