The Criterion Channel Reviews

The Criterion Channel’s selection of classic and art films is worthy of 5 stars. I had no issues searching for titles and exploring the catalog. It was exciting to have found, at last, a streaming service with movies I actually want to see and can download and watch offline. And that’s where TheCriterionChannel falls woefully short—-offline viewing. Every film that I’ve downloaded to watch offline has randomly frozen then restarted, sometimes all the way back to the beginning of the film. Freeze, restart, 10 minutes of film then freeze, restart, 3 minutes of playback then freeze, restart back at the beginning. There are no real viewing controls available other than the slide bar so there is no way to easily resume or scroll back 10 seconds or so. I reported the freeze issues to the developers who, much to my surprise, have been super-responsive, suggesting workarounds and following up with me, so 5 stars for support, but the problem persists. I find all of this puzzling—you would think a video playback application to be a no-brainer. I download and watch films using my public library’s app all the time and playback is always perfect. I won’t be signing up for Criterion Channel after the trial period because at this point in time films downloaded for offline viewing do not playback properly.

When Criterion announces their streaming service I signed up as a charter member on day one. The day TheCriterionChannel went live I was there. I was ready. Then I was extremely disappointed.
I’m only going to say what so many others have said in these reviews and what Criterion keeps ignoring apparently. No full list of every title. They instead gave us a list on a separate website?! Then I use that list to add all the titles I’m interested in. Look at the list, switch back to TheCriterionChannel , search TheCriterionChannel , add the film. This literally took me 90 minutes to do. Then I realized that there was a limit to how many films could be in your wishlist! Are you kidding me?! So half the titles I added pushed out/deleted the other half. Add to this the horrible, almost unusable interface and search function and I sadly deleted my membership and TheCriterionChannel . Over the past two months I come here and check the release notes to see if these things have been corrected. Nope. Criterion doesn’t seem to care. As the developers of TheCriterionChannel they have the ability to read the reviews here and add their own response. But they don’t. I suppose the reason why is because they have no intention of improving TheCriterionChannel. Which is sad. I am a huge fan of film and the criterion collection. It’s been painful to watch this company sabotage it’s own product and ignore user complaints and concerns.

They hit the nail on the head in many ways but also fail miserably in others. I am leaving a review like this (with room to improve) that will hopefully be read by them so they can change a few things to make this truly a best of the best movie viewing platform. They obviously offer some of the best movies on planet earth and that is the main draw as well as the uber high quality in which they release their movies. A major issue on their app/platform is the searching capabilities which are atrocious. Yes you can break it down by year/genres/director etc but they need to do a much much better job with the search capabilities as a whole. One such improvement would be to show films that I might like based on my personal viewing habits or personal tastes. I also feel every single movie on here needs to have a trailer that you can view prior to making the movie selection for each night. These are just a few suggestions among many others. Overall wonderful platform for some of the best cinema available but there is definitely room for making this much much better and that comes from me which is a humongous fan of Criterion!

The Channel is wonderful! Of course I’m loving the enormous library and the ability to experience so many different films from all over the world that I didn’t even know existed. The player is also a big improvement from the one used on Filmstruck. Much easier to use I find. If I had one criticism, it would only be that I wish there were more genre fare. I’m sure the intention is to stick to films that are only the Criterion list, but I do wish that the site featured more Hammer horror films or perhaps Hong Kong action films. I recall Filmstruck having more of a genre selection in its library. This I feel is important not simply for my own benefit but also for those who’ve not yet experienced them and can’t find them on other sites.
That aside, I love the site. I love the library. I love TheCriterionChannel . Y’all are doing an awesome job and I truly appreciate the effort to bring such great cinema to those living in an increasingly streaming exclusive world. Thank you all! You’ll always have a customer in me.

I don’t know where to begin. If you love movies and aren’t subscribed! Shame on you. The selection is breathtaking. The quality of audio and video superb. The user interface, in my opinion, is one of the easiest to use. I love that it is curated. I love that it allows one to steep in the marrow and blood of the filmmaking process. I love that it provides films that are outside of the criterion catalogue. I write this in 2020, months into the world burning away. Film has always been a religion to me. This channel is the wall between my belief in humanity and despair. I visited an old friend today, the Magnificent Ambersons. I watched Maidstone yesterday which was so terrible it made my day brighter. Last week, last month, always something unexpected or intelligent or beautiful or anger inducing or tearfully poignant. I can’t see how a film enthusiast can go without criterion. And, being a film nerd, any film with the Janus logo makes my joy return a bit more.

I just refer to it as The Channel. You don’t need any others.
There isn’t a streaming platform this dedicated to the preservation and history of film. Nutflix, and Foolu, don’t care about being a international, multi-cultural, highly functional cinematic app. That covers all your cinematic souls needs in one click. Criterion should be offered in all universities that teach film and art. This is a chance of a lifetime to expand your world and take a trip around the world without ever leaving your house for what it costs to change your synthetic automobile oil. For us, the ever wanting and needing movie loving audience that needs to escape into the darkness, letting go of reality and plunging ever deep into the suspension of disbelief, this is your home! Movies, film, cinema, (whatever you may call it) is art and history. Just as much as anything hanging in a gallery that will teach you where you came from. The Criterion Channel is essential to the knowledge of you, the world and your place in it.

I’ve had the Criterion Channel app since it premiered and I’ve always loved it. What impresses and pleases me further is to see when features get added that improve the experience. One of the biggest recent improvements is a playback speed function, which I worry my fellow cinephiles would judge me for using, but come on y’all, get serious. War and Peace is beautiful but comes in 4 segments. The Human Condition is a monumental achievement and one of the greatest anti war films of all time, but rounds up to about 10 hours. If we were in film school, sure, we could judge people for speeding up playback, but don’t be gatekeeping. If playback speed options encourage someone to watch a classic film they wouldn’t have otherwise, that is a net positive for culture.

So, yeah, good on The Criterion Channel for adding this feature. I’ll probably play around with it if y’all ever add Satantango to streaming again. ;)

Before the Criterion channel launched, I found film struck, back in 2017, I downloaded TheCriterionChannel , but when I heard that film struck shut down, I was very sad, but when I heard of the launch of the Criterion channel, I was very excited, in 2019, I downloaded the Criterion channel app, on my graduation party, I started my two week free trial, and the one movie I put on, it’s called the graduate, definitely one of my favorite movies of all time, I even enjoyed Turner Classics, like Casablanca, Citizen Kane, and the blob, and many others, TheCriterionChannel works really good on my iPad, and also on my Roku, I would love to see the Criterion channel also on the Roku channel, and, I’m also very excited, that the Criterion channel app has a 24 hour channel on the Criterion channel app very, very excited about that, I love to sit back, and have some beers and watch some good old Turner classic movies with my friends, keep updating TheCriterionChannel , and keep it alive,

This is the best streaming service I’ve ever used. I’ve already watched 17 movies on it so far and I haven’t seen a single bad one yet. I like the way the movies are organized, with tons of different sub categories, and I love that most of the movies come with interviews and other supplementary material, but I do wish it had way more search options available than it does, because I’ve had to use third party sources, like a Letterboxd list that displays all of the service’s available movies, in order to find things I want to watch. I’d also appreciate some kind of rating system and a suggestion feed. But neither of those are enough to hinder my enjoyment of this service overall, as it contains a bunch of incredible movies that are difficult to locate.

The service itself has also been consistently smooth. I’ve used it on three different devices so far without any issues, which is impressive for any service this early in its life.

These are superb, enriching movies that will entertain you and also make you a more intelligent and empathetic human being. They will also lead to interesting conversations, because Criterion Channel will inflame in you some passion, leading to genuine interest, leading to real insight and enthusiasm, leading, perhaps, if you are careful, to some intriguing stranger enjoying your company. For me, the passions have been for Aki Kaurismaki and Jim Jarmusch, Juno Itami and Billy Wilder, but you will find your own.

If you want to wade into a copious sludge lake of video content, and raft on slurry rivers worn by artificial intelligence, and surf big data waves propelled by endless surveillance and machine learning, there are many streaming options for you these days! Enjoy your buffet. If instead you would like to rediscover your humanity through moving art (they call them “films”) chosen by caring and wise people who have devoted their lives to this form and its subcultures, there is but one choice, and you are reading its reviews.

