The Criterion Collection
Essays
Oct 18, 1998 — 1986 was not a good time to make a film which attempted to capture the Punk spirit. Deep into second-term Reagan/Thatcher, American and British pop culture were infected with cynicism, hopelessness, immobility. So when Alex Cox came over with his...
The Daily
Feb 1, 2019 — A cast of dolls and a rhino are featured in this year’s award-winners, and Steven Soderbergh has previewed his new film.
Jul 2, 2026 — I first met Courtney Love in 1994. I was twelve years old, and I felt ugly and confused pretty much all the time. I was slouching through the locker bay at Calle Mayor Middle School in Torrance, California, when I...
The Daily
Feb 18, 2020 — From the making of Chinatown, through fresh memoirs and ongoing biographies, here’s this month’s overview of new and noteworthy titles.
Oct 29, 2019 — Matewan opens in the pitch-black darkness of a West Virginia coal mine. A miner lights the carbide lamp on his helmet. The small open flame he wears provides the only flicker of light in this cramped space next to a...
The Oscar-winning composer selects favorite films that continue to excite him, including Andrei Rublev and Sid & Nancy; praises the transportive nature of Les Blank’s work; and shares how Nicolas Roeg changed his life.
The Daily
Oct 26, 2017 — New York. A new restoration of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Daughter of the Nile (1987) opens at the Quad tomorrow. In the New York Times, J. Hoberman notes that it was “produced by a music company as a vehicle for the Taiwanese...
Essays
Feb 18, 2008 — At the climax of Alex Cox’s Walker (1987), a helicopter descends from the night sky onto a plaza where the colonial buildings are ablaze and an army of mercenaries is disintegrating . . .
The actor talks about Steven Soderbergh’s use of nonlinear storytelling in Traffic, shares how Sid & Nancy continues to inspire him as a performer, and praises the visual poetry of Drugstore Cowboy.