Here’s What’s Coming to The Criterion Channel in February 2025

The Criterion Channel has announced their February 2025 lineup of films, and it includes collections featuring New York love stories, Argentine noir, Claudette Colbert, Joan Micklin Silver, and films celebrating Black History Month.

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* indicates programming available only in the U.S.

Here’s the full breakdown:

New York Love Stories

The cultural dynamism, iconic landmarks, and anything-can-happen energy of New York City have provided the vibrant backdrop to some of the most indelible love stories ever told on-screen. Reflecting the ever-changing face of the city from the 1970s through the 2000s, this selection of heart-racing romances finds such stars as Cher, Diane Keaton, Al Pacino, Liza Minnelli, Nicolas Cage, Chow Yun-fat, Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett falling in and out of love across the five boroughs. From Hollywood hits like Moonstruck and The Goodbye Girl to cult favorites like It’s My Turn and Down with Love, these movies capture the grit, glamour, and uniquely electric atmosphere of a city where every day brings a new chance for human connection.

FEATURING: Annie Hall (1977), The Goodbye Girl (1977), It’s My Turn (1980), Arthur (1981), Losing Ground (1982), Falling in Love (1984), Something Wild (1986), An Autumn’s Tale (1987), Moonstruck (1987), Crossing Delancey (1988), Frankie and Johnny (1991)*, I Like It Like That (1994), It Could Happen to You (1994), Kissing Jessica Stein (2001), Raising Victor Vargas (2002), Down with Love (2003), Carol (2015)*

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 trailblazers like Fronza Woods (Fannie’s Film), Kathleen Collins (Losing Ground), Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), and Marlon Riggs (Tongues Untied), as well as bracing contemporary voices like Adepero Oduye (To Be Free). Alongside a selection of rich and revelatory documentaries (Black Panthers, Nationtime), these stories of revolution, resistance, creativity, community, and everyday endurance offer a multifaceted vision of Black American identity across generations.

FEATURES: Nothing but a Man (1964), A Time for Burning (1966), Portrait of Jason (1967), Nationtime (1972), Losing Ground (1982), Say Amen, Somebody (1982), You Got to Move (1985), Tongues Untied (1989), Paris Is Burning (1990), Daughters of the Dust (1991), A Place of Rage (1991), Alma’s Rainbow (1994), The Watermelon Woman (1996), The Final Insult (1997), Drylongso (1998)

SHORTS: Baldwin’s N****r (1968), Black Panthers (1970), Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist (1979), Fannie’s Film (1981), To Be Free (2017)

Argentine Noir

Featuring a new introduction by critic Imogen Sara Smith

Argentina gave rise to some of the finest and most fascinating crime thrillers of the postwar noir boom—pitch-black tales of lust, greed, guilt, and deception suffused with the passionate intensity of tango and sculpted in striking expressionist shadows. This selection of newly restored films from the Perón era brings together some of the most intriguing examples of Argentine noir, including two atmospheric Cornell Woolrich adaptations (If I Should Die Before I Wake, Never Open That Door), a female-centered remake of Fritz Lang’s M (The Black Vampire), and a searing adaptation of Richard Wright’s landmark novel Native Son starring the writer himself. Set amid the smoky nightclubs and dark alleys of Buenos Aires and laced with bitterly ironic social critique, these stylish, suspenseful journeys into existential dread are ripe-for-discovery gems from one of Latin America’s major film industries.

FEATURING: Native Son (1951), The Beast Must Die (1952), Never Open That Door (1952), If I Should Die Before I Wake (1952), The Black Vampire (1953), The Bitter Stems (1956)

Starring Claudette Colbert

With her heart-shaped face, casual elegance, and natural charm, Claudette Colbert was one of the most effortlessly sophisticated, easy-to-love stars of Hollywood’s golden age. While her deep saucer eyes could generate real pathos in tear-jerking melodramas like Torch Singer and Imitation of Life, she proved particularly adept at screwball comedy, delivering the genre’s delicious dialogue with impeccable poise in classics like It Happened One Night, Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, and The Palm Beach Story. The shrewdly independent, self-assured women Colbert specialized in portraying mirrored her own trajectory as one of the few major stars of the era to work successfully as a freelancer, breaking free from the studio system and taking full control of her own career and image.

