Charles Musser is a professor of film and media studies at Yale University. His seventy-two-minute documentary Errol Morris: A Lightning Sketch recently premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.

Dec 31, 2015 — Take a look at this year’s far-ranging wacky Criterion sketch.

Jan 1, 2014 — This January 1, we present a red and black sketch to keep you guessing for the year ahead.

Jul 12, 2026 — Channel Calendars This month on the Criterion Channel, crank up the volume on our playlist of (actually good) rock biopics that go beyond cliché to explore the elusive place where inspiration sparks and musical legends are born. Our Southern Gothic...

Oct 30, 2025 — Classics of the genre—including Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession and David Cronenberg’s The Fly—explore the gory extremes of corporeal experience.

May 25, 2023 — One of the first hit movies made by an Asian American team, They Call Me Bruce confronts everyday racism with irreverent humor emblematic of its era.

Nov 2, 2022 — The director of Samson and Delilah and Sweet Country discusses his formative artistic encounters, his eclectic professional background, and on-screen Indigenous representation.

Mar 15, 2022 — The story of queerness in American cinema isn’t complete without the unusual case of These Three (1936) and The Children’s Hour (1961). Both films are based on Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play The Children’s Hour, inspired by an incident in which...

Jul 23, 2021 — Deep Dives In later years, Buster Keaton referred to his signing of a contract with MGM as “the worst mistake of my career.” In 1928 it was purely a business decision. The last few films he had made for his own...

Oct 30, 2020 — Channel Calendars With Thanksgiving around the corner, we’re grateful to the tireless preservationists who keep film history alive. Founded by Martin Scorsese in 1990, The Film Foundation has been an indispensable pillar of moving-image culture for the past three decades,...