The Criterion Collection
Essays
Oct 12, 1987 — Akira Kurosawa’s thrilling Cinemascope epic is set squarely within the traditions of the Japanese film genre known as the “Chambara.”
Essays
Dec 11, 1986 — If events had turned out differently, Orson Welles’s second film might well be widely regarded as “the greatest film of all time.”
Dec 1, 1986 — Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is one cult film that has also won over the cultivated buff. As Peter Morris remarks (in his Dictionary of Films): “Though one of the subtlest films of the genre, containing little...
Essays
Jan 16, 2024 — Drawing on the influence of a wide range of genres, John Sayles creates a densely layered narrative that unfolds across two timelines and explores the long-hidden secrets of a small border town in Texas.
Sep 29, 2014 — The Toronto-based songwriter-producer Austin Garrick is one-half (alongside vocalist Bronwyn Griffin) of the electronic pop duo Electric Youth, whose full-length debut album, Innerworld, was released in September 2014 by Secretly Canadian/Last Gang Records. Garrick’s music is known to fans of...
Dec 11, 2009 — This expansive tribute to the iconic Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai was first published on the Criterion Collection’s website in fall 2005, around the time of the Criterion releases of two films starring Nakadai: Kurosawa’s Ran and the less well-known samurai...
Jun 16, 2008 — Decades later, we’ve come to understand that Claude Sautet’s film—in a less gaudy and obvious, more secretive, insidious way—was just as revolutionary as Breathless.
Essays
Sep 8, 1998 — In David Lean’s Summertime, in which Rossano Brazzi seduces Katharine Hepburn—an aging, repressed Ohio “working girl” on vacation in Venice—the Continental lover reached his pinnacle and approached his end. In the next decade, he would be embodied by Marcello Mastroianni,...
The actor, comedian, and screenwriter shares why he thinks Secrets & Lies is Mike Leigh’s “juiciest” work, praises the powerful simplicity of The Celebration, and selects contemporary films that have inspired him, like Anatomy of a Fall and The Worst...
The writer, director, and actor talks about the formative influence of Richard Linklater and the Coen brothers, does his best impression of Brenda Blethyn in Secrets & Lies, and shares why Close-up transcends the bounds of cinema.