The Criterion Channel’s March programming is built like a greatest-hits mixtape for anyone who ever built a personality out of a shelf. “VHS Forever” as a love letter to analog obsession, a compact Gwyneth Paltrow trio as a reminder of her ‘90s/’00s precision, two recent shorts by Charlie Kaufman and Eva H.D. that drift like city-symphony afterimages, and a Romanian New Wave spotlight that turns mundane bureaucracy into existential suspense.
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The headliner is “VHS Forever,” which treats videotape as a technological revolution and a cultural contagion. The collection traces how VHS reshaped taste and access—video-store culture, home-recording compulsion, and the strange intimacy of transgressive images living in your living room—by ricocheting from “Videodrome” and “Benny’s Video” to hangout-era store mythology like “Clerks” and “The Watermelon Woman.” The lineup’s big contemporary counterpoint is “Videoheaven,” an exclusive premiere from Alex Ross Perry, narrated by Maya Hawke, that reframes the rental store as a consumer temple, community hub, and quiet generator of dread.
The Paltrow mini-showcase—“Sliding Doors,” “A Perfect Murder,” and “Two Lovers”—plays like a three-panel portrait of a star built on intelligence and restraint: romantic fate games, sleek adult thriller tension, and rawer intimacy. It’s a tidy programming idea that doubles as a reminder that movie-star charisma doesn’t need volume when it has control.
Kaufman’s two shorts with Eva H.D. lean away from the intricately constructed metafiction mode people associate with him and into something more impressionistic and sensorial: “Jackals & Fireflies” and the Athens-set “How to Shoot a Ghost,” the latter starring Jessie Buckley. Criterion frames them as city symphonies—works that find their emotion in passing encounters, small gestures, and the bruised poetry of urban wandering.
The Romanian New Wave series remains one of the most bracing modern movements because it’s so unflashy and so merciless. Films by Cristi Puiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, and Cristian Mungiu turn everyday dilemmas into moral dramas where the humor is pitch-black, and the pressure is social, political, and intimate all at once. Titles like “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” “12:08 East of Bucharest,” and “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” sit here as clean examples of minimalist filmmaking that never feels small.
Outside the top stories, March is stacked. Anime fans get “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex” Season 1 (original and English-dubbed), still one of the sharper cyