This month on the Criterion Channel, 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. There’s plenty more to choose from, including a celebration of African American history on film, Dag Johan Haugerud’s award-winning Oslo Trilogy, Héctor Babenco’s feverish portraits of life on the margins in Brazil and Argentina, short films from a trailblazing Sudanese collective, and the exclusive premiere of Peter Hujar’s Day.

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*Indicates programming available only in the U.S.

TOP STORIES

Stunts!

Featuring a new introduction by stunt coordinator Buddy Joe Hooker, part of Criterion’s Spotlight series

Don’t try this at home! Cocurated by legendary stunt artist Buddy Joe Hooker, this thrill-packed tribute to the art of stunt design—which will be celebrated at the one hundredth Academy Awards in 2028 via the long-overdue addition of a new category—celebrates the bold, ingenious visionaries whose invention and daring have brought seemingly impossible images to the screen. From the often genuinely dangerous slapstick wizardry of silent-comedy pioneers Buster Keaton (The General) and Harold Lloyd (Safety Last!) to the high-octane exhilaration of car-chase classics like Bullitt and Gone in 60 Seconds to the breathtaking, balletic action choreography of Hong Kong auteurs Jackie Chan (Police Story) and John Woo (Hard Boiled, Face/Off), these films explode with some of the most hair-raising, stylish, and unforgettable set pieces ever captured on film.

FEATURING: Safety Last! (1923), The General (1926), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), Stagecoach (1939), Ben-Hur (1959), Bullitt (1968), Gone in 60 Seconds (1974), Hooper (1978), The Road Warrior (1981), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Police Story (1985), Hard Boiled (1992), Face/Off (1997), The Hunted (2003), Death Proof (2007) 

Yearning

The exquisite ache of longing suffuses these at once melancholy and intoxicatingly romantic visions of heartbreak, unrequited love, and forbidden passion that luxuriate in the overwhelming pull toward a connection that feels all but impossible. From swooning Hollywood classics (Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, All That Heaven Allows) and sumptuously stylized period romances (In the Mood for Love, Bright Star, The Deep Blue Sea) to tender evocations of queer yearning (My Own Private Idaho, God’s Own Country) and unpredictable tales of cosmic connection (Sleepless in Seattle, Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time), these films overflow with a bittersweet pang that is familiar to anyone who has experienced the peculiar pleasure-pain of all-consuming desire.

Programmed by Hillary Weston

FEATURING: The Passionate Friends (1949), Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), All That Heaven Allows (1955), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Maurice (1987), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), The Age of Innocence (1993), In the Mood for Love (2000), Brideshead Revisited (2008)*, Bright Star (2009)*, The Deep Blue Sea (2012)*, God’s Own Country (2017)*, Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (2020)* 

Gangsters, Gold Diggers, and Grifters: Mervyn LeRoy’s Pre-Code Films

In the early 1930s, when Warner Bros. was the home for gritty, socially conscious dramas ripped from the fabric of working-class life, perhaps no director exemplified the studio’s trademark style—punchy, edgy, slangy, and relentlessly paced—more than the prolific Mervyn LeRoy, who directed a remarkable twenty-five films between 1930 and 1934. Including brutal crime-drama classics like Little Caesar and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, hard-hitting stories of urban realism like Five Star Final and Three on a Match, fast-talking comedies like High Pressure and Hard to Handle, and the Busby Berkeley musical extravaganza Gold Diggers of 1933, these tales of hustlers, chiselers, con men, and chorus girls bring the flinty, make-or-break world of the Depression era to vivid life.

Programmed by Bernardo Rondeau

FEATURING: Five Star Final (1931), Little Caesar (1931)*, Big City Blues (1932), High Pressure (1932), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Three on a Match (1932), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Hard to Handle (1933), Heat Lightning (1934), Hi, Nellie! (1934)

Sudanese Film Group

Formalized in 1989 to foster a new wave of Sudanese filmmaking free from censorship, the Sudanese Film Group sought to create a distinctly homegrown cinema that reflected the experiences of ordinary people and challenged entrenched systems of power in a country shaped by decades of colonialism, civil war, and political instability. Formally radical and thematically incisive, these short films by founding members Eltayeb Mahdi, Ibrahim Shaddad, and Suliman Mohamed Ibrahim Elnour employ a cinematic grammar all their own to confront issues of economic exploitation, imperialism, the abuse of power, and postcolonial disillusionment. Though the group’s ambitions were soon thwarted by the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, the films they left behind are a powerful assertion of creative independence and cinema as a form of political resistance—a legacy explored in the revelatory documentary Talking About Trees, also featured here.

