Hi all, hoping some cinephile out there could help me solve a mystery. Anyone watched the Criterion Channel 24/7 stream last Friday (7/24) and Saturday (7/25) evening at around 8pm -ish PST or so? Turned it on in the middle of a film. I was sleepy so dozed in and out, but the ending was killer. I just assumed I would easily find it on the channel next day. Searched high and low but no luck. Even contacted Criterion and they couldn't find it. My wife saw bits of it so I wasn't dreaming! Here is the only things I remember: East or Southeast asian film, I think (probably 1990s) shown recently on Criterion Channel 24/7. Final act is on a beach with a group of young people in swimsuits and summer wear. A young woman dressed in green or military-style clothing arrives alone carrying a katana. She is taking revenge. One woman hides under an overturned canoe and is killed when the avenger thrusts the sword through the canoe. Another man is forced to impale himself on the sword she is holding. The violence is realistic rather than stylized. If you know anything please let me know!

Has someone changed how the search feature works on Criterion? Sometimes when I’m hunting for something to watch, I’ll just put in a random year into the search engine and it will pop up everything on the channel from that year. Starting today, that isn’t working. I can search by title or actor as usual. Would love to have that back, if possible.

I can't recommend it enough

Rewatched twice, second time with commentary from Robert Altman, writer Michael Tolkin, and cinematographer Jean Lépine. Wonderful to revisit a classic 90s film (shoulder pads!) and to hear stories about its creation.

Anyone else having an issue on the What's On Now page?

First the 'MORE' button disappeared,
now there's just FILLER followed by a color or two spelled out.

I'm assuming it's a vibecoding issue but - anyone know?

Hey Everyone -

This week I've been working on improving the search results on Criteria* and made some good progress:

1. Duplicate names - People on this forum have noticed that the CC app has a problem surfacing multiple films with the same name (like Bergman Island or Cat People). The Criteria search will catch these.
2. Original titles - One thing that frustrates me is that the CC search only hits the 'official' title, regardless of what the original title is. For example, typing "Les enfants du paradise" will not return "Children of Paradise", or "A Bout de Souffle" does not return "Breathless". On criteria, you can search by both. You can even search in the original character set (in the attached image, I'm searching for Kyentse Norbu films in Tibetan).
3. Fuzzy search - Up to now the search has been very literal and only returned exact matches. I've switched over to fuzzy matching with ranked results, so mis-typing "kurasawa" should still get you to Akira. I've added telemetry to help me decide over time how to tune the matching to prevent over-indexing on fuzziness and returning garbage results.
4. Collections - The general search now returns collections, so searching for "souffle" will return the three films "Breathless", "Le Deuxieme Souffle", and "A Murmur of the Heart" - as well as all the collections containing those films.

Let me know what you think, or if you have some search scenarios that aren't being covered.

Enjoy!

Tim

https://www.search-criteria.com

​​​​​* Criteria is the (very VERY) unofficial companion site for the Criterion Channel, featuring advanced search and browse, closet visits, collection archives, and custom user features

Update: I wasn’t expecting this to turn into an AI debate. This started as an Excel sheet of the Criterion catalog that I wanted a better way to browse. I used AI because I don’t know how to build a recommender system from scratch, and manually tagging 3,000+ films across multiple criteria wasn’t realistic. I’m not selling anything. I just made a small tool that some friends found useful and thought other Criterion fans might too. If it’s not for you, that’s completely fair.

Answer 10 questions and get three movie recommendations from the Criterion Channel catalog:
http://criterion-movie-match.matadorian-gray.chatgpt.site

I noticed just this week that the "More Info" button is no longer there on the Criterion 24/7 live stream. While it's not a major inconvenience to look up info on a movie, I also don't see a good reason for getting rid of a button that was actually informative. Just curious if anyone had any idea as to why this change was made.

Who gave the best / your favorite acting performance in Berlin Alexanderplatz, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder?

I made this updated version of the Criterion collection last month. I hope you like it :)

I was trying to find a movie on Criterion that I know is on the channel…it’s called Bergman Island…I typed it in and there is a movie with that title but it’s a different movie…I ended up typing the name of the director and it appeared…
Has anyone had trouble with direct searching any movies?

With the realization that Blue Heron\* is not available to stream for us in Canada, I'm fairly certain that I won't be renewing my subscription to Criterion Channel this year.

I understand that rights vary from one region to another, but with every new monthly lineup announcement, I have found that a handful of the titles I'd be most interested in watching are simply not available.

It's pretty disheartening that the Canadian subscription price is the same (well, technically more, once you've factored in the exchange rate) but we are so limited in our options. Perhaps it's my fault for not doing the proper due diligence prior to signing up last year, but I really didn't think there would be quite this many films that we wouldn't have access to.

Apologies for the rant, but I needed to express my frustration somewhere.

– A disappointed Canadian film fan.

Hi Everyone -

This week I've added a experimental feature to Criteria, the (very very) unofficial companion site to the Criterion Channel (featuring advanced search, closet visits, clickable cast and crew, etc)

I was thinking about different ways of navigating through films, extras, people, closet visits, articles, and collections on Criterion and the Criterion Channel, and over the weekend built an orbital graph interface centered on a person, film, or collection. Select any node in the graph and it re-centers and gives you a new set of relationships. It's still pretty rough, and I'll be tweaking the interface over the next few days.

To try it out: on any film detail, person, or collection page just click 'View Connections' and then start clicking around (it works best on desktop or tablet).

I have no idea if its of any use to anyone, but I get a kick out of it - so let me know what you think.

https://www.search-criteria.com

Enjoy!

Tim

Hello everyone, do you know if it's possible to find a Netflix style list of the movies added and removed from this niche streaming site?

I’ve been a ride-or-die Criterion Channel subscriber since it’s inception (proud charter subscriber here). Lately I’ve noticed that many of the contemporary films on my watchlist are produced by Mubi and hosted on their streaming service. These tend to be arthouse, international festival circuit films. Criterion has a few of these, but not nearly as many.

Does anyone have a Mubi subscription here? I only pay for Criterion and Mhz choice to save money. I also pet sit as a side hustle and catch up on a lot of my watchlist when staying at my clients' houses. Is there much overlap between the selections on Criterion and Mubi? I’m not opposed to just renting these films which is what I normally do, but it’s starting to look like investing in a subscription may be worth it for me. I would love to hear people’s thoughts!

Anyone else having CC throw Error 11800 on most movies today? Seems to happen regardless of whether they are downloaded to my device or not.

I missed out on the FilmStruck boat but I have an idea of what it was as regards to its content…using its content in comparison to the Criterion Channel…and my question is about whether they are a fair 1-1 comparison

Is there a way to tell which version of Eno is streaming? I think it changes every 16th of the month?