The Criterion Collection
Jun 11, 2012 — Charlie Chaplin’s transcendent, visionary comedy is made up of one iconic moment after another.
Features
Jun 27, 2011 — A rogue’s gallery of vituperative 1950s vixens and night-world tough-guy gargoyles all coalescing in a constellation of twinkling cold war lights, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly is a film of a thousand stars. Stars of every sort, size, and description:...
Features
Feb 28, 2011 — In 1969, director Alexander Mackendrick retired from the film industry and became founding dean of the film school at the newly established California Institute of the Arts. Passionately interested in the pedagogy of cinema (“Film writing and directing cannot be...
Feb 22, 2011 — It wasn’t intended. No one could have predicted it. But Sweet Smell of Success turned out to be a terminus where several movie genres and subgenres converged and curdled, producing a uniquely delicious perfume of everlasting cynicism. Inhale deeply. And...
Production Notes
Jan 10, 2011 — I was deeply saddened by today’s news of the passing of Peter Yates, whom I had the honor to meet while producing Criterion’s DVD for his great seventies crime picture The Friends of Eddie Coyle. His death marks the loss...
May 20, 2010 — Driven to Destruction Nagisa Oshima was a destructive force in Japanese cinema—and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. Intent on exploding taboos and jabbing the eye of the status quo, he created films that leave us with a...
Interviews
Oct 13, 2009 — This week marks the publication of Jonathan Lethem’s new novel, Chronic City, another captivating journey through mysterious New York with a host of peculiar characters (and a sci-fi twist), including a certain cinephile who finds his way into the offices of...
Nov 13, 2008 — Mitch Mitchell, the inimitable drummer featured in all of the Jimi Hendrix material in Monterey Pop, died this week at age sixty-one. A one-of-a-kind player, Mitchell was the perfect foil for Hendrix and integral to the sound of the Jimi...
Jun 19, 2006 — Decades after its backyard birth, Jack Woods’s DIY horror movie has forged a model of inspiration for succeeding generations of effects artists and low-budget filmmakers.
Essays
Jan 16, 2024 — Drawing on the influence of a wide range of genres, John Sayles creates a densely layered narrative that unfolds across two timelines and explores the long-hidden secrets of a small border town in Texas.