All films except Africa, the Jungle, Drums and Revolution and Talking About Trees were digitally restored by Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V.

SHORTS: Hunting Party (1964), The Tomb (1977), It Still Rotates (1978), Africa, the Jungle, Drums and Revolution (1979), Four Times for Children (1979), A Camel (1981), The Rope (1984), The Station (1989)

FEATURES: Talking About Trees (2019)

Wuthering Heights: Two Versions

As the latest screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights makes its way to theaters in time for Valentine’s Day, revisit two strikingly different cinematic visions of Emily Brontë’s immortal tale of tempestuous, star-crossed love that stretches beyond the bounds of time. Starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, William Wyler’s sweeping 1939 version—with its exquisitely moody black-and-white cinematography—remains a paragon of classic Hollywood craftsmanship, while Andrea Arnold’s 2011 postmodern triumph roils with a raw, visceral intensity, charged with youthful desire and violent obsession.

FEATURING: Wuthering Heights (1939), Wuthering Heights (2011)

Celebrate Black History

The story of Black Americans is, in many ways, the story of America itself. Though the African American experience has long been relegated to the margins of the big screen, a vital cinematic legacy endures thanks to the work of pioneers like Oscar Micheaux (Within Our Gates), Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep), Jessie Maple (Will), Madeline Anderson (I Am Somebody), and Kathleen Collins (Losing Ground), as well as bracing contemporary voices like Adepero Oduye (To Be Free). Their stories of revolution, resistance, creativity, community, and everyday endurance offer a multifaceted vision of Black American identity across generations.

FEATURES: Within Our Gates (1920), The Blood of Jesus (1941), Nothing but a Man (1964), A Time for Burning (1966), Portrait of Jason (1967), Killer of Sheep (1977), Will (1981), Cane River (1982), A Different Image (1982), Losing Ground (1982), Say Amen, Somebody (1982), You Got to Move (1985), Paris Is Burning (1990), Daughters of the Dust (1991), A Place of Rage (1991), Alma’s Rainbow (1994), The Watermelon Woman (1996), Drylongso (1998), Compensation (1999)

SHORTS: Integration Report 1 (1960), Baldwin’s Nigger (1968), Black Panthers (1970), I Am Somebody (1970), Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist (1979), To Be Free (2017)

EXCLUSIVE PREMIERES

Peter Hujar’s Day

Featuring a new interview with director Ira Sachs, part of Criterion’s Meet the Filmmakers series

A loving snapshot of a vanished New York, Ira Sachs’s captivating cultural time capsule is a warm, witty, graceful re-creation of a real-life conversation that took place between photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) and writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) in 1974. Peter Hujar’s Day eavesdrops on the two friends’ leisurely, affectionate hangout as Hujar recounts his previous day’s activities, offering insights into both his art and his everyday life. What emerges is a touching celebration of creativity, connection, and simply being present, made exceptionally vivid by director Ira Sachs’s graceful cinematic flourishes and wonderfully tender performances from Whishaw and Hall, whose chemistry gives the film its heart and soul.

REDISCOVERIES AND RESTORATIONS

Rude

Jamaican Canadian director Clement Virgo’s landmark debut—among the first Canadian dramatic features made by and featuring a predominantly Black cast and crew—is a searing, poetic portrait of marginalized souls fighting to overcome their demons. Over the course of one Easter weekend in a Toronto housing project, three desperate people—a drug dealer turned artist (Maurice Dean Wint) trying to go straight; a boxer (Richard Chevolleau) coming to terms with his sexuality; and a young woman (Rachael Crawford) coping with a breakup—confront the darkest parts of themselves while searching for a path forward.

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY CINEMA 

Dag Johan Haugerud’s Oslo Trilogy

When Dag Johan Haugerud’s exquisite coming-of-age portrait Dreams won the Golden Bear at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival, it marked the culmination of a remarkable trilogy of stand-alone but thematically connected films—alongside Love and Sex—exploring the complexities of intimacy, desire, gender, and modern relationships against the backdrop of contemporary Oslo. Suffused with the spirit of Eric Rohmer in their elegant naturalism and richly conversational style, these wry, incisive works grapple gracefully with the friction between social norms and the realities of human connection in its myriad, often messy forms.

