Two Films by Kira Muratova: Restless Moments
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.
Night and the Cities
From After Hours to Mikey and Nicky to Collateral, movies centered on the twists and turns of a single night give filmmakers the chance to boldly experiment with cinematic time and space.
To Die For: You’re Not Anybody in America Unless You’re on TV
In Gus Van Sant’s wickedly funny tale of suburban depravity, Nicole Kidman plays a vacuous weather reporter whose hunger for fame anticipates our own era of digital celebrity.
Three Routes Through Thelma & Louise
How the West Was Won
Seamlessly blending an array of cinematic traditions, Thelma & Louise is more than anything a western—one that takes advantage of the genre’s elasticity and reflects its preoccupation with justice, liberty, and self-determination.
From Her to Eternity: The Enduring Icy Hotness of Deborah Kerr
The Oscar-winning actor—whose one-hundredth birthday we’re celebrating on the Criterion Channel—embodied a mess of contradictions that have long been obscured by her reputation for unbending rectitude.
La piscine: Savage Water
Dismissed as gossip-column fodder in its time, Jacques Deray’s cooly enigmatic villa thriller is an exploration of masculine vanity and feminine disillusion.
Crash: The Wreck of the Century
In one of the most controversial films of his career, David Cronenberg adapts a scandalous J. G. Ballard novel, radically overhauling its story to address a society paralyzed in the headlights of a new millennium.