This month on the Criterion Channel, celebrate the hundredth birthday of the great Harry Dean Stanton, delight in the twists and thrills of our Murderous Melodramas collection, or binge the surreal cult-favorite TV series The Prisoner. There’s so much more to choose from this month, including four idiosyncratic gems by Jonathan Demme, a new installment of Adventures in Moviegoing with underground-comics legend Daniel Clowes, a selection of highlights from the BlackStar Film Festival, an intimate documentary portrait of Marc Maron, and three unclassifiable wonders directed by a Buddhist lama.

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TOP STORIES

Starring Harry Dean Stanton

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, mystics, and all-American eccentrics with a singular gravity and offbeat charisma. From his indelible supporting turns in films like Cool Hand Luke, Straight Time, and Wise Blood to his breakthrough roles (in his late fifties) in Paris, Texas and Repo Man, Stanton remained a sui generis, unfailingly authentic presence whose merest glance or gesture hinted at profound existential depths.

FEATURING: Ride in the Whirlwind (1966), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Where the Lilies Bloom (1974), Farewell, My Lovely (1975), Straight Time (1978), Wise Blood (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Christine (1983), Paris, Texas (1984), Repo Man (1984), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988),* Wild at Heart (1990),* Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998),* The Straight Story (1999), Inland Empire (2006), Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction (2012), Lucky (2017)*

Murderous Melodramas

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 (Written on the Wind) and Vincente Minnelli (Some Came Running), melodrama became a vehicle for subversive critiques of American life, using stylization and excess to reveal the dark currents beneath a repressed, conformist society. Above all, the genre was a gift that kept giving to women stars like Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, and Dorothy Malone, who sank their teeth into juicy parts that let them “do a little exploding,” as Mary Astor said of her role in the deliciously perverse Desert Fury.  

FEATURING: Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Desert Fury (1947), Niagara (1953), Queen Bee (1955), The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), Violent Saturday (1955), A Kiss Before Dying (1956), Bigger Than Life (1956), Written on the Wind (1956),* No Down Payment (1957), Some Came Running (1958), The Long, Hot Summer (1958), Home from the Hill (1960), Portrait in Black (1960)*

BlackStar Film Festival Presents

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 filmmakers like Andrew Dosunmu (Restless City), Blitz Bazawule (The Burial of Kojo), and Jessica Beshir (Faya dayi), as well as stunning shorts by acclaimed artists like Cauleen Smith (The Changing Same) and Ja’Tovia Gary (An Ecstatic Experience). From dreamlike journeys to urgent social thrillers, these films have helped shape a new generation of independent cinema. 

FEATURES: The Passion of Remembrance (1986), Restless City (2011), Evolution of a Criminal (2014), A Moving Image (2016), The Burial of Kojo (2018), Test Pattern (2019), Landfall (2020), Faya dayi (2021), Fire Through Dry Grass (2023) 

SHORTS: The Changing Same (2001), An Ecstatic Experience (2015), To Be Free (2017), The People Could Fly (2024), We Were the Scenery (2025)

Daniel Clowes’s Adventures in Moviegoing

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 Aster to discuss the exploitation classics, counterculture oddities, and art-house touchstones that shaped his brilliantly cracked sensibility. The selections he has chosen to present include cult favorites like Peter Weir’s subversive thriller The Plumber and the jaw-dropping animated odyssey Journey to the Beginning of Time, films that have left a mark on his own work.

FEATURING: Umberto D. (1952), Ugetsu (1953), Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955), The Plumber (1979)

Two Films by Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes 

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 Confidential capture the awkwardness, melancholy, and absurdity of youth with dark, deadpan humor and a refreshingly cynical edge, seamlessly making the leap from page to screen through Zwigoff’s idiosyncratic direction.

FEATURING: Ghost World (2001), Art School Confidential (2006)

Directed by Jonathan Demme 

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 overflow with warmth and affection for even the most damaged souls, as well as an easygoing grace that gave his extraordinary actors space to shine.

