The Criterion Collection
Feb 26, 2021 — First Person When I was eight years old, I discovered what it meant to be of two minds. I didn’t discover this in any intellectual way; this was brought to bear on me in 1973 because that’s the year my...
Jul 21, 2020 — Consider this an afterword to Taste of Cherry (1997), the feature that brought its director, Abbas Kiarostami, to full international prominence, after it became the first Iranian movie to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (where it...
Oct 29, 2019 — Matewan opens in the pitch-black darkness of a West Virginia coal mine. A miner lights the carbide lamp on his helmet. The small open flame he wears provides the only flicker of light in this cramped space next to a...
Short Takes
Sep 17, 2013 — The author sheds some light on the fascinating life of the American scriptwriter behind Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan.
Oct 21, 2025 — Set in a postcard-perfect American town, David Cronenberg’s provocative take on the old-fashioned crime thriller examines the pleasure we derive from cinematic violence and the construction of patriarchal impunity.
Mar 18, 2025 — In what he described as his “first serious drama,” Charlie Chaplin channeled the influence of modernist literature, foreign cinema, and his European travels into a work of striking formal sophistication.
May 6, 2024 — Perhaps the most hard-to-categorize of the great Hollywood studios came into its own with a string of critically acclaimed films based on popular books and plays, including Born Yesterday, A Raisin in the Sun, and From Here to Eternity.
Jan 23, 2024 — In the first ten years of her extraordinary career, the Belgian filmmaker used the raw materials of quotidian, marginal lives to spark a radical reinvention of cinema.
Dec 6, 2022 — Known for their austerity and shocking moments of violence, the Austrian director’s first three films cultivate a kind of humanism in their dogged refusal to coddle the viewer.
On the Channel
Nov 18, 2018 — The powerhouse actors at the center of Persona became two of Ingmar Bergman’s most essential collaborators, bringing a remarkable emotional range to their performances.