This September, take your seat in the jury box and watch legal battles over justice, truth, and freedom play out in our selection of riveting courtroom dramas. Explore the New Hollywood essentials that changed American filmmaking in the 1960s and ’70s, or savor the lurid bloodletting and lavish visual textures of giallo, Italy’s rapturous spin on the horror-mystery genre. There’s plenty more to choose from this month, including a centennial salute to Marcello Mastroianni, a tribute to the women screenwriters who left their mark on 1930s Hollywood in the pre-Code era and beyond, guest selections from acclaimed novelist Rachel Kushner, and a pair of wildly ambitious passion projects from Francis Ford Coppola, presented in time for the release of his new sci-fi epic Megalopolis.

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TOP STORIES

The American courtroom is the ultimate stage—a living theater where human dramas of truth, justice, and ethics play out with sometimes life-or-death stakes—so it’s little wonder that it’s the setting for some of the most riveting films ever made. Impassioned speeches, sharp cross-examinations, and explosive testimony make the courtroom drama an actor’s dream, while master directors like Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, The Verdict), Otto Preminger (Anatomy of a Murder), and Jonathan Demme (Philadelphia) use the intricacies of the legal system to explore complex questions of morality, subjectivity, and human nature. Full of surprise twists and bombshell revelations, these films remind us that there are multiple sides to every story.

FEATURING: 12 Angry Men (1957), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Inherit the Wind (1960), . . . And Justice for All (1979), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), The Verdict (1982), My Cousin Vinny (1992), Philadelphia (1993), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), 12 Angry Men (1997), Runaway Jury (2003)

Featuring a new introduction by Mark Harris

It was the era of movie brats, titanic ambition, and risk-taking creative gambles—the moment when a new generation of upstart filmmakers took over the Hollywood studios and forever changed the possibilities of American cinema. Liberated from the censorship of the Production Code and bankrolled by executives eager to reach an increasingly counterculture-minded youth market, hotshot auteurs like Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde), Robert Altman (MASH, California Split), Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven), and Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now) brought a bracing new naturalism to the screen in the 1960s and ’70s, pushing the boundaries of sex, violence, and social commentary while shattering stylistic conventions with bold formal experimentation. As studio filmmaking has become increasingly dominated by franchises and blockbusters, these era-defining films stand as beacons of artistic vision and radical independence.

FEATURING: Seconds (1966), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Graduate (1967), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), MASH (1970), Watermelon Man (1970), Klute (1971), The Last Picture Show (1971), The Last Detail (1973), California Split (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Mikey and Nicky (1976), Obsession (1976), Taxi Driver (1976), Days of Heaven (1978), Apocalypse Now Redux (2001)

The 1930s were a golden age for women writers, who penned some of the most outrageous provocations of the pre-Code era and created memorable, true-to-life female characters for the period’s reigning stars. While writers like renowned humorist Anita Loos (Red-Headed Woman) and two-time Academy Award winner Frances Marion (Dinner at Eight) have been justly celebrated, others like the prolific Jane Murfin (What Price Hollywood?), best-selling novelist turned screenwriter Viña Delmar (Make Way for Tomorrow), and pioneering writer-director Wanda Tuchock (Finishing School) played a significant but underrecognized role in shaping the first decade of sound cinema. Bringing wit, sass, and a personal perspective to stories about women navigating modern attitudes toward work, sex, family, and marriage, these trailblazing screenwriters ensured that women’s voices and perspectives were a vital part of early Hollywood.

FEATURING: Hallelujah (1929), Working Girls (1931), Blondie of the Follies (1932), Back Street (1932), Red-Headed Woman (1932), Rockabye (1932), What Price Hollywood? (1932), Bed of Roses (1933), Dinner at Eight (1933)*, Hold Your Man (1933), Midnight Mary (1933), Tugboat Annie (1933), Finishing School (1934), Sadie McKee (1934), Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), You and Me (1938)*

Born one hundred years ago this September, Marcello Mastroianni made being a movie star look effortless, wearing his suave good looks and worldly sophistication with a sly, self-deprecating lightness that was perhaps only matched by his American counterpart, Cary Grant. Though he will forever be remembered for his immortal collaborations with Federico Fellini—who cast the actor as his alter ego in his masterpiece 8½—Mastroianni left behind a staggering body of indelible performances for major directors like Luchino Visconti (Le notti bianche), Michelangelo Antonioni (La notte), and Mario Monicelli (The Organizer). An actor of virtuosic versatility who was equally at home in the zesty farce of Divorce Italian Style, in the humane drama of A Special Day, and parodying his own image in We All Loved Each Other So Much, Mastroianni embodies, perhaps more than any other performer, the soul of Italian cinema.