FEATURING: Something Wild (1986), Married to the Mob (1988), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Rachel Getting Married (2008)

The Prisoner*

Long before Twin Peaks beamed prime-time surrealism into the American living room, there was The Prisoner, the 1960s British cult sensation that pushed television into new realms of unsettling, Kafkaesque mystery across seventeen hypnotic, thrilling episodes. Series creator Patrick McGoohan stars as a nameless spy who, after he abruptly resigns from his highly classified job, is kidnapped and held in a strange, deceptively idyllic town known only as the Village, where his quest for freedom collides with the sinister machinations of a mysterious authoritarian sect determined to keep him under their control. With its prescient exploration of free will in the age of surveillance, this pop-culture touchstone remains one of the most discussed and endlessly analyzed series in television history.

EXCLUSIVE PREMIERES

Are We Good?

Frank, caustic, and fearlessly funny, comedian and podcast pioneer Marc Maron has built his career on holding nothing back. Yet the famously outspoken comic continues to reveal new sides of himself in this poignant documentary. Filmed in the wake of the sudden and shocking death of his partner, filmmaker Lynn Shelton, Are We Good? finds Maron reflecting—with his inimitable candor—on grief, loss, disillusionment, and growth as he struggles with how to move forward and channel personal tragedy into comedy.

REDISCOVERIES AND RESTORATIONS

The Energy War

In the 1970s, the U.S. faced an energy crisis so severe that President Jimmy Carter declared it “the moral equivalent of war.” Seeking to curb the country’s dependence on foreign oil, Carter kicked off a legislative melee with the divisive Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 at its center. This epic look at the inner workings of government chronicles the arduous efforts of lobbyists, senators, cabinet members, and the president himself to reach a compromise amid a deeply divided Congress. Directed by legendary documentary filmmakers D. A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, and Pat Powell as a three-part PBS special, The Energy War is a riveting immersion into the high-stakes world of DC dealmaking as well as a timely account of the messy realities of lawmaking in a fractious political environment.

People’s Hero

Something like Dog Day Afternoon amped up through the operatic grit of Hong Kong action cinema at its peak, this electrifying, morally complex thriller unfolds almost entirely within the tense confines of a bank in the middle of a robbery gone wrong. As the two bumbling crooks (Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Ronald Wong) see their perfect crime go spectacularly awry, one of their hostages (Ti Lung)—who happens to be a murderous ex-con—takes over and quickly turns the situation to his own ruthless advantage. People’s Hero pushes claustrophobic tension and barely contained chaos to the breaking point.

Pom Pom and Hot Hot

Rollicking buddy-cop comedy meets action spectacle in this Hong Kong joyride. Following the exploits of police-officer partners Shin (Jacky Cheung) and Chiang (Stephen Tung Wai) as they try to bring down a crime syndicate while dealing with family and romantic complications, Pom Pom and Hot Hot ambles through an entertaining mix of crime thriller and comic misadventure—until it explodes in a jaw-dropping, outrageously acrobatic gun-fu climax that pushes everything into overdrive and rivals the best of John Woo in its bullet-spattered delirium.

Bye Bye Love

When lost and nihilistic drifter Utamaro (Ren Tamura) chances upon Giko (Miyabi Ichijo), a female-presenting shoplifter, one thing leads to another and the couple soon find themselves on the lam for murder. As the pair get to know each other on the road by way of encounters alternately surrealistic, psychedelic, and sexual, what emerges is a daringly liberated portrait of social malaise, free love, and gender fluidity in a rapidly changing 1970s Japan. The sole feature directed by Isao Fujisawa, who learned his craft as an assistant director to Hiroshi Teshigahara on New Wave classics like Woman in the Dunes and The Face of Another, this landmark of Japanese queer cinema is a deeply personal reckoning with sexual and personal identity that bridges the distance between Pierrot le fou, Bonnie and Clyde, and Funeral Parade of Roses with an impeccable sense of style, splashes of Godardian color, and potent anti-imperialist and existential themes.

CRITERION COLLECTION EDITIONS

An FBI trainee (Jodie Foster) enlists the help of an infamous serial killer (Anthony Hopkins) to gain insight into the mind of another murderer in Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning horror classic.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A classic Criterion commentary by Demme, Hopkins, Foster, screenwriter Ted Tally, and former FBI agent John Douglas; deleted scenes; four documentaries featuring hours of cast and crew interviews; and more.