A lot of issues I have with several other streaming apps were resolved with The Criterion Channel. I was bothered by the lack of special and extra features in streaming services, such as Netflix, which made physical media much more appealing to me overall. Also, most streaming services are bereft of classic hollywood cinema, indie films, and foreign films and have a constant stream of mainstream or populous media. This creates a stale library content for most streaming services and quality varies immensely month to month. The Criterion Channel is the main streaming service that I know of (other than Mubi) that dedicates itself to a strong curation of content from cinema around the world and around different time periods while also including many special features existing in only the physical media versions of these films. Also, they have specialized playlists and categories that are centered around film genres, directors, technical works, and themes that are rare to see in other streaming services (or at least this level of dedication). Please subscribe to The Criterion Chanel and give it a watch. I do not want this streaming service to suffer the same fate as Filmstruck and would like this stand its ground against the other streaming giants.

If you’re interested in the kind of material Criterion puts out, there’s no reason not to get the Criterion Channel. In addition to almost all of Criterion’s films, supplements, interviews, and commentaries, there are also great non-Criterion films added every month for a limited time. For example, they recently featured pre-code Barbara Stanwyck films and are currently featuring MGM technicolor musicals like The Band Wagon and Meet me in St. Louis. This rotating lineup gives subscribers an incentive to stick around and see what new films the first of the month will bring.

TheCriterionChannel itself works very well, but has a few flaws. In particular, there’s no way to access the complete list of available films, so it can be tough to find what movies that you aren’t already aware of if they don’t happen to be featured. TheCriterionChannel supports Picture-in-picture, but the corner screen sometimes goes black and can only be restored by closing TheCriterionChannel and firing up the film again. Beyond those nitpicks, TheCriterionChannel is easy to use, and everything that’s on TheCriterionChannel is available to download for offline viewing.

While I mourned the end of Filmstruck, I’m even happier with the Criterion Channel. I initially thought it was going to be just Criterion films, but that’s not the case due to the differences between streaming rights and distribution rights. So, films that Criterion may not be able to acquire for physical releases (even if they want them) may very well be easier to license for streaming. This keeps it interesting! The whole channel feels extremely curated in the best way possible, down to each well written synopsis. And of course, the supplemental videos for some films are *chef’s kiss* fantastic. In the past month or so I’ve really only been using TheCriterionChannel to watch movies. A lot of the other services feel so bogged down lately by so many options and I can never tell the quality. It was getting frustrating until I remembered I had TheCriterionChannel. Oh and if you feel overwhelmed by all the new stuff you’ve never heard of before, check out their Instagram - they’re constantly posting about interesting films and series. Sometimes all it takes is seeing a screenshot of a film for me to watch it! As far as functionality goes, I have no complaints. Maybe in the future they could have a rating or like feature so TheCriterionChannel could recommend films.

Awesome collection of movies. They group some by interesting themes like the recent ‘caught on tape’ and ‘heist’ lists. They have others lists like women filmmakers or Martin scorcese’s world cinema project or double features with unique themes. There are also short videos of filmmakers talking about their favorite movies. I think generally quite a few of those movies are simultaneously available. I just wish criterion gets hold of more newer movies at least from the past two decades. Like Todd Solondz’s Happiness, or Miranda July’s Me and you and Everyone we know or Richard Ayoade’s The Double or lesser known international gems like a death in the Gunj or so many others I just heard of but never got to see. But that has nothing to do with TheCriterionChannel . As for TheCriterionChannel please keep grouping movies by themes or moods or tropes, it makes a person like me feel like bingeing those set movies rather than those occasional gems which I heard are good but remain in my to watch list for a long time. And also more favorite movie lists of filmmakers. That’s it, thanks for releasing criterion movies in a streaming app

I love the style and variety of cinema from different parts of the world that criterion channel has in it’s vault. There’s a certain sense that these movies were not meant to be forgotten and left in the waste bin of history collecting dust and fading away from the collective conscious. I’m so happy to see some of my old favorites (Kurosawa and Kubrick), but more importantly than that, new discoveries opening my vantage point of what I can imagine. There’s definitely a rabbit hole you can get into here. There was a month of Toshiru Mifune films and I literally binged them. Some I haven’t even seen from him or seen him act in, a dramatic role vs. as a samurai. This isn’t just for those high brow snobbery film critic reviewers. I think there’s a recency bias as far as, “oh if it was made in 1935 it can’t be good). My ex-girlfriend used to say, “if it’s in black-and-white it’s useless”. I was shaking my head, but moving on. Criterion has my favorite film of all time - “Ikuru”, with hours of extras! If you give that one a shot you’ll enjoy it. Good luck on your foils odyssey.

