The Criterion Channel’s April lineup has the usual deep-catalog flex, but this month’s programming feels especially sharp in the way it turns curation into argument. The headliners are not just titles but modes: corporate corruption, Cold War dissent, trans self-representation, avant-garde shorts, and the ongoing excavation of films and supplements once locked away on out-of-print physical editions. If March was about breadth, April looks more like Criterion tightening the thesis.
The flashiest of the month’s marquee programs is “Corporate Thrillers,” a slick, poisonous run through the years when Hollywood treated boardrooms, law firms, and finance as arenas of Shakespearean treachery. The series stretches from Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” and Sydney Pollack’s “The Firm” to “Disclosure,” “Primal Fear,” “The Devil’s Advocate,” “Michael Clayton,” and “Arbitrage,” tracing the era between the Black Monday crash and the global financial collapse through stories of greed, conspiracy, legal rot, and ambition curdled into pathology. Criterion is also already flagging David Fincher’s “The Game” for June 1, a nice bit of looming paranoia parked just beyond the month’s edge.
Elsewhere, the service launches what could become one of its more addictive ongoing series with “Out-of-Print Criterion Collection Editions,” a showcase for films and supplements once tied to LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu-ray releases that have since disappeared from circulation. The first wave is strong: “King Kong,” “High Noon,” “Bad Day at Black Rock,” “Harold and Maude,” “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” “The Elephant Man,” and Paul Verhoeven’s “RoboCop.” For longtime collectors, it is a small act of restoration-by-streaming; for newer subscribers, it is a reminder that Criterion history includes the supplemental ecosystem as much as the movies themselves.
One of the month’s more personal attractions comes through Mary Bronstein’s “Adventures in Moviegoing,” which arrives at a particularly good moment for the filmmaker following “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” Her selections—“Portrait of Jason,” “Night of the Living Dead,” “News from Home,” “Smithereens,” and “Frownland”—map a taste for rawness, formal independence, and abrasive intimacy. Criterion frames the program through Bronstein’s conversation with Channel programming head Aliza Ma, linking her own work back to a lineage of DIY rigor, downtown energy, and emotional messiness.
The month’s most vital sidebar may be “Tramps, Troublemakers, and Trailblazers: Trans Filmmakers,” curated by Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay. The program refuses any flattening idea of a singular trans film image, instead moving across documentary, narrative, essay film, horror, and short-form work. The lineup includes “Maggots and Men,” “Drunktown’s Finest,” “Lingua Franca,” “No Ordinary Man,” Jane Schoenbrun’s “We’re All Going To The World’s Fair,” “Dog Movie,” “Castration Movie Anthology i. Traps,” and “Queens of Drama,” alongside shorts like “Gender Troublemakers” and “Rupert Remembers.” It is one of those Criterion programs that feels both corrective and expansive—less a sidebar than a reorientation.
Criterion’s exclusive premieres also carry some weight this month. Bi Gan’s “Resurrection,” arriving with a new introduction from the director as part of the Channel’s Meet the Filmmakers series, sounds like exactly the sort of dream-logic cinema the platform loves to champion: a shape-shifting odyssey that moves across a century of film language, from silent-era expressionism to noir to vampire romance. There is also “Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By,” André Bonzel’s personal and historical excavation of home movies, memory, sex, and image-making, built from inherited amateur footage and family history.
On the repertory side, April digs in with “Three Noirs by Jacques Tourneur,” anchored by “Out of the Past,” plus “Berlin Express” and “Nightfall,” while “Emile de Antonio’s Cold War Counterculture” gathers the documentarian’s blunt-force political cinema across “Point of Order!,” “Rush to Judgment,” “In the Year of the Pig,” “Millhouse,” “Painters Painting,” “Underground,” “In the King of Prussia,” and “Mr. Hoover and I.” There is also a healthy side menu of additions: Sophy Romvari shorts, a “Prismatic Ground Presents” package, Charlotte Gainsbourg’s “Jane by Charlotte,” the music docs “Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr.” and “Tokyo Melody: A Film About Ryuichi Sakamoto,” the surveillance thriller “Stranger Eyes,” and Mary Bronstein’s early feature “Yeast.”
