The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 15, 1999 — Great comedy cannot be confined within normally accepted boundaries of taste and sensitivity. The essence of the Pythons was that they were always ready to take on formidable, daunting subjects that others might find too dangerous to contemplate. The idea...
Aug 12, 1991 — It is 1945. For the first time in four years, the Southern Pacific stops in Black Rock. A one-armed man named John J. MacReedy (Spencer Tracy) steps off the train. This brooding stranger makes the few residents who inhabit the...
Oct 30, 2012 — “I discovered Criterion in the late eighties with the laserdisc of Citizen Kane, which I still watch,” writes director William Friedkin, whose films include The French Connection, The Exorcist, Sorcerer, and 2011’s Killer Joe. “Since switching to DVD and Blu-ray,...
The Daily
Dec 9, 2023 — This week we’re revisiting the work of Tolkin, Bogdanovich, and Borowczyk and reading profiles of Isabelle Huppert and Nicolas Cage.
The Daily
Nov 15, 2022 — An ongoing series spotlights films by women directors made in eastern Europe during the Soviet era.
Aug 23, 2022 — Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut, a western depicting Black cowboy heroes, allowed two of the industry’s most significant Black stars to reorient themselves as artists.
Oct 24, 2005 — Hideo Gosha’s swordplay drama captures rebellion against the Japanese feudal system, pitting its twin protagonists against each other but also, together, against the very notion of authority itself.
Dec 18, 2000 — Elegant humor cloaks despair in Luis Buñuel’s masterwork, wherein greedy characters flee their toxic lives and find refuge in the loneliness of dreams.