The Criterion Collection
Essays
May 5, 1998 — John Woo’s last film made in Hong Kong before his emigration to the U.S. reflects the city's anxieties and state of crisis throughout the decade.
On the Channel
Oct 16, 2024 — This month, celebrate Noirvember with a dazzlingly dark lineup of hard-boiled pleasures.
On the Channel
Jun 12, 2024 — This summer, we’re bringing back one of our favorite seasonal themes with a hard-boiled Neonoir collection. Plus: Pop Shakespeare, Times Square, and Columbia Screwball.
Jul 26, 2016 — Megan Abbott is the award-winning author of seven novels, including Dare Me and The Fever. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal. She is also the author of The Street Was...
Feb 24, 2026 — For this existential noir, Joel and Ethan Coen drew inspiration from crime-fiction master James M. Cain’s lean, hard-boiled style and interest in the quotidian world of work.
Essays
Oct 6, 2008 — It is pretty much a convention of the hard-boiled gangster picture that most, if not all, of the principal characters wind up dead by the final shot. So it ought not constitute a “spoiler” to note that Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le...
An epic elegy set in 1920s Oklahoma, a vision of life in the wake of nuclear devastation, one of the most intoxicating love stories ever told, a Hong Kong action tour de force, a hard-boiled gangster noir, and an irreverent...
The award-winning actor, writer, and director shares his love for the hard-boiled voice-over in Blast of Silence, praises the exquisite acting and production design of Topsy-Turvy, and selects favorites by his frequent collaborators Joel and Ethan Coen.
Apr 27, 2026 — During the evening rush on a busy Los Angeles boulevard, a man steps into a news-vendor’s stall and scans the out-of-town papers section, where journals offer balm for homesick travelers and transplants. But his hometown, Evanston, Illinois, is missing—no call...
Mar 19, 2026 — To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the invention of VHS, the director and the editor of Videoheaven discuss how this game-changing format shaped their lives and imaginations and left a seismic impact on the film industry.