The Criterion Collection
Essays
May 26, 2026 — Of all the performing arts, stand-up comedy may be the most ephemeral, even more so if the humor is considered dangerous or taboo. Stand-up relies on the charged dynamic between a comedian and an audience, with both sides often bringing...
Oct 19, 2021 — The works of great artists have a way of reactivating fundamental questions about the nature and potential of an art form. In the case of filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, these questions revolve around a word that has been used routinely to...
May 28, 2013 — Mike Leigh’s breakthrough is a funny film about serious things, and an emotional and slyly political take on consumer culture.
Sep 26, 2012 — Countercultural icons Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov makes square subversive in Bartel’s cult classic.
Though remembered now primarily for his intense, spare 1960s gangster films, this French master had a startlingly varied career, encompassing wartime dramas and psychosexual character studies.
May 11, 2009 — Novelists learn not to expect too much when their books are made into movies. Obviously, great fiction has been turned into great cinema, but the dents and scrapes that so many classics have sustained on the rocky road from the...
Visual Analysis
Sep 24, 2020 — Under the Influence Certain movies have such a profound impact on us in our formative years that they go on to resonate in unexpected ways throughout our lives. For Miranda July, one such film is Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape (1989), which...
The artist, musician, and director of Heart of a Dog shouts out Guy Maddin as one of her favorite filmmakers, praises the first scene in Sunday Bloody Sunday, and can’t resist Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life.
On the Channel
Mar 18, 2024 — Among this month’s highlights are a collection of noir classics from the genre’s peak year, a Jean Eustache retrospective, and our favorite movies that unfold within a tight timespan between dusk and dawn.