The Class

Jun 10, 2014 — Douglas Sirk once said: “This is the dialectic—there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.” When All That Heaven Allows was...

Dec 8, 2010 — Over at his New Yorker blog, The Front Row, Richard Brody dives back into Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning, the Criterion edition of which is his DVD pick of the week. Over a lovingly assembled montage of clips from...

Sep 24, 1990 — Imagine Hitchcock’s Psycho told from the point of view of its title character, and you have a rough idea of Taxi Driver. This riveting 1976 film is at once a thriller, a psychological case study, an exploration of the eroticism...

May 25, 2016 — For the past ten years, we’ve been proudly welcoming the Bronx-based school’s students into our Criterion family. As the 2016 school year ends, we’re thrilled to watch another class of young filmmakers express their vision and employ what they’ve learned...

Jun 3, 2002 — In addition to being his funniest film, The Horse’s Mouth is the most personal, and touching, of all Alec Guinness’ movies. Apart from starring as the brilliant but bedraggled artist Gulley Jimson, Guinness also adapted the Oscar-nominated screenplay from Joyce...

The rapper, record producer, composer, and filmmaker talks about how the Once Upon a Time in China series elevated the martial genre, praises Mikey and Nicky as a master class in how to write a buddy movie, and shouts out...

May 29, 2017 — A biting satire of haute-bourgeois French society, Jean Renoir’s 1939 The Rules of the Game is beloved for the intricacy of its construction and the mixture of tenderness and irony with which it views its characters. Set just before the...

May 29, 2025 — The rise of fascism upended the childhoods of both filmmakers.

Dec 20, 2024 — Along with conversations with Jem Cohen and Johnnie To, the week brings fresh angles on the year that was.

May 2, 2024 — The series spotlights rarely seen films by Shirley Clarke, Marie Menken, Bette Gordon, Jack Smith, and dozens more.