The Criterion Collection
Essays
Feb 9, 2010 — You can’t keep a good woman, or a great movie about a good woman, down. By all accounts, goodness in the real Lola Montez reflected the vagaries of character, not talent. She was, as Cosmo Brown says of Lina Lamont...
Sep 19, 2005 — Jane Campion is a rarity, not simply because she is a world-class female director, but because she has devoted her career to exploring female subjectivity.
Feb 19, 2025 — Gus Van Sant’s lyrical exploration of addiction and faith—adapted from an autobiographical novel by James Fogle—influenced cinematic drug depictions throughout the nineties and helped to initiate a wave of American independent filmmaking.
Feb 19, 2019 — A master at adapting literary classics for the screen, Luchino Visconti made a bold choice in emphasizing the homoerotic undertones in Thomas Mann’s novella.
Sep 5, 2017 — “If the only thing we wanted, or expected, a horror film to do was to get a rise out of you—to make your eyes widen and your jaw drop, to leave you in breathless chortling spasms of WTF disbelief—then Darren...
Sep 3, 2007 — Aconversation, a misunderstanding. The basic pattern in many of Jim Jarmusch’s films is two characters, sometimes three, bound together by chance and wandering along toward an ill-defined goal, each trying all the while to get to know the other or...
Dec 12, 2023 — In the history of cinema, French director Albert Lamorisse is a unique figure. His intense focus on three subjects—children, animals, and flight—is distinctive, and the fact that all of his works clock in under ninety minutes (and most under an...
On the Channel
Feb 24, 2022 — Next month on the Criterion Channel, we’re pushing the envelope with a series of the pre-Code films made by Paramount Pictures, a centenary tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini, and a collection of groundbreaking concert documentaries.
Dec 20, 2019 — The following account was scratched together in August 1990, when Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World was still taking shape in the editing room. Apart from a basic rinse of copy editing, I’m offering it up essentially as is,...
The Daily
Jul 10, 2026 — We’re celebrating the Harry Dean Stanton centennial, listening to Ross McElwee and Tsai Ming-liang, and revisiting the work of Bruce Conner.