FEATURING: Honor Among Lovers (1931), Torch Singer (1933), Cleopatra (1934), Imitation of Life (1934), It Happened One Night (1934), The Gilded Lily (1935), I Met Him in Paris (1937), Maid of Salem (1937), Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), Midnight (1939), Skylark (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), No Time for Love (1943), The Egg and I (1947), Thunder on the Hill (1951)

Directed by Joan Micklin Silver

One of the greatest American filmmakers to emerge in the 1970s, Joan Micklin Silver drew on her background as the daughter of Russian-born Jewish parents to write and direct beautifully bittersweet portraits of women, immigrants, and marginalized communities. With profound empathy, her films vividly evoke specific times and places: New York’s turn-of-the-century Lower East Side (Hester Street), the whirlwind office of a Boston alt-weekly newspaper (Between the Lines, inspired by her time as a writer for the Village Voice), or the intergenerational cultural melting pot of 1980s Manhattan (Crossing Delancey). Brimming with humor, Silver’s films are rich with insight into the experience of finding one’s place in a rapidly changing world.

FEATURING: Hester Street (1975), Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976), Between the Lines (1977), Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979), Crossing Delancey (1988), A Fish in the Bathtub (1999)

Directed by Buster Keaton

Featuring The Great Buster: A Celebration, a documentary by Peter Bogdanovich

Arguably the greatest comic genius of the silent era, Buster Keaton turned the adage “less is more” into slapstick gold, using his perpetually passive, poker-faced visage to wring laughs from the most absurd situations. A child of vaudeville, he transferred the knockabout style of physical comedy he honed on the stage to the nascent medium of cinema, distinguishing himself both in front of and behind the camera with his audacious, often genuinely dangerous set pieces and innate understanding of the possibilities of filmmaking. With innovative features like Sherlock Jr., The General, and Steamboat Bill, Jr., Keaton took silent comedy to new heights of astonishing ambition—all the while remaining, thanks to that immovable countenance, touchingly human.

FEATURING: The Navigator (1924), Sherlock Jr. (1924), Go West (1925), Seven Chances (1925), Battling Butler (1926), The General (1926), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)

STREAMING PREMIERES

All Shall Be Well

What happens to a lifetime of love when it collides with the harsh realities of a bureaucratic system that doesn’t recognize your relationship? That’s the question at the heart of this profoundly poignant, delicate exploration of the meaning of family, in which Angie (Patra Au Ga-man), a sixtysomething lesbian living in Hong Kong, finds herself adrift following the sudden death of Pat (Maggie Li Lin-lin), her loving partner of forty years. When she learns that, because they were unable to legally marry, Pat’s estate will pass to her extended family, Angie struggles to retain both her dignity and the home that they shared for over thirty years.

CRITERION COLLECTION EDITIONS

Joan Micklin Silver digs fearlessly into the psychology of a toxic relationship in this thorny anti–romantic comedy, one of the most singular (and initially misunderstood) films produced by a major American studio in the 1970s.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A program featuring producers Griffin Dunne, Mark Metcalf, and Amy Robinson; a 1983 documentary about Micklin Silver by Katja Raganelli; the film’s original ending, cut by Micklin Silver for its 1982 rerelease; and more.

Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver, 1988)

Criterion Collection Edition #1250

Joan Micklin Silver’s wonderfully, warmly Jewish spin on the romantic comedy infuses the genre with a fresh perspective on a woman’s search for fulfillment.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: An audio interview with Micklin Silver and a program on the making of the film featuring actors Amy Irving and Peter Riegert and screenwriter Susan Sandler.

REDISCOVERIES AND RESTORATIONS

Toute une nuite

A hot summer evening in Brussels: couples dance in bars and cafés, part outside homes, or escape together under the darkness of night; some discover or reignite romance, some end it, while still more grasp tightly to each other in the last moments of dying love. In Chantal Akerman’s singular Toute une nuit, the modern city and its inhabitants are captured in fragmentary, elliptical visions of desire, frustration, and loneliness, with more than two dozen characters appearing in fleeting vignettes that tease the possibility of larger narratives. Alongside her magnum opus Jeanne Dielman, Toute une nuite is one of the legendary Belgian director’s greatest triumphs: a charming, avant-garde melodrama that is as much about the weight of time as the longing for connection.

One Way or Another

The only feature from the radical Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez—who also worked as an assistant director with Agnès Varda and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea before her untimely death at age thirty-one—is an extraordinary portrait of postrevolution Cuba. Blending invaluable documentary footage with a loose narrative about the budding relationship between an outspoken schoolteacher (Yolanda Cuellar) and a young worker (Mario Balmaseda) facing a moral crisis, One Way or Another depicts revolution as an ongoing process that takes place at the level of community—among friends, lovers, coworkers, teachers, students, and parents, all of whom must work together to negotiate a new social order. Above all, Gómez offers a trenchant intersectional critique of the lingering sexism and machismo that, she argues, must be cleared away in order to create a truly just society.

