The Theme

Mar 9, 2021 — “Oral tradition is a tradition of images. What is said is stronger than what is written; the word addresses itself to the imagination, not the ear. Imagination creates the image and the image creates cinema, so we are in direct...

Sep 24, 2019 — Bill Forsyth is Scotland’s most famous filmmaker, and Local Hero (1983) is his most famous film—for many, the true subject of Local Hero’s title is the Glasgow-born writer-director himself. The enduring affection and adulation for Local Hero stem from the...

Feb 13, 2017 — One Scene Romantic love is poignant because it is an infinite feeling that exists in a finite frame. And Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy is the most romantic and profound of love stories because it imbues love with the weight of...

Apr 14, 2016 — Repertory PicksThis week, the RiverRun International Film Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is hosting a screening of D. A. Pennebaker’s 1968 film Monterey Pop. Playing as part of From the Archives: Rock on Film, a music-themed sidebar to the festival,...

Aug 24, 2010 — I n a photograph of Josef von Sternberg from 1937, he looks like a character from one of his own films: a turbaned magus with elegantly trimmed beard and mustache, holding a cigarette as he gazes out obliquely, with the...

Oct 6, 2026 — A dystopian drama that draws on the influences of African mythology and hip-hop, Ngozi Onwurah’s debut feature uses a mix of speculative forms to expose anti-Blackness as a system that underpins the modern world.

Aug 30, 2022 — Next month, the Criterion Channel celebrates the films of trailblazing cinematographer James Wong Howe, European acting icon Romy Schneider, and Spanish provocateur Carlos Saura.

Jun 9, 2021 — Critics welcome the big-screen version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical as a celebration of the return of the movies.

Mar 17, 2020 — The economic impact of the coronavirus crisis is immediate and harsh, but the lessons to be learned have been there for the taking for decades.

Sep 24, 2026 — The elegantly crafted portmanteau films Quartet, Trio, and Encore adapt twelve spellbinding tales of deception and passion from one of the best-selling authors of the twentieth century.