Before the Fall

Apr 1, 2022 — This week: A new Cinema Scope, Robert Siodmak, Theodore Witcher, reenactment in nonfiction, and the science of Dune.

May 14, 2018 — In the singular world of Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki, auteurist homage and social consciousness are joined by some of the most lovingly filmed dogs in contemporary cinema.

Aug 31, 2012 — He was a doctor, explorer, and anthropologist in addition to being a director. Learn more about the fascinating man who made Lonesome.

May 4, 2020 — “You’ve never seen prairie grass with the wind leaning on it, have you, Diz?”Jean Arthur asks this poetic, expressively peculiar question of Thomas Mitchell in Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and we understand her yearning for truth...

Aug 1, 2016 — Back in January, veteran actor Keith Baxter stopped by the Criterion offices for lunch and regaled us with memories of his experience working with Orson Welles.

Jul 19, 2010 — “Why do you want to dance?” “Why do you want to live?” A question followed by another question stands at the beating heart of The Red Shoes. It’s an entirely rhetorical exchange, but it underscores the power and the mystery...

Oct 15, 2015 — Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni are cast against type—and funnyman director Ettore Scola gets serious—in this humane drama set in Fascist Italy.

Aug 24, 2011 — NOTE: The following essay contains spoilers. Not long into Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine (2007), a melodrama about suffering, salvation, and the dangerously blurred line between belief and madness, the heroine encounters the first of several challenges to her way of...

Mar 12, 2024 — The thirteenth edition offers twenty features, new short films by Kevin Jerome Everson and Nathaniel Dorsky, workshops and more.