The Criterion Collection
John Powers has been the film critic for LA Weekly, Vogue, and NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, where he is presently critic at large. He’s the cowriter (with Wong Kar Wai) of the 2016 book WKW: The Cinema of...
Nov 21, 2023 — What stuck with me most after watching La cérémonie (1995) for the first time was the chewing gum.It’s not the scene most often cited in discussions of this late-career classic from French thriller master Claude Chabrol. Don’t get me wrong:...
Sep 26, 2023 — In this vibrant, music-filled portrait of an artist and his community, director Luis Valdez gathers what little is known about rock-and-roll idol Ritchie Valens and fuses it with a lived-in understanding of what it is to be Chicano.
Nov 2, 2021 — Federico Fellini’s earliest masterpiece is a story of despair and optimism, cruelty and salvation, that occasioned the director’s ascent to stardom.
Essays
Jul 20, 2021 — Dismissed as gossip-column fodder in its time, Jacques Deray’s cooly enigmatic villa thriller is an exploration of masculine vanity and feminine disillusion.
Features
Jun 22, 2020 — Songbook At first it’s just one of many Fellini-esque dances: a band switches to an upbeat tune, Nino Rota’s “Caracalla’s (La Bersagliera),” and a previously dour party becomes an impromptu circle of ecstatic movement. Though overshadowed in La dolce vita...
On the Channel
Aug 5, 2018 — The writer-director of Monsoon Wedding and Salaam Bombay! takes us through an eclectic mix of favorite films, including works by Jane Campion, Lars von Trier, and Satyajit Ray.
In Theaters
Jul 12, 2018 — French master René Clair, who achieved comedy magic at the dawn of film sound, takes the spotlight in a program next Wednesday at the Miami Beach Cinematheque.
On the Channel
Mar 30, 2018 — In a new conversation on the Criterion Channel, filmmaker Rebecca Miller talks about her formative experiences as a movie lover and what she’s drawn to in on-screen acting.
In Theaters
Feb 15, 2018 — Three formally daring short works by Chantal Akerman will play in a monthlong retrospective of the director’s work at the Cinémathèque française.