The Criterion Collection
Essays
Apr 19, 2004 — “Floating weeds, drifting down the leisurely river of our lives,” has long been a favored metaphor in Japanese prose and poetry. This plant, the ukigusa (duckweed in English), floating aimlessly, carried by stronger currents, is seen as emblematic of our...
Dec 5, 2023 — A tight-lipped stranger arrives in a gold-mining town. After checking into a hotel, he heads to Charlie’s Saloon, one of those gambling palaces with glittering chandeliers and be-feathered hostesses. He is told that Charlie “runs the town” and “owns a...
Interviews
Oct 29, 2013 — In this 1997 interview, the British-born Hollywood director talks about his early career and the making of his most famous film, The Uninvited.
Jan 5, 2016 — Toshiya Fujita’s two-film saga set exuberant, manga-inspired martial-arts choreography against a backdrop of a Japanese society in transition to unfold a vivid tale of epic vengeance.
The Daily
Apr 22, 2025 — Adaptations, Hollywood histories, and Satyajit Ray’s cover designs feature in this month’s roundup.
Nov 2, 2020 — Two decades before his inspired turn in Parasite (2019) as a chiseling patriarch—The Man With No Plan—Song Kang-ho became a symbol of new wave South Korean cinema by starring in a pair of iconic films as the movement was beginning...
Aug 13, 2024 — In films that elude categorization, the Ukrainian director developed a boldly experimental aesthetic that evokes her mercurial inner dialogue and the leaps and stutters of her imagination.
The Daily
Jul 8, 2022 — The actor brought a wiry tension to his roles in The Godfather, Thief, and Misery.
Jul 14, 2020 — Bruce Lee seemed born to be on-screen. At three months old, he appeared as an infant in a Hong Kong movie called Golden Gate Girl (1941). After he died suddenly of cerebral edema in 1973 at the age of thirty-two,...
Essays
Aug 20, 2001 — Preston Sturges’s generous-hearted satire achieves a synthesis that is both terribly funny and deeply moving.