Current

An online magazine covering film culture past and present

Galatea’s Revenge: Actresses Talk Back
Galatea’s Revenge: Actresses Talk Back

In a collection of behind-the-scenes documentaries now playing on the Criterion Channel, legendary female performers assert their agency over their screen personae and find freedom in the glamour and artifice of their profession.

By Erika Balsom

Max Richter’s Top 10
Max Richter’s Top 10

One of the most influential composers of his generation chooses a selection of favorite films, including ones with outstanding scores, such as The Royal Tenenbaums and La dolce vita.

Birth: Love Eternal
Birth: Love Eternal

Jonathan Glazer’s enigmatic second feature explores the terrors of being desperate for love—and the vulnerability, loneliness, and difficulty in understanding other people that might drive this state.

By Olivia Laing

Kiss of the Spider Woman: Revolutionary Transgressions
Kiss of the Spider Woman: Revolutionary Transgressions

A resounding critical and popular success upon its release, Héctor Babenco’s adaptation of a literary masterpiece by Manuel Puig was an unprecedented cinematic fusion of a radical politics of sex with a sexual politics of revolution.

By B. Ruby Rich

House Party: What’s Understood
House Party: What’s Understood

Unencumbered by the white gaze, Reginald Hudlin’s groundbreaking feature-film debut is a celebration of a Black community in all its diversity, featuring fully realized characters who exist not as spectacle but as reality.

By Michael Harriot

Yam daabo: On Idrissa Ouédraogo’s Humanist Cinema

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 5

Yam daabo: On Idrissa Ouédraogo’s Humanist Cinema

A deft mixture of family epic, romantic melodrama, landscape cinema, and comedy, Burkinabe director Idrissa Ouédraogo’s landmark film balances the universality of its themes with the fierce individuality of its characters.

By Chrystel Oloukoï

Kummatty: A Children’s Movie for Adults

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 5

Kummatty: A Children’s Movie for Adults

At once earnest and fantastic, carefree and mindful, G. Aravindan’s richly imagined work of folklore channels the director’s deep spiritual vision through the form of a children’s story.

By Ratik Asokan

The Fall of Otrar: From the Ruins of Otrar

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 5

The Fall of Otrar: From the Ruins of Otrar

This visually stunning masterpiece from Kazakh New Wave iconoclast Ardak Amirkulov is one of the few films that looks evil in the eye without flinching.

By Kent Jones

Chronicle of the Years of Fire: Chronicle of a Nation in Revolt

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 5

Chronicle of the Years of Fire: Chronicle of a Nation in Revolt

A singular achievement in Arab film history, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s sweeping political epic is a memorial to the lives lost in the struggle for Algerian independence.

By Joseph Fahim

The Criterion Channel’s February 2026 Lineup

Channel Calendars

The Criterion Channel’s February 2026 Lineup

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.

The Dead: Another Year
The Dead: Another Year

The constant negotiation of routine pleasure and profound sorrow—the experience of being human—is at the heart of John Huston’s final film, an exquisite adaptation of James Joyce’s classic short story.

By Michael Koresky

Captain Blood: A Pirate Is Born
Captain Blood: A Pirate Is Born

A smash hit at the box office, this electrifying adventure film established the team of director Michael Curtiz and actors Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland as one of the most iconic creative partnerships in Hollywood.

By Farran Smith Nehme

Video

Room Tone 2025
On Film  – 25 Dec 2025