Fun Is Beautiful

Aug 27, 2024 — A brilliant satire, inspired by a 1973 PBS documentary series that gave rise to the reality-television genre, Albert Brooks’s first feature film examines the ethical dilemmas of combining cheap entertainment and sociological experiment.

Nov 19, 2025 — Joachim Trier’s family drama stars Stellan Skarsgård as a renowned film director and Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as his estranged daughters.

Oct 6, 2009 — Our Jeanne Dielman–Criterion Collection Cooking Video Contest on YouTube has been a huge success, thanks to scores of filmmakers who served up more than fifty delectable entries! We’ve been amazed at the quality of the submissions, and now we need...

Feb 19, 2007 — A powerful document of anti-Nazi propaganda, Powell and Pressburger’s war drama consolidated their partnership and showed a way forward for British cinema.

Dec 29, 2020 — Channel Calendars The stars are aligned for the first month of the New Year on the Criterion Channel. We’re pleased to be kicking off 2021 with a tribute to Jane Fonda, whose greatest hits reflect her multifaceted career as a political activist...

Feb 26, 2019 — The trailblazing African American director Charles Burnett’s third feature, To Sleep with Anger (1990), was his biggest production to date, albeit still made on a modest budget of $1.4 million, a significant portion of which was raised through the attachment...

Mar 5, 2018 — Along with 132 short films and a slew of masterclasses, installations, discussions, and other events, the Berlin International Film Festival presented 253 features this year. I managed to catch twenty-seven of them, and Adina Pintilie’s Touch Me Not, winner of...

Feb 20, 2018 — Get Out director Jordan Peele tells the Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Galloway that he’s currently writing and plans to direct his next film later this year. “One thing I know is that this is genre; and playing around with the thriller,...

Jun 29, 2016 — In this essay, first published in Grand Street in 1994, Dr. Strangelove coscreenwriter Terry Southern offers a lively behind-the-scenes look at the film’s production.

Nov 12, 2013 — Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig create a luminous, romantic portrait of a young woman looking for fulfillment in New York City.