As usual with Criterion, the overall pleasure is in the cross-pollination. April is not just offering subscribers a pile of good movies; it is setting “Michael Clayton” next to “RoboCop,” Mary Bronstein next to Shirley Clarke, trans counterhistories next to corporate malfeasance, and Emile de Antonio’s political fury next to a new Bi Gan dreamscape. The lineup starts streaming on April 1. In the meantime, Criterion has already tipped one of its next moves, with “The Game” set to join the Channel on June 1.
Complete list of films premiering on the Criterion Channel this month:
All Said Done, Micah Weber, 2025
Antitrust, Peter Howitt, 2001
Arbitrage, Nicholas Jarecki, 2012*
Bad Day at Black Rock, John Sturges, 1955*
Berlin Express, Jacques Tourneur, 1948
Buseok, Kyujae Park, 2024
Castration Movie Anthology i. Traps, Louise Weard, 2024
Concrete Resources (Thank you for keeping me a company of images), Emir West, 2024
The Deal, Harvey Kahn, 2005
The Devil’s Advocate, Taylor Hackford, 1997
Disclosure, Barry Levinson, 1994
Dog Movie, Henry Hanson, 2023
Drunktown’s Finest, Sydney Freeland, 2014
The Elephant Man, David Lynch, 1980
endings, Philip Hoffman and Isiah Medina, 2024
The Firm, Sydney Pollack, 1993*
Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By, André Bonzel, 2021
Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr., Philipp Virus, 2021
Gatchaman: The Movie, Hisayuki Toriumi, 1978*
Gender Troublemakers, Mirha-Soleil Ross and Xanthra Phillippa Mackay, 1993
Grandma’s House, Sophy Romvari, 2018
Grasshopper Republic, Daniel McCabe, 2023
Harold and Maude, Hal Ashby, 1971
Hemel, Danielle Dean, 2024
High Noon, Fred Zinnemann, 1952
In Dog Years, Sophy Romvari, 2019
The International, Tom Tykwer, 2009
In the King of Prussia, Emile de Antonio, 1983
In the Year of the Pig, Emile de Antonio, 1968
It’s Him, Sophy Romvari, 2017
Jane by Charlotte, Charlotte Gainsbourg, 2021
Kalighat Fetish, Ashish Avikunthak, 1999
King Kong, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933
Lingua Franca, Isabel Sandoval, 2019
The Man Who Fell to Earth, Nicolas Roeg, 1976
Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy, 2007
Millhouse, Emile de Antonio, 1971
Mr. Hoover and I, Emile de Antonio, 1989
Nightfall, Jacques Tourneur, 1956
Nine Behind, Sophy Romvari, 2016
No Ordinary Man, Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt, 2020
Norman Norman, Sophy Romvari, 2018
Out of the Past, Jacques Tourneur, 1947
Painters Painting, Emile de Antonio, 1972
Point of Order!, Emile de Antonio, 1964
Primal Fear, Gregory Hoblit, 1996*
Pumpkin Movie, Sophy Romvari, 2017
Queens of Drama, Alexis Langlois, 2024
Remembrance of József Romvári, Sophy Romvari, 2020
Remote Views, Alexis McCrimmon, 2025
Return to Reason, Man Ray, 2023
RoboCop, Paul Verhoeven, 1987
Rupert Remembers, Xanthra Phillippa Mackay, 2000
Rush to Judgment, Emile de Antonio, 1967
So Pretty, Jessica Dunn Rovinelli, 2019
Still Processing, Sophy Romvari, 2020
Stranger Eyes, Yeo Siew Hua, 2024
Tokyo Melody: A Film About Ryuichi Sakamoto, Elizabeth Lennard, 1985
Tuktuit, Lindsay McIntyre, 2025
typhoon diary 风球日记, Helix Zhang, 2024
Underground, Haskell Wexler, Emile de Antonio, and Mary Lampson, 1976
Wall Street, Oliver Stone, 1987
The Water Murmurs, Story Chen, 2022
Winter Portrait, Fernando Saldivia Yáñez, 2024
Yeast, Mary Bronstein, 2008
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
