Spotlight
Under the Influence
In this ongoing series of videos, contemporary filmmakers talk to us about the movies that have had a lasting impact on their work.
Current
An online magazine covering film culture past and present
Close to Home: A Conversation with Juan Pablo González
United by a meditative approach that captures the spiritual bounty of the natural landscape and the tolls of physical labor, this Mexican director’s films challenge stereotypical depictions of his country’s rural communities.
Mother: Look, Ma, No Therapist!
Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds are at their comedic best in this tale of parent-child bonding filled with Oedipal humor and emotional insight.
Real Life: A Young, Honest Guy Like Himself
A brilliant satire, inspired by a 1973 PBS documentary series that gave rise to the reality-television genre, Albert Brooks’s first feature film examines the ethical dilemmas of combining cheap entertainment and sociological experiment.
Unforgotten Ancestors: Il Cinema Ritrovato 2024
This year, Bologna’s annual feast of restorations and rediscoveries showcased one of the most ambitious masterpieces of the silent era, the melodramas of Japanese filmmaker Kozaburo Yoshimura, and other treasures of film history.
Neza Calling: Punk at the Margins of Mexico City
In the late 1980s, filmmakers Gregorio Rocha and Sarah Minter set out to capture the rebellious subculture of youth in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, a slumlike suburb synonymous with the worst failures of urban expansion in Mexico.
Not a Pretty Picture: An Act of Reckoning
In her formally daring debut feature, Martha Coolidge stages a confrontation with the subject of date rape that questions the kind of “closure” required in conventional storytelling.
Jessica Pratt’s Top 10
Among the Los Angeles–based singer-songwriter’s favorites are a music documentary she knows by heart, a Wes Anderson film with an iconic soundtrack, and a courtroom drama propelled by brilliant character actors.
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.
The Criterion Channel’s September 2024 Lineup
This month brings riveting courtroom dramas, New American Cinema classics, giallo shockers, pre-Code gems by women screenwriters, and a new episode of Adventures in Moviegoing.
Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Human-Scaled Artistry in The Savages
The great actor creates an unforgettable portrait of a man worn down by the world in Tamara Jenkins’s darkly funny and deeply moving family drama.
The Criterion Closet 40
The monumental forty-film box set CC40 celebrates forty years of the Criterion Collection with an electrifying mix of classic and contemporary films, and presents them with all their special features and essays.
My Own Private Idaho’s Outsider Twist on Shakespeare
Made in an era when self-consciously postmodern takes on the Bard were popular, Gus Van Sant’s melancholy road movie mines the ambiguously queer tensions in the history play Henry IV.
