Channel Collections

Like his acclaimed feature Happyend , now streaming on the Criterion Channel, these short films by Neo Sora display both his keen eye for vivid cinematic details and ability to connect intimate human stories with broader social and political questions. While The Chicken and A Very Straight Neck are striking adaptations of short works by the Japanese writers …

Julien Duvivier was among the definitive craftsmen of classical French cinema, bringing expressive camera work, atmospheric mise-en-scène, and a darkly lyrical sensibility to often-overlooked jewels across an extraordinary array of genres. His deeply shadowed, fatalistic early sound films David Golder and La tête d’un homme anticipate the poetic-realist styl…

Featuring an introduction by Grady Hendrix, part of Criterion’s Spotlight series Raw, gritty, intensely angry visions of individuals pushed to the brink by a corrupt society, the films of Hong Kong action renegade Ringo Lam scorch the screen with an anarchic fury. His action classic City on Fire offered Chow Yun-fat one of his meatiest roles and inspired Que…

Urgent, eye-opening dispatches from the front lines of American class struggle, these galvanizing documentaries by Barbara Kopple—both winners of the Academy Award for Best Documentary—are among the most essential films ever made about organized labor. Filmed over several years, Harlan County USA is a powerful immersion into a small Kentucky town struggling …

In 1948, Gainsborough Pictures—best known for its enormously popular gothic melodramas—embarked on a rare prestige project: an anthology-film adaptation of four short stories by W. Somerset Maugham titled Quartet , soon followed by two similarly structured follow-ups, Trio and Encore . Featuring British acting legends like Dirk Bogarde, Jean Simmons, and Gly…

Towering literary lion, fierce social critic, and inimitable cultural icon James Baldwin opened up a new space for the frank discussion of race, sexuality, and identity in American society. He also left behind a dynamic cinematic legacy, as seen in these portraits that capture his electrifying presence and passionate eloquence. Across his screen appearances,…

The vast, arid landscapes of the American Southwest become hallucinatory expanses of existential reckoning in these sun-blasted journeys into a harsh, unforgiving no-man’s land. From the counterculture disillusionment of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point to the aching desolation of Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas to the feverish romanticism of David Lynch’s…

Set against the decaying grandeur of the American South, these sweltering sagas of family secrets, repressed desires, and twisted love are steeped in the region’s vibrant folklore and haunted history. Featuring adaptations of definitive southern writers like Tennessee Williams ( Baby Doll ) and Flannery O’Connor ( Wise Blood ), lurid chronicles of families i…

When rock stars get the Hollywood treatment, the result is often a lackluster re-creation of their career’s most famous highs and lows. But the best musical biopics do more than just cover their subjects’ greatest hits, adopting unconventional modes of storytelling that go deeper than mere mimicry. These films find visionary directors putting their imprints …

The sultry, vivacious Cuban-born star Ninón Sevilla reigned as queen of the Mexican cine de rumberas , a genre that deliriously fused noir, melodrama, and musical spectacular. Sevilla lit up the screen playing fallen women caught between virtue and vice in films built around the kinetic, high-voltage dance numbers that she famously choreographed herself. Thi…

Working defiantly out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, underground auteur Joel Potrykus makes scrappy, darkly comic portraits of the losers, slackers, metalheads, outcasts, and weirdos raging against the system as they struggle to get by on the margins of America’s heartland. Starring Potrykus himself alongside his Keatonesque regular Joshua Burge, the caustic, ap…

After resigning, a secret agent is abducted and taken to what looks like an idyllic village, but is really a bizarre Kafkaesque prison. His warders demand information. He gives them nothing, but only tries to escape.

Playful, absorbing, and deeply inquisitive, the films of Onyeka Igwe turn to the archives to challenge official narratives and excavate hidden histories. Whether tracing fragments of her own family history in the names have changed, including my own and truths have been altered , reimagining anticolonial activism in 1940s London in A Radical Duet , or conjur…

A Buddhist monk and lama, Bhutanese auteur Khyentse Norbu is a cinematic philosopher whose visually ravishing, spiritually profound films feel at once ancient, radically contemporary, and thrillingly alive. Travellers and Magicians reframes the road movie as a meditation on fantasy and desire, Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait unfolds like a tantric mas…

Jonathan Demme moved fluidly across genres while maintaining an unmistakably humanist sensibility, from the kinetic screwball anarchy of Something Wild and Married to the Mob to the restrained terror of The Silence of the Lambs to the overwhelming emotions of Rachel Getting Married . Animated by unforgettable characters in states of reinvention, his films ov…