Professional ambition and personal attraction become dangerously entwined when a young magazine editor falls in love with the lesbian photographer she is determined to rescue from obscurity.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by director Lisa Cholodenko,  a conversation between Cholodenko and filmmaker Karyn Kusama, interviews with actors Ally Sheedy and Radha Mitchell and photographer JoJo Whilden, and more.

Director Nicholas Ray deconstructs the 1950s suburban family in this shocking tale of an ordinary father whose experimental medication transforms him into a psychotic household despot. 

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by critic Geoff Andrew, a television interview with Ray, an appreciation by author Jonathan Lethem, and more.

Martin Scorsese’s controversial, profoundly personal work of faith imagines an alternate fate for Jesus Christ (Willem Dafoe).

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by director Martin Scorsese, actor Willem Dafoe, and writers Paul Schrader and Jay Cocks; location production footage; and more. 

A straitlaced businessman (Jeff Daniels) and an eccentric free spirit (Melanie Griffith) set out on an impromptu road trip that spirals from kinky comic thriller to radiantly off-kilter love story.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Interviews with director Jonathan Demme and writer E. Max Frye.

A journalist and his loose-cannon attorney barrel toward Las Vegas on a feverish psychedelic odyssey in this unhinged adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s excoriating vision.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Gonzo commentaries featuring director Terry Gilliam, actors Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro, and Thompson; deleted scenes; and more.

Two teenage misfits confront an uncertain future amid the cultural wasteland of consumerist America in this cult-classic comedy of adolescent alienation.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by director Terry Zwigoff, writer Daniel Clowes, and producer Lianne Halfon; interviews with actors Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, and Illeana Douglas; and more.

DIRECTOR SPOTLIGHTS

Desire, Death, and Samsara: The Films of Khyentse Norbu

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 masquerade suspended between rave and ritual, and Pig at the Crossing turns absurdist comedy into existential vertigo.

FEATURING: Travellers and Magicians (2003),* Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait (2016), Pig at the Crossing (2024)

Short Films by by Onyeka Igwe

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 conjuring the absent images of Britain’s colonial record in a so-called archive, Igwe’s work shifts inventively between documentary, narrative, and performance to bring the nearly forgotten past into dynamic dialogue with the present.

FEATURING: We Need New Names (2015), Specialised Technique (2018), the names have changed, including my own and truths have been altered (2019), a so-called archive (2020), The Miracle on George Green (2022), A Radical Duet (2023), Penkelemes (2025)

Two Black Comedies by Joel Potrykus 

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, apocalyptically funny Buzzard and its startling quasi-sequel Vulcanizadora are raw, anarchic visions of alienated masculinity hurtling toward shocking self-destruction. 

FEATURING: Buzzard (2014), Vulcanizadora (2024)

ACTOR SPOTLIGHTS

Ninón Sevilla: Queen of the Mexican Cabaret

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. This selection of some of her defining showcases—including hothouse masterpieces Aventurera and Victims of Sin—explodes with the fiery passion and intoxicating Afro-Cuban rhythms that made her an enduring icon of Mexican cinema’s golden age.

FEATURING: Carita de dielo (1947), Aventurera (1950), Victims of Sin (1951), Take Me in Your Arms (1954)

HOLLYWOOD HITS

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Two slacker teens (Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves) embark on a totally bodacious time-travel odyssey to save their history grade—and possibly the fate of mankind.

Bad Influence

An LA yuppie (James Spader) is initiated by a dangerously charismatic stranger (Rob Lowe) into a world of kinky sex, drugs, and crime in this darkly seductive neonoir. 

MUSIC FILMS

A Band Called Death

Discover the incredible, nearly forgotten story of three Black brothers from Detroit who forged a visionary proto-punk sound years before the Ramones.

Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC

Time travel back to the heart of 1970s bohemian New York with this vivid look at Max’s Kansas City, the counterculture nexus that helped spawn the downtown punk scene.

DOCUMENTARIES

Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction

This intimate, poetic portrait of the legendary actor unfolds through film clips, folk songs, and reflections from collaborators like David Lynch and Wim Wenders. 

SHORT FILMS

S the Wolf 

A playful, hand-doodled animated short explores family, first love, masculinity, and identity through the director’s evolving relationship with his hair.