The Criterion Collection
Features
Jun 15, 2020 — The hugely popular and prolific Italian actor Alberto Sordi relished playing rogues, characters riddled with foibles and weaknesses. In an interview with Positif’s Jean A. Gili in 1999, he revealed that his aim was to depict in a comic register...
Jan 10, 2005 — Seijun Suzuki made a breakthrough with his second feature, a yakuza thriller full of devil-may-care assurance and try-anything imagination.
The Daily
May 20, 2019 — Triple crosses follow double crosses in this slick crime thriller.
Essays
Oct 24, 2005 — Kihachi Okamoto’s subversion of the samurai movie possesses the same gritty, stark realism with regard to imagery and body count, yet the tone is decidedly comic.
Oct 24, 2005 — Mirroring changes in awareness, politics, and lifestyle occurring across the globe, the chanbara (or Japanese swordplay film) underwent a significant metamorphosis in the early 1960s, acquiring a decidedly more radical spirit. Seemingly without warning, groundbreaking cinematic styles from beyond the...
The Daily
Nov 13, 2025 — The filmmaker’s memoir is “messy, manic, and shot through with revelation.”
Production Notes
Jun 21, 2022 — The producer of our edition of the masterful 1987 melodrama tells the stories of some of director Stanley Kwan’s legendary collaborators, including superstars Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung.
The Daily
Mar 9, 2018 — Ryan Coogler is on the cover of the new March/April 2018 issue of Film Comment, and Devika Girish writes about how “the mythology of Black Panther is keenly attuned to the present even as it undoes the past: it is...
Jul 28, 2017 — A new 4K restoration of James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), converted to 3D, is heading to theaters on August 25. Now James Wigney of the New Corp Australia Network reports that “Cameron says he is in negotiations to...
Jun 6, 2017 — Combining sardonic humor with poignant characterizations, this cult comedy explores the discontents of two high-school graduates adrift in strip-mall America.