Jun 27, 2012 — The warrior and philosopher protagonist of The Samurai Trilogy, Musashi Miyamoto, was a real-life seventeenth-century figure. Here, the translator of Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings tells us about this fascinating man and his principles of swordplay and spirituality.

The award-winning writer and director of Tótem shares her love for Aki Kaurismäki’s “strange, funny filmmaking spirit,” dedicates her selection of Barbra Streisand’s The Prince of Tides to her mom, and talks about Werner Herzog as a “warrior” in Burden...

Feb 20, 2026 — Since the 1980s, Indigenous artists have turned to documentary filmmaking and a variety of experimental forms to reassert their cultural sovereignty and lay claim to their own narratives.

Jan 20, 2026 — This month, leap into a century of cinema’s greatest stunts, feel the ache of thwarted romance and bittersweet yearning, or get into trouble with the Depression-era hustlers of Mervyn LeRoy’s pre-Code films.

Oct 29, 2024 — From Kaneto Shindo to Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the masters of the genre over the past half-century have tapped into a deep well of cultural anxiety, exploring everything from the sins of their nation’s feudal past to the dangers of new technologies.

Oct 16, 2024 — This month, celebrate Noirvember with a dazzlingly dark lineup of hard-boiled pleasures.

Jan 9, 2023 — The films in the Criterion Channel collection Free Jazz chronicle the development of a deeply experimental music that has baffled and enthralled listeners in equal measure.

Sep 22, 2021 — Writer-director John Huston blasted the fusty pieties that pervaded big-studio filmmaking in the post-Code era, whether as the progenitor of film noir with The Maltese Falcon (1941) or the brainy daredevil who threaded critiques of frontier capitalism, gold lust, and...

Jun 14, 2021 — Postwar Hollywood’s quintessential heavy wields his signature mix of brutality and neurosis to embody an abusive husband in Max Ophuls’s psychological drama.

Mar 26, 2021 — In her hypnotic, uncategorizable films, the director serves as a channel for images that emerge from deep within her unconscious.