The Criterion Collection
Nov 16, 2008 — Chungking Express (1994) was the Masculin féminin of the 1990s, a pop-art movie about cool twentysomethings looking for love in the city that has replaced Paris as the center of the world-cinema imagination. What Jean-Luc Godard did for “the children...
Essays
Sep 15, 2008 — Max Ophuls’s ingenious tale of Viennese cafe society conveys both the transience of individual passions and the durability of passion itself as a motivating force in human behavior.
Essays
Jan 21, 2008 — As late as 1970, Alf Sjöberg’s boldly experimental 1951 adaptation of August Strindberg’s play was declared as inaugurating “a new cinematic language.”
Feb 16, 2004 — In this quintessential noir, Samuel Fuller breaks with the Red Scare formula of his contemporaries by contrasting the faceless evil of Communism against the peccadilloes of the workaday American crook.
Essays
Aug 24, 1989 — Yasujiro Ozu’s favorite theme of the stresses and strains of parent-child relationships figure prominently in this story of a raggle-taggle theater troupe giving its final performances in a small fishing village.
Essays
Jun 17, 2025 — Mitchell Leisen’s marvelously chic and brilliantly constructed screwball classic revolves around a heroine who flounders through a succession of complications but always manages to come out ahead.
Jan 5, 2016 — Toshiya Fujita’s two-film saga set exuberant, manga-inspired martial-arts choreography against a backdrop of a Japanese society in transition to unfold a vivid tale of epic vengeance.
Mar 19, 2026 — To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the invention of VHS, the director and the editor of Videoheaven discuss how this game-changing format shaped their lives and imaginations and left a seismic impact on the film industry.
The Daily
Nov 27, 2024 — The week offers evasive icons, an archive to rummage through, and a great but overlooked critic.
The Daily
Jan 29, 2024 — Jurors, audiences, and critics seem to agree that 2024 is off to a promising start.