FEATURING: Love (2024), Sex (2024), Dreams (2024)

CRITERION COLLECTION EDITIONS

Imprisoned together, a leftist militant and a gay, cinema-obsessed window dresser forge a bond that transforms their understanding of politics, sexuality, and masculinity. 

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A documentary on the making of the film; an interview with Suzanne Jill Levine, biographer of author Manuel Puig; and more.

The blossoming romance between a well-off widow and her younger gardener challenges 1950s social conventions in a pinnacle of classic Hollywood melodrama.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by film scholars John Mercer and Tamar Jeffers-McDonald, Mark Rappaport’s essay film Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, an interview with director Douglas Sirk, and more. 

A ragtag band of drug addicts try to outrun sobriety and fate as they rob pharmacies for pills across the 1970s Pacific Northwest. 

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary featuring director Gus Van Sant and actor Matt Dillon, a documentary on the making of the film, deleted scenes, and more.

A small-town everyman tries to make it in the big city in this silent-comedy favorite featuring some of slapstick virtuoso Harold Lloyd’s most daring stunts.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by film critic Leonard Maltin and director and Harold Lloyd archivist Richard Correll, the feature-length documentary Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius, and more.

Martin Scorsese and an all-star cast bring Edith Wharton’s classic tale of passion, scandal, and hypocrisy amid New York’s Gilded Age to sumptuous life.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A documentary on the making of the film and interviews with Scorsese, coscreenwriter Jay Cocks, production designer Dante Ferretti, and costume designer Gabriella Pescucci.

DIRECTOR SPOTLIGHTS

Directed by Héctor Babenco

Featuring Babenco: Tell Me When I Die, a documentary by Bárbara Paz

Outlaws and outcasts populate the films of Argentine Brazilian director Héctor Babenco, an artist of rare empathy born eighty years ago this month. First finding success (and notoriety) in Brazil with his incendiary thriller Lúcio Flávio—the true story of an infamous bandit that doubles as a potent critique of police corruption—he went on to achieve international acclaim with his neorealist bombshell Pixote, a harrowing descent into Brazil’s criminal underworld as seen through the eyes of a young street boy, and the subversive Manuel Puig adaptation Kiss of the Spider Woman, a taboo-shattering exploration of masculinity and sexuality starring Raul Julia and an Academy Award–winning William Hurt. Moving between gritty authenticity, operatic melodrama, and flourishes of feverish surrealism, Babenco’s films stand as works of indelible courage and compassion.

FEATURING: King of the Night (1975), Lúcio Flávio (1977), Pixote (1981), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), Foolish Heart (1998), The Past (2007), Babenco: Tell Me When I Die (2019)

Two Documentaries by Anupama Srinivasan and Anirban Dutta

Two recent documentaries by filmmaking duo Anupama Srinivasan and Anirban Dutta, made in far-flung corners of the world, reveal a shared commitment to patient, empathetic observation. Flickering Lights follows villagers on the India-Myanmar border who have spent decades awaiting electricity, capturing their hopes, anxieties, and daily struggles when light finally arrives. Nocturnes plunges viewers into the Himalayan night, where scientists studying hawk moths prompt a deeper reflection on the fragile balance between humans, other species, and a warming planet, building into a quiet meditation on how we see, listen, and connect.

FEATURING: Flickering Lights (2023), Nocturnes (2024)

AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS

SLC Punk!

A directionless punk rocker (Matthew Lillard) in the Mormon stronghold of Salt Lake City, Utah, faces a conundrum: how to grow up without selling out.

INTERNATIONAL CLASSICS

Ashes of Time Redux*

A swordsman (Leslie Cheung) confronts the ghosts of his past in the definitive version of Wong Kar Wai’s epic martial-arts fever dream.

MUSIC FILMS

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Follow Canadian heavy-metal lifers Anvil as they stumble through a harrowing European tour in one of the most beloved rockumentaries of all time.

LUNAR NEW YEAR

Double Happiness*

Sandra Oh shines in this warm, sharp-witted story of a young Chinese Canadian woman who must figure out how to honor her cultural heritage while forging her own identity.