No other streaming service out there makes watching great cinema quite so accessible. Mubi is great, Kanopy and Fandor are also good, but the Criterion Channel is exactly what we needed after FilmStruck, the former greatest thing ever, was shut down last year. In many respects, Criterion Channel is better, as it is easier to navigate and more appealing to the eye. The catalog is smaller, but with time I imagine it will expand to the great size of the late FilmStruck catalog. Nevertheless, the catalog currently available is chock full of great cinema, new and old, domestic and foreign, entertainment and artistic. There’s a film in here for everyone, and TheCriterionChannel makes finding such films super easy. The way TheCriterionChannel features films on the front page is very unique, as rather than an algorithm aggregating a bunch of movies under some generic genre title such as “independent dramas” a la Netflix, the people working on TheCriterionChannel create a new themed collection of a few films every days. There are double features, short + feature pairs, director highlights, studio highlights, female filmmaker spotlights, etc. Long live cinema, and love live the Criterion Channel!

I came over with some trepidation from FilmStruck, where I found the Criterion offerings on there often less compelling than the rest of FilmStruck. Nonetheless I joined as Charter member and have been glad to be a part of it since it’s launch. TheCriterionChannel continues to grow slowly and lack some of the functionality I want, particularly stability of progress in a film and uninterrupted broadcasts, but the care in curation and greater inclusion of added features contextualizing films more than makes up for all the areas still in need of improvement. I’ve found the new releases to be addressing my concerns more and more as they go along.

Finally, I’ve found the mix of the familiar art house classics has been expanded with better coverage of earlier eras of Hollywood, series featuring the work of directors who have just released a new film, and a healthy stream of films from the last decade and a commitment to highlighting women filmmakers that has become stronger and stronger.

As someone from the film archivist community I also deeply appreciate the priority placed on new restorations and highlighting the many people who make them possible.

Like many fans of the Criterion Collection, I was frustrated with FilmStruck’s bugs and sad when it ended. But the Criterion Channel is SUCH an improvement. Some of the best movies you will ever see are available in their rotating selection of movies. I own about 40 criterion titles in physical form but I have to say, the channel may be the best way to experience the best of the Criterion Collection. Their sections on 21st century cinema and Women Filmmakers always point me towards great films. The Saturday matinees and Friday double features are excellent as well. I would also like to shoutout whoever it is that is managing the Channel’s collection. There have been some valid complaints lodged against the Criterion Collection due to the lack of diversity (specifically black directors) in the collection, but the Channel is an incredible resource for filmmakers that haven’t made it into the physical Criterion Collection, usually due to distribution rights. They’ve had great retrospectives of Kathleen Collins, Cheryl Dunye, Charles Burnett, Terence Nance, and many more. It is a Wonderful service, and I can’t recommend it enough!! Love u Criterion Collection lmk if ur hiring I graduate in May xoxoxoxo

In my opinion, there is no better collection of movies and film than the criterion collection. You can find works from all of the greatest directors, a treasure trove of world cinema, the most important and influential films of all time, not to mention numerous short films, interviews, commentary and more. It’s literally the history of film laid out before your very eyes. Any true cinephile has access to this channel or has shopped this collection. I thought I loved movies, but once I started exploring this collection my love and appreciation for them deepened and grew exponentially. This is film as an art form and not just entertainment. I would say the only reason you would NOT want to start watching movies from the criterion collection is because once you do you can never watch a crappy Netflix movie again without feeling guilty that you just wasted 2 hours of your life. You’ll ruin 90% of all other programming on contemporary channels because it will all pale in comparison to what criterion has to offer. If you want to keep on sifting through trash, then keep with your current viewing habits, but if you want to expand your horizons then dive into all that Criterion has to offer!

after hours of frantic searching for an affordable option to watch all the Wong Kar Wai's movies again (yes, i was willing to buy DVDs but not @ $50 a pop!) i am so glad i found criterion channel streaming services. i do not watch TV, i have netflix and britbox. but neither carries a good selection of true older intl (aka non-english) films. two days ago, i develop this craving for the older movies from HK i grew up watching. even contacted my friends in china to see what app they've got for movies such as "days of being wild", "in the mood for love", and "2046"! no one had any good option. criterion channel app is the only one after hours of google search that actually carries some of the movies i wanted. they do not have "days of wild" or "2046" (maybe later??) but they have a great collection for the "in the mood for love" including all the scenes that did not make to the final release. they are gems! really appreciate it.