Remorques

Poet Jacques Prévert cowrote this atmospheric tale of the romantic trials of a tugboat captain, played by the iconic French star Jean Gabin. For André (Gabin) and the other members of the Cyclone’s crew, existence is harshly divided between the danger of the stormy seas and the safety of life at home with their patient women. When André meets temptation in the form of the alluring Catherine (Michèle Morgan) during a risky rescue, he comes perilously close to betraying his wife of ten years. One of the triumphs of unsung master Jean Grémillon, the haunting Remorques is distinguished by beautiful tracking shots and cunning special-effects work.

DIRECTOR SPOTLIGHTS

Sara Gómez’s Revolutionary Cuba

A true cinematic revolutionary who used the camera as her tool in the fight against oppression in all forms, the Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez brought the stories of ordinary Cubans to the screen with a bracing immediacy and insight. Drawing on her background in ethnography, Gómez became her country’s first woman director, exploring issues of class, race, labor, women’s health, and Afro-Cuban culture in a string of intimate, illuminating shorts that revealed the complex realities of life in a postrevolutionary society rocked by seismic change. Though she directed only one feature—the formally innovative landmark of radical feminist cinema One Way or Another—before her death from an asthma attack at age thirty-one, Gómez left behind a vital legacy as a pioneer whose work continues to offer lessons in what a truly engaged, decolonial counter-cinema can be.

FEATURES: One Way or Another (1977)

SHORTS: I’ll Go to Santiago (1964), Excursion to Vueltabajo (1965), Guanabacoa: Chronicle of My Family (1966), And . . . We’ve Got Sabor (1967), On the Other Island (1968), An Island for Miguel (1968), Treasure Island (1969), Local Power, Popular Power (1970), A Documentary About Transit (1971), On Sugar Workers’ Quarters (1971), My Contribution (1972), Year One (1972), Prenatal Care (1972), About Extra Hours and Volunteer Work (1973)

Directed by Billy Woodberry

One of the leading figures of the LA Rebellion—the new wave of Black American independent cinema that emerged from UCLA’s film school in the 1970s and ’80s—Billy Woodberry created one of the movement’s defining works with his neorealist masterpiece Bless Their Little Hearts, an aching portrait of an ordinary family buckling under marital and economic pressures. Since then, Woodberry has forged his own distinctive brand of archival documentary filmmaking in searching, politically trenchant works like And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead and his latest, Mário, a portrait of the Pan-African thinker and activist Mário Pinto de Andrade, founder of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

FEATURES: Bless Their Little Hearts (1984), And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead (2015), Mário (2024)

SHORTS: The Pocketbook (1980), Marseille après la guerre (2005), A Story from Africa (2019)

Directed by Axelle Ropert

One of contemporary French cinema’s most intriguing auteurs, Axelle Ropert employs an alchemical blend of narrative classicism and subtle expressionism to create nuanced explorations of human relationships and the division between the worlds of children and adults. Particularly concerned with the complexities of family bonds—a girl’s experience of her parent’s disintegrating marriage in Petite Solange, two brothers in love with the same woman in Miss and the Doctors—her films are distinguished by their elegant mise-en-scène, which suggests the mysterious, hidden emotional depths lurking beneath the surface of everyday life.

FEATURING: The Wolberg Family (2009), Miss and the Doctors (2013), The Apple of My Eye (2016), Petite Solange (2021)

HOLLYWOOD HITS

Phantom Thread

Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps make for one of the most deliciously perverse screen couples in recent memory in Paul Thomas Anderson’s sumptuous tale of high fashion and mad love.

MUSIC FILMS

Eternity’s Pillar

Throughout the mid-1980s, viewers tuning in late at night to Los Angeles’s KTTV Channel 11 could catch a broadcast unlike any other: Eternity’s Pillar, a journey through the astral plane created and hosted by jazz visionary and spiritual guru Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda. Blending music, meditation, chanting, and an avant-garde video-art aesthetic, this singular audiovisual experience—four episodes of which are presented here—is a sublimely cosmic expression of Coltrane’s deep-held belief in music’s capacity to attain spiritual transcendence.

This program is presented in partnership with the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where the exhibition Alice Coltrane: Monument Eternal is on view February 9–May 4, 2025.

TRUE STORIES

A Season with Isabella Rossellini

Catch up with the legendary actor, model, animal-behavior expert, and all-around creative force as she turns seventy, facing life with the same spirited curiosity and playfulness that have sustained her singular career across decades.

Flipside

A filmmaker’s attempts to revive the struggling New Jersey record store of his youth spins off into a strange, expansive, and moving meditation on music, work, and the sacrifices and satisfaction of trying to live a creative life.