The Big Year

May 31, 2017 — Long difficult to see, this transgressive silent masterpiece draws on a wide range of aesthetic influences to push against the boundaries of film form.

May 24, 2017 — “Love them or hate them, the films of Bruno Dumont never cease to confound,” begins Jordan Mintzer in the Hollywood Reporter. “For a long time the 59-year-old auteur was known for his uncompromising—and uncompromisingly bleak—early works like The Life of...

Jul 18, 2016 — Criterion’s resident researcher and web producer takes a trip to Madrid bookstore Ocho y Medio, which she calls “a shrine to Spanish contributions to the seventh art.”

Apr 26, 2016 — “It is not an exaggeration to say that before Primary, documentary as we know it today—the art of candid observation—didn’t exist,” writes Thom Powers.

Feb 23, 2016 — Without any overt topical references, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate captured the zeitgeist of the 1960s and the dawning countercultural revolution.

Feb 24, 2012 — The writer reflects on the decades-long creative collaboration and friendship between his father, playwright and television writer Elihu Winer, and John Voelker, judge and author.

Oct 19, 2010 — Clock­ing in at three hours and twenty-seven minutes, Seven Samurai’s lengthy runtime underscores the endurance of the samurai lifestyle, its toils and struggles.

Jan 26, 2010 — If Paris, Texas is a love letter to America and American cinema, it now also has something of the feel of a farewell: the world to which Wenders pays homage is vanishing fast.

Sep 22, 2009 — Something very heavy happened at Monterey last weekend. Those very odd three days began in Friday’s cool gray air as the first of the crowd began to circle through the booths of the fairground. The only word for it then...

Jan 21, 2009 — It’s a clichéd truism that moviemaking is a collaborative art. Of course it is, and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of directors working time and again with the same crew members, trusted writers, cameramen, production designers, editors,...