United by their roots in the alternative-comics underground, a shared love of eccentric Americana, and a misfit misanthropy that belies a cracked humanism, director Terry Zwigoff and cartoonist-screenwriter Daniel Clowes are uniquely well-matched collaborators. Adapted by Clowes from his own graphic work, the cult classics Ghost World and Art School Confiden…

With his groundbreaking comics series Eightball and the acclaimed graphic novel Ghost World , Daniel Clowes brought the alternative-comics underground to mainstream recognition, channeling outsider alienation and an edgy humor steeped in the weirdo fringes of American pop culture. In this edition of Adventures in Moviegoing, he sits down with his friend Ari …

Now in its fifteenth year, the BlackStar Film Festival was established in 2012 to platform the voices of Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists who expand the possibilities of cinematic storytelling. Showcasing one film from each year of the festival’s history, this selection of highlights brings together dazzling, thematically rich features from major filmmak…

In its midcentury heyday, Hollywood melodrama wallowed in blazing Technicolor, operatic plot twists, gloriously bad behavior, and even foul play. These films’ surging emotions push their characters toward outright violence, infusing the women’s picture with noirish thrills. In the hands of masters such as Douglas Sirk (<em.Written on the Wind) and Vincente M…

Featuring Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction (2012), a documentary by Sophie Huber With his lean, hangdog face and sunken, soul-weary eyes, Harry Dean Stanton—born one hundred years ago this month—was one of the all-time great character actors. He inhabited the cinematic margins for more than six decades, imbuing his portrayals of drifters, down-and-outers, …

Stories of self-discovery, self-acceptance, and the simple but radical, often dangerous act of just existing as a queer person are on display in these empathetic and innovative shorts, which reflect the wide spectrum of experiences that make up the LGBTQ+ rainbow.

Filmed in New York City between 1997 and 2003, Daniel Peddle’s The Aggressives broke new ground in cinematic representation with its bold, unfiltered immersion into the lives of trans men and masculine-presenting lesbians of color who defy social expectations in their quest to live authentically. Peddle revisits the trailblazing subjects of the original film…

From the cities we live in to the products we use every day to the typefaces we communicate through, how do the subtle but impactful forces of design shape our lives? That’s the question at the heart of the illuminating documentaries of Gary Hustwit ( Eno ), who invites us to see the world around us with fresh eyes. Whether delving deep into the story behind…

Among the most singular, miraculous bodies of work in all of cinema, the films of French auteur Eric Rohmer constitute a genre unto themselves. Gently existential, hyperarticulate character studies set against vivid seasonal landscapes, these dialogue-driven yet gracefully cinematic films probe universal moral questions about love, desire, and the intricacie…

A patron saint of punk cinema and borderless storytelling, Alex Cox remains one of the greatest subversives to ever pick up a camera, a rebel auteur who blends gonzo surrealism, anarchic irreverence, and blistering anticapitalist and anti-imperialist critique. From the radioactive deadpan of the sci-fi comedy Repo Man to the hallucinatory fever dream of his …

With Criterion Editions of Hairspray and Desperate Living coming to home video this month, there’s no better time to watch the Pope of Trash discuss his formative moviegoing memories and introduce a selection of favorites.

Proud, rebellious, colorful, intimate, and frank, these essential visions of LGBTQ+ life find boundary-pushing filmmakers turning the richness of the queer experience into indelible art. From taboo-shattering art-house classics to defining works of the 1990s New Queer Cinema explosion to contemporary showstoppers from emerging talents, these films represent …

With wedding season upon us, take a walk down the aisle of some of cinema’s most unforgettable nuptials. Focusing on the lead-up to and spectacle of the big day itself, these films dramatize the often-conflicting dreams, desires, and fears that bring two people together before the altar, with directors like Sofia Coppola ( Marie Antoinette ), Jonathan Demme …

A performer of rare volatility and range, Courtney Love brings a feral intelligence and bruised glamour to the screen, meriting a place in cinematic culture alongside her hallowed stature in music. In films, Love is not merely an icon crossing mediums; her work with auteurs like Alex Cox ( Straight to Hell ), Julian Schnabel ( Basquiat ), and Miloš Forman ( …

The legend of cinema’s most iconic superspy begins here, with the trio of films that turned writer Ian Fleming’s suave secret agent James Bond into a global phenomenon. Featuring Sean Connery’s still-unmatched portrayal of 007—equal parts danger, charm, and wit— Dr. No , From Russia with Love , and Goldfinger established what would become the series’s signat…

