The Criterion Collection
Nov 21, 2017 — Terry Gilliam plunges into the filth and absurdity of medieval England with this grim fairy-tale comedy.
Essays
Jul 18, 2017 — During a period of personal turmoil, Andrei Tarkovsky created this enigmatic masterpiece, which explores spiritual and metaphysical mysteries through the prism of a science-fiction epic.
Jun 1, 2017 — By turns gritty and lyrical, this portrait of the Syria-Turkey border brings together two pioneers of Turkish cinema.
Jan 19, 2017 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder plays a working-class gay man hoodwinked by his uppity bourgeois lover in this unsparing portrait of queer culture in 1970s West Germany.
Sep 29, 2015 — Merchant Ivory Productions’ sun-kissed romantic comedy is an effervescent tale of class and manners among the Edwardian English.
Dec 16, 2014 — The prolific and popular Keisuke Kinoshita made his fascinating first movies at a time of great difficulty and censorship, yet their spirit and brilliance shine through.
Jul 30, 2014 — A friend and longtime scholar of Jacques Demy ruminates on the great director’s career, as well as the port hometown they shared—which would become a magical movie location.
Nov 8, 2011 — With the very first shots of Fanny and Alexander (1982), director Ingmar Bergman announces his perspective and signals his intentions. Here, we find the ten-year-old Alexander gazing into a puppet theater, lifting layer after layer of skillfully painted backdrop. We...
Jul 21, 2009 — Jean-Luc Godard’s essay follows twenty-four hours in Juliette’s life, beginning and ending in the evening in the apartment she shares with her husband and two young children.
Dec 25, 2008 — Robert Rossellini’s efforts to put history into images would yield some forty-two hours of “didactic” movies, mostly for television.