The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jan 15, 1996 — If Akira Kurosawa is the John Ford of Japanese samurai dramas, then director Kihachi Okamoto—a specialist in action films, with a particulat accent on violence and raw characterizations—is the samurai film’s Sam Fuller.
Jun 3, 1991 — Jean Marais on the set of Beauty and the Beast An excerpt from Cocteau: A Biography (1970) by Francis Steegmuller Beauty and the Beast, the first film of Cocteau’s own since The Blood of a Poet, and his finest poem since...
May 29, 2019 — Once again, Lav Diaz and Takashi Miike did what they do; but the Fortnight also showcased a wide range of promising talent.
The Daily
Apr 4, 2022 — Nicholas Ray’s melodrama is both a critique of 1950s America and a straight-up horror movie.
The Daily
Aug 26, 2021 — Steven Soderbergh lines up another series and adaptations of novels by Colson Whitehead and Taffy Brodesser-Akner are in the works.
The Daily
Sep 25, 2019 — Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson star as a couple whose breakup turns nasty at the hands of “the divorce-industrial complex.”
Jul 10, 2018 — The martial-arts film was never the same after King Hu got his hands on it, reinventing the genre with subtle editing and dazzling choreography.
Oct 1, 2014 — In the hands of director Serge Bourguignon, a potentially sensationalistic story becomes a poetic and complex investigation of love and pain.
Sep 23, 2014 — In director Jack Clayton’s hands, Henry James’s tale of the sinister and sensual things hiding behind Victorian decorum becomes one of the screen’s great works of terror.