FEATURING: Le notti bianche (1957), Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), Il bell’Antonio (1960), La dolce vita (1960), Divorce Italian Style (1961), La notte (1961), 8½ (1963), The Organizer (1963), Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963), Marriage Italian Style (1964), A Slightly Pregnant Man (1973), We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974), A Special Day (1977), One Hundred and One Nights (1995)

Black-gloved killers, blood-red violence: welcome to the mind-warping world of giallo, the luridly stylized genre of mystery-thrillers that emanated from Italy in the 1960s and ’70s. Sprung from the imaginations of directors like Mario Bava (Blood and Black Lace), Dario Argento (Deep Red), and Lucio Fulci (Don’t Torture a Duckling), giallo took classic influences—Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock—and scrambled them into baroque exercises in pure stylistic excess, defined by kaleidoscopic color, voyeuristic camera work, eye-popping mise-en-scène, and eardrum-shattering soundtracks. Unbound from narrative logic and laced with subversive critiques of church, state, and class, these perversely pleasurable cinematic transgressions are some of the most inspired and imaginative genre films ever made.

FEATURING: The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), Blood and Black Lace (1964), The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), In the Folds of the Flesh (1970), All the Colors of the Dark (1972), Death Walks at Midnight (1972), Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972), Who Saw Her Die? (1972), Torso (1973), What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974), Deep Red (1975), Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975), Tenebrae (1982)

CRITERION ORIGINALS

With her latest novel, Creation Lake, hitting shelves this September, acclaimed writer Rachel Kushner—whose The Flamethrowers was recently named one of the best 100 books of the twenty-first century by the New York Times—sits down with Criterion Channel curator Aliza Ma to discuss her long-standing fascination with film and the ways in which cinema has influenced her own art. Reflecting on her favorite movies made in her onetime home of San Francisco, why Michelangelo Antonioni is always with her, and why she considers Barbara Loden’s Wanda to be the greatest film ever made about the United States, Kushner offers astute cultural insight into the filmgoing experience and the alchemical relationship between the cinematic image and the printed word.

FEATURING: L’enfance nue (1968), Teorema (1968), The Pig (1970), Wanda (1970), Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (1975), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Mr. Klein (1976), Sans Soleil (1983)

EXCLUSIVE PREMIERES

A timely, riveting documentary that unfurls with the energy and suspense of a thriller, Bad Press—winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression—offers unparalleled insight into the inner workings of Indigenous politics. Imagine you lived in a world where your only reliable news source became government propaganda overnight. That’s exactly what happened to the citizens of the Muscogee Nation in 2018. Out of 574 federally recognized tribes, the Muscogee Nation was one of only five to establish a free and independent press—until the nation’s legislative branch abruptly repealed the landmark Free Press Act in advance of an election. Refusing to accept this flagrant act of oppression, one defiant journalist, Angel Ellis, charges headfirst into a historic battle against her tribal government’s censorship and corruption.

In this luminous, gossamer-delicate portrait of human connection, Stefan (Stefan Gota), a Romanian construction worker living in Brussels, says goodbye to his friends as he prepares to leave the city and return home to his mother for a possibly extended stay. But while waiting for his car to be fixed, he meets Shuxiu (Liyo Gong), a Belgian-Chinese woman preparing a doctorate on mosses and whose attention to the near-invisible stops him in his tracks. On the heels of his similarly ethereal Ghost Tropic, rising director Bas Devos offers another mood-drenched Brussels city symphony. With a quiet grace that’s becoming a trademark, he captures both the longing of contemporary urban life and the potential for enchantment that still exists in spaces shared by strangers from different worlds.

REDISCOVERIES AND RESTORATIONS

One of the most intoxicating cinematic achievements of the 1980s is given spectacular new life in this director-approved reimagining, which includes six minutes of never-before-seen footage. After the era-defining successes of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, director Francis Ford Coppola swung for the fences once more with this colossally ambitious, gorgeously stylized musical romance featuring songs by Tom Waits, a commercial failure that nearly derailed the director’s career, but which has become cherished for its stunning visuals and innovative approach to the genre. No expense was spared on a lavish soundstage recreation of Las Vegas, a neon dream against which two lovers (Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr) break up and have affairs over the course of one fateful Fourth of July.