The road of return is studded with adventure, discovery, and surprise in these tales of epic quests that draw on one of literature’s most enduring narrative archetypes: the journey back home. Whether traversing the hardscrabble highways of Depression-era America ( Sullivan’s Travels ; O Brother, Where Art Thou? ), the surreal labyrinth of New York City after…

Composed in stark, black-and-white images of working-class poetry that have the elemental power of silent cinema, these three works by Bill Douglas are among the most miraculous achievements of British independent film. Based on Douglas’s own hardscrabble upbringing in a postwar Scottish mining village, the Trilogy traces the coming of age of a boy named Jam…

Flowing freely between documentary and performance, the richly impressionistic films of brothers Bill and Turner Ross are wonders of regional American filmmaking made according to an unwavering philosophy: to be completely present in the moment and alive to the ecstatic humanity that passes before their camera. Whether capturing the rhythms of life along the…

The visually mesmerizing and deeply reflective films of Kimi Takesue traverse genres—including documentary, fiction, and experimental forms—to explore the charged spaces between observer and observed. Often centered on the act of travel, Takesue’s work follows tourists and locals as they navigate shared yet unequal terrain. In evocative shorts and acclaimed …

Born from a period of intense political upheaval, these radical Caribbean films spotlight vital stories of workers’ movements, decolonial struggle, and liberation from economic exploitation and violent oppression. Including urgent, on-the-ground accounts of revolutionary movements ( Haiti: The Way to Freedom , Grenada: The Future Coming Towards Us ), dynamic…

As a writer-director, producer, and creator of The Sopranos , David Chase has left an indelible imprint on popular culture, revolutionizing the art of television by bringing a boldly cinematic sensibility to the small screen. In this edition of Adventures in Moviegoing, he sits down with crime-fiction author Megan Abbott to discuss his formative cinematic ex…

Beginning in the 1930s, the ever-growing number of working women inspired a new type of romantic comedy, where meet-cutes come amid desks and typewriters, and the course of true love is entangled with office politics and professional rivalry. The genre was tailor-made for stars like Jean Arthur, Katharine Hepburn, and Rosalind Russell who could dazzle with b…

As a new generation of movie-mad directors emerged in the 1980s, they drew direct inspiration from the films they grew up watching and obsessing over. The result was a striking run of idiosyncratic Reagan-era remakes in which filmmakers such as John Carpenter (turning the Cold War sci-fi classic The Thing from Another World into a glacial descent into existe…

A self-described “Marxist among capitalists,” documentarian Emile de Antonio wielded the camera as a weapon in his fight against America’s corrupt power structures and the Cold War establishment elite. Unabashedly aligning himself with the leftist movements of the 1960s and ’70s in contrast to the “objective” style of the then-dominant cinema verité movement…

A master of mood, shadow, and dreamy ambiguity, French-born director Jacques Tourneur brought a sophisticated subtlety to his celebrated work in Hollywood. His command of atmosphere and darkly poetic sensibility were particularly suited to film noir, as seen in this trio of stylish, chiaroscuro-engraved favorites, including the stone-cold classic Out of the …

Boundary-breaking filmmakers reclaim their stories with these richly varied looks at the trans experience. Long misrepresented on-screen through disreputable and actively harmful images, trans characters have come into focus thanks to a pioneering generation of trans directors determined to capture their lives with nuance and hard-won insight. Curated by Cad…

Through a mix of razor-sharp realism and pitch-black humor, the films of the Romanian New Wave turn everyday dilemmas into gripping moral dramas. Provocatively merging the personal and the political, leading directors like Cristi Puiu ( The Death of Mr. Lazarescu ), Corneliu Porumboiu ( 12:08 East of Bucharest ), and Cristian Mungiu ( 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2…

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 thema…

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 bruta…

Raw, nightmarish transmissions from the unholy depths of the New York City underground, the films of revered cult auteur William Lustig are thrillingly intense, shockingly visceral plunges into the darkest chasms of urban existence. Pulsing with kinetic energy, his grindhouse opuses Maniac , Vigilante , and the Maniac Cop series are gritty, startlingly bruta…

As his acclaimed latest The Secret Agent comes to theaters, catch up with the bold, gripping, and fearlessly political cinema of Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho. Fusing slow-burn suspense with incisive social commentary, his features Neighboring Sounds and Bacurau (the latter codirected with Juliano Dornelles) twist genre conventions into subversive…

With a wit as dry as the martinis she famously loved, celebrated writer Dorothy Parker was a legend of the Jazz Age New York intelligentsia. Less well remembered is the time she spent in Hollywood as a screenwriter, where she brought her bitingly satirical voice and gift for delightfully dagger-like dialogue to a precious handful of films, including the belo…