The Criterion Collection
Apr 19, 2019 — Performances No other comedian could milk a pause for a laugh quite the way Jack Benny could on his radio program, which lasted from 1932 to 1955 and turned him into an American institution. (He also did a TV show...
Apr 1, 2019 — Over the course of his four-decade Hollywood career, Robert Zemeckis has racked up no shortage of memorable achievements, bringing to life the beloved Back to the Future franchise, winning an Oscar for his work on Forrest Gump, and gaining renown...
Mar 26, 2019 — It’s the afternoon of February 8, 1964, and Ed Sullivan has assembled a gaggle of CBS ushers to talk about tomorrow night’s show, featuring the four lads from Liverpool who call themselves the Beetles—strike that, the Beatles. He needs to...
Essays
Mar 21, 2019 — “The world is full of skeptics,” Detour’s Al Roberts struggles to explain, in voice-over, while on-screen we’re pondering Vera’s dead body. “I know. I’m one myself . . .”Even now, closing in on seventy-five years after the Producers Releasing Corporation...
Essays
Apr 25, 2017 — After a string of ill-fated productions, Francis Ford Coppola channeled his feelings of self-doubt in this deeply personal take on S. E. Hinton’s beloved novel.
In Theaters
Feb 16, 2017 — Repertory PicksTomorrow, the International House Philadelphia salutes French actor-director Pierre Etaix with a double dose of his unique brand of physical comedy. The screening kicks off with As Long as You’ve Got Your Health (1966), a compendium of four hilarious...
Mar 23, 2016 — We had come to expect Chantal Akerman’s periodic gifts of small and large cinematic gems. Certain of this flow, we were devastated when, all too abruptly, we were forced to think of her latest film, so beautiful, as her last.
Oct 21, 2014 — Federico Fellini’s frantic tragicomedy is such a classic it risks being underestimated.
Short Takes
Nov 20, 2013 — On November 5, Frances Ha herself, Greta Gerwig, appeared onstage at the New York Institute of Technology Auditorium on Broadway for a special Screen Actors Guild Foundation event. Following a screening of Noah Baumbach’s film, cowritten by and starring Gerwig,...
Essays
Apr 9, 2013 — This essay by novelist, playwright, and culture critic Gary Indiana originally appeared in the 1992 book Everything Is Permitted: The Making of “Naked Lunch.” Burroughs’s work tends to affect people like a Rorschach test. It separates cultural conservatives from avant-gardists,...