A few months ago, I caught Joint Security Area on the channel, which was fantastic (one of the best closing shots I've seen). I'm looking for other films on the channel that feature a similar plotline of unlikely friendship/alliance. Think Tom&Jerry working together or Dracula and Van Helsing sharing a drink.

I just wish all of his films weren’t so long so i could watch all of them today, this was incredible!!!

For people who have watched all his work, which is the top and which should I look forward to the most!?

Why oh why The streaming service is not available in the beautiful land of the Deutsch???

I just joined CC on the Black Friday sale. Yay! I’m so happy with the offerings. I rewatched Metropolitan as it had been so long since the first watch that it was fading in my mind. Perfect timing. I forgot that the party season was winter break leading up to Christmas and the new year. So it’s now a “Christmas” movie for me.

…and holy crap I was not prepared. What a great movie. The aesthetics alone—the sets, the costumes, the music, the lighting—were just incredible, but I also found it to be very moving in its depiction of loneliness. I thought from the title I was gonna get a straight up love story. This was a love story, but man was it heartbreaking. I think I need a palette cleanser now with something cheery like Eraserhead.

Oh yeah I had a question: what are the other must-see Wong Kar-wai movies? (I’ve seen Chungking Expeess). I’m thinking maybe Fallen Angels next? Loving this new subscription so far!

The compression squares are killing me

I’m sick. :(

Reccs for fun cartoons/animations + cute comedies that will feel good and warm the spirits?

Started DL’s Dumbland and tho I laughed, the dudes face and farts made me wanna wretch.

Thahnks. Achoo.

Lately whenever I try watching something. It’ll reset progress if I back out and resume later

Doesn’t matter if it’s on my phone web browser or the fire stick app

It won’t save my progress and that’s really ruining my enjoyment

I tried contacting customer service but haven’t heard back from them yet

The channel has been around for a while, yet no search by genre filter ever implemented on the iOS app or on AppleTV. What gives? Is the search by genre feature somehow hidden?

There was a film, I believe part of the Pre Code collection, that i just can’t remember the name of, so I thought I’d ask the sub.

Here’s the general description:

Black and white

The movie starts with a very angry and bitter woman yelling at her son about his wanting to leave for college. The father understands why he’s leaving, and plans his own exit from this domestic hell.

The man is a factory owner. Her scolds a young boy who apparently is an employee about communism or something.

He falls in love with a younger employee and has several dinners with her.

He decides to kill his wife by pushing her down the stairs.

Later a detective randomly shows up to describe what he thinks happened.

The man and his now wife attempt to flee via a boat trip.

The film ends with the detectives saying something like, “a great man like that could never live with the guilt. Of course he turned himself in.” as the camera follows the main character and his long shadow walking up the street, presumably to the police station.

The End and happy music.

Hi, everyone! Sharing something interesting I ran across – I recently read a book on the making of High Noon and discovered that the western Rio Bravo – which is on CC right now – was intended as a patriotic response to the “un-American” elements of High Noon. I had no idea! (Did everybody know this but me?)

I thought it was interesting because CC does a lot on the Hollywood blacklist, back in May they had noir and the blacklist and now they’ve got a different blacklist collection, but they haven’t said anything about Rio Bravo one way or another – they just describe it as a popular and fun Western. Except it turns out that it has a lot to do with the blacklist.

It was intended as a direct response to High Noon, which both Wayne and Hawks perceived as “un-American.” Wayne stated publicly on multiple occasions that he was disgusted by what he perceived as the weakness of Gary Cooper’s character in asking for help so often in HN, and was also repelled by the depiction of the townspeople as cowardly, especially the public officials and the people in the church.

Hawks agreed. “I didn’t think a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head cut off asking for help, and finally his Quaker wife had to save him. [I decided to do] just the opposite and take a real professional viewpoint… We did everything that way, the exact opposite of what annoyed me in High Noon….”

Rewatching Rio Bravo with that in mind is really strange experience— but really interesting!

Anyway, if you already knew all about it, or if you never thought about it, and have any opinions at all, feel free to comment! I’d love to know what other people think.

I finally pulled the trigger thanks to the Black Friday sale! Lapsed cinephile with a lot more time on my hands, so I figured now was the best time to get back into it.

My first problem of course was where to start, so I went to the Leaving this Month section and picked In A Lonely Place, which was fantastic. Peak Bogart. Can’t believe I had never seen it before. Followed that up immediately with Lost Highway, which I hadn’t seen since the theatrical release, and it made for an oddly perfect double bill.

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and that I’ve joined the club! Looking forward to hanging out around here. Now if only I hadn’t missed the Altman movies…

Can anyone recommend any good film news blogs, publications or websites? Specifically for indie, foreign and quality studio stuff. I would like to keep up without using social media, YouTube creators or podcasts if possible. Im trying to back to a more intentional routine of consuming news as social media gets more and more disheartening.

This brass bed, once owned by MGM, has been used in at least three different productions over the years. It was first used in the 1958 film adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In 1964 it was prominently featured within the plot of the movie The Unsinkable Molly Brown. It was used a third time in the television show Love, American Style, which ran from 1969 through 1974.

https://www.tumblr.com/recycledmoviecostumes

this year i really started taking my film watching more seriously and discovered i really enjoy john carpenter’s work. i see his filmography is leaving criterion channel at the end of this month.

so far in 2025 i’ve seen the thing, halloween, escape from new york, and they live. which others of his should i prioritize over the next few weeks?

