The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jan 19, 2009 — In 1929, a fifty-one-year-old Congregationalist pastor named Lloyd C. Douglas published his first novel. It was a ramshackle sort of book, at its core an undiluted Christian sermon on the life-transforming power of charitable works. But it was a sermon...
Oct 24, 2005 — When Samurai Rebellion premiered, on May 27, 1967, the original Japanese title was Joiuchi—hairyo tsuma shimatsu, which means something like Rebellion—Receive the Wife. This title indicates the two concerns of the film: the social impact of an unheard-of act of...
Aug 22, 2005 — This delicate, fascinating film is self-consciously, almost militantly, naive, and it remains something of an anomaly in Roberto Rossellini’s body of work.
Dec 9, 2002 — What makes Jean-Luc Godard’s classic so unique a viewing experience today, even more than in 1963, is the way it stimulates an audience’s intelligence as well as its senses.
Features
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.
The Daily
Feb 3, 2026 — This year’s winners tell stories of trauma and triumph.
The Daily
May 29, 2025 — The rise of fascism upended the childhoods of both filmmakers.
The Daily
Jul 17, 2024 — Summer reading options range from fiction to philosophy, from the fog of war to finicky fame.
May 29, 2024 — This Oscar-winning courtroom drama revolves around one of director Justine Triet’s most complex creations—a high-achieving female protagonist whose motivations remain tenaciously mysterious.
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.