B-movie maestro William Castle and cult star Vincent Price join forces for this unabashedly entertaining old-dark-house thriller, which blends creepy atmospherics with a touch of camp outrageousness. Price plays a wealthy eccentric who throws a party at his foreboding mansion, offering to give each of his guests $10,000—as long as they can survive the night. What begins as an evening of fun and harmless scares soon becomes a night of terror, as the weird goings-on (ghosts, a pit of acid, walking skeletons) and schlocky-fun thrills pile up.

A long-overlooked gem of American independent cinema, this delicate character study from writer-director Christopher Munch features a luminous performance from Jacqueline Bisset as a cancer patient confronting her mortality. Seeking to make sense of a life tinged with regret, she embarks on a journey across America that brings her in touch with those she loved and lost over the course of her existence. A probing, unusually unsentimental consideration of what it means to face death, The Sleepy Time Gal forgoes comforting clichés in favor of something far more truthful and uncompromisingly open-ended.

CRITERION COLLECTION EDITIONS

Federico Fellini plunges into the seductive decadence of Rome’s rich and glamorous in this biting, era-defining critique of celebrity.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Interviews with actor Marcello Mastroianni, filmmaker Lina Wertmüller, and scholar David Forgacs; a video essay by filmmaker Kogonada; and more.

A groundbreaking, high-stakes experiment in metacinema brings a stunning immediacy to questions about the on-screen representation of sexual violence.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: An interview with director Martha Coolidge, conducted by filmmaker Allison Anders; and Old-Fashioned Woman (1974), a documentary by Coolidge about her grandmother.

An Oscar-winning Jane Fonda brings nervy audacity and counterculture style to one of her most iconic roles, as a sex worker drawn into a missing-person investigation when a detective (Donald Sutherland) shows up at her door.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Interviews with Fonda and director Alan J. Pakula, a program about Pakula and the film by filmmaker Matthew Miele, a documentary made during the shooting of the film, and more.

DIRECTOR SPOTLIGHTS

To mark the release of his acclaimed new drama His Three Daughters, we’re revisiting the films of Azazel Jacobs, who has been quietly crafting some of the funniest, tenderest, and most winningly offbeat works in the last two decades of American independent cinema. Poignant stories of outsiders and misfits navigating life’s challenges—an adult son hiding out in his parents’ home in the lo-fi family portrait Momma’s Man, an overweight teen finding himself in the refreshingly authentic coming-of-age tale Terri, a mutually unfaithful couple rekindling their spark in the comedy of remarriage The Lovers—his films capture some of the most painfully relatable parts of the human experience with wry humor and generous empathy.

FEATURING: The GoodTimesKid (2005), Momma’s Man (2008), Terri (2011), The Lovers (2017)*

Simmering with outrage and biting irony, the slashingly subversive films of French-Martinican writer-director Julius-Amédée Laou carry on the legacy of his compatriot Frantz Fanon, giving blistering expression to the experience of postcolonial systemic racism in France. Though he is most famous as a playwright, Laou’s forays into cinema—including the urgent, landmark short Open Mic Solitaire and his trenchantly funny first feature The Old Sorceress and the Valet—display boldly cinematic formal flourishes deployed in the name of radical defiance.

FEATURES: The Old Sorceress and the Valet (1987), French Wedding Caribbean Style (2002)

SHORTS: Open Mic Solitaire (1983), Mist Melodies of Paris (1985)

HOLLYWOOD HITS

A work of overwhelming, visionary power, Francis Ford Coppola’s hallucinatory Vietnam War epic is one of the greatest films of the 1970s. It’s presented here in its Redux extended cut, along with a riveting behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling how the production pushed Coppola and his collaborators to the edge of destruction.

John Landis’s howlingly original genre touchstone is the rare horror comedy to be as truly frightening as it is funny.

AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS

The ultimate in ’90s slacker cinema is an irresistible, funny-sweet ode to the decade’s anti-sellout ethos set to a definitive alt-rock soundtrack.

Cult auteur Abel Ferrara offers a bracing plunge into the sordid neon underbelly of 1980s Times Square in this stylishly pulpy neonoir sleazefest.

Elisabeth Moss delivers a fearless performance as a woman on the edge in a tour-de-force portrait of psychological breakdown from acclaimed director Alex Ross Perry.

Ethan Hawke brings the incredible life of unsung country-music great Blaze Foley—genius, loser, philosopher, drunk, poet, rebel, and ramblin’ man—to the screen with humor and heart.

INTERNATIONAL CLASSICS

Superstar director Park Chan-wook achieved his first major success with this masterful mystery thriller, which explores the complex relationship between North and South Korea with searing humanity.