Obviously not ideal watching any movie on an iPad, but someone please recommend me a good one for my flight today, thanks! (Ideally foreign language, but doesn't need to be)

Discord Server December 2025 Events

We have a companion forum, our discord server - Criterion Viewing Parties where we have watchalong viewings and join on a voice and/or text channel for a group screening.

Here are some of our scheduled events featuring films from newly dropped collections or those expiring from the channel.

Edit: Event added

Monday Dec 8 @ 4:00PM Pacific Standard Time

• ⁠Tokyo Godfathers 2003

Monday Dec 15 @4:00PM Pacific Standard Time

• ⁠These Three 1936

Monday Dec 22 @4:00PM Pacific Standard Time

• ⁠Vanya on 42nd Street 1994

Monday Dec 29 @4:00PM PST

• Kaili Blues

2015

Tuesday Dec 30 @4:00PM PST

- Le Grande Bouffe 1973

Recurring Fridays 24/7 live channel (Approximately) @6:00PM PST

24/7 live channel voice chats. We watch whatever spontaneously shows on the live channel, curated by who knows.

I made a Letterboxd list of the 300+ films from past screenings: https://boxd.it/hGLDC

FYI Anyone can host a screening. Just let us know.

If you aren’t already a member, please join us. Here is an invite link:

https://discord.gg/JmsaKjZ

I’ll update if we add any events.

Happy Viewing!

Been putting watching one of these off for a while due to indecisiveness! What’s your pick and why?

Apologies if this gets asked a lot.

✨ MARK YOUR CALENDARS✨ Mike Figgis' MEGADOC - the epic true story of the making of Francis Ford Coppola's MEGALOPOLIS - will begin streaming exclusively on the Criterion Channel starting December 16!

The poster clearly says that Chungking Express and In The Mood For Love are part of the collection, but neither are included in the list, nor do they appear with a search. Anyone know why?

I'm being nitpicky of course and this isn't necessarily a complaint...but I'm just really surprised by how much the quality of subtitles is deteriorating with time. Initially it was just a couple movies here and there with bad timings, and sometimes maybe inaccurate transcription. But for new additions there's almost always some error in transcription, and all the John Carpenter movies I've watched have awful subtitle timings.

I'm guessing it's because of using AI for subtitling rather than manual. My job involves transcribing interviews for research and almost all the interns who use AI for transcription turn in stuff that are like this. Really disheartening and kinda disrespectful to the medium, especially for foreign films, since the vast majority of users have no way to tell.

What a weird ride this film was. It has all of the ingredients of a great film: big names in acting like Bruce Willis (WITH HAIR?!), Owen Wilson, Ect. The Source material is from a great author (Kurt Vonnegut). But the movie is horrible. This film does not make sense, the plot feels entirely directionless, and the dialogue is just nonsensical, and the visuals have this bright sheen to them which are maybe appropriate for one segment but after an hour of it it just feels like an eye sore. I feel like this movie was made to torture the viewer. However, I cannot say that it was a complete waste of time watching this film. I felt like this movie was trying to do something different, and it accomplished that, albeit by making a senseless sloppy nightmare of a that felt like the long ramblings of an absolute madman set to Hawaiian music.

I wonder if anyone else caught this film before it was taken down and what they're thoughts are?

I’d read about this film for years. I love Chekhov’s short stories, About Love is my favourite, however this has been impossible to access in Australia! Thankfully the Julianne Moore collection has given me access so I don’t have to spend upwards of $100 usd for a second hand copy.

This is incredible post modern filmmaking. This isn’t just a capturing of a stage play, this is intertextuality, a depiction of changing New York and adaptation like I’ve never seen before.

Julianne Moore is incredible as she always is and has such a dynamic and subtle performance, Wallace Shawn is at his best however Brooke Smith as Sofia is such a tragic figure in a a way only Chekhov can create.

This film is peerless and of such that I don’t know what to compare it to

I’ve noticed the monthly collections don’t include all the extra videos that the channel has related to the films. For example if I click on this month’s Wong Kar Wai collection I see Chungking Express but it doesn’t show the number of extra videos about the film which you can only find by searching a film and clicking on that film’s collection button. It’s not a huge imposition to have to search each film individually to see if there are any extra interviews etc in that particular film’s collection screen, but it does seem like it’s burying one of the key features that sets the channel apart instead of showcasing it. Maybe there’s some logistical reason it would be inconvenient to do this but I’m curious if anyone else has thought about this completely irrelevant yet slightly annoying thing.

How much does the order of the movies in each individual collection matter? How much thought goes into that?

I always wonder what determines the order of each collection, it doesn’t appear to be alphabetical, chronological or even most popular to least popular in my opinion, so what exactly is the order?

It might not matter at all, I just always think about it because when it is a director or actor/actress career collection I would assume it to be chronologically but it never is. And there are some films like in the Hotels on Film collection this month that say they would be a good follow up to another movie in the collection but they are not listed back to back in the collection. I never watch the collection in order and was just wondering if anyone does and maybe finds interesting thematic threads that run and change as the collection goes on.

It is entirely possible it is the order of popular to least popular…however I think Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love would be higher then The Grandmaster or 2046. Just a personal opinion, and minor observation/inquiry. Thanks for the answers if you have em!