The Criterion Collection
Essays
Mar 27, 2012 — Coward and Lean? It may not sound as natural as Launder and Gilliat or Powell and Pressburger, perhaps because we don’t instinctively think of Noël Coward as a filmmaker or of David Lean as part of a team. But they...
Jan 18, 2012 — Poto and Cabengo: Three-Part Harmony Jean-Pierre Gorin’s three Southern California movies are so militantly unclassifiable that terms like documentary or essay film seem as hopelessly out of sync with the recalcitrant and frequently exhilarating works themselves as a Marxist harangue in...
Essays
Oct 25, 1994 — Kenji Mizoguchi develops his medieval fable about moral freedom and slavery with intuition, cunning, and an overarching sense of tragedy.
Jul 22, 2026 — In his fiction features Beginners, 20th Century Women, and C’mon C’mon, the acclaimed director casts a sensitive gaze on the rich psychodynamics of human relationships and the hidden interconnections of our unconscious motivations.
The Daily
Apr 26, 2021 — Capping a months-long journey, Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland wins three top awards.
Aug 28, 2020 — One severe pan, a good handful of raves, and a set of fence-straddling reviews recommending that viewers go ahead and proceed—but with caution.
Features
Aug 26, 2019 — In the first twenty-four features he directed, between 1925 and 1939, Alfred Hitchcock —always working closely with his wife Alma Reville (variously credited for assistant direction, screenplay, and continuity)—evolved from apprenticeship to technical mastery to an exuberant flowering that made...
Essays
Jan 23, 2017 — In his radical debut feature, Ousmane Sembène reveals the agony of the postcolonial experience through the story of a Senegalese migrant abused by her French employers.
Sep 13, 2016 — Kenji Mizoguchi achieved the sublime with this structurally complex portrait of artistic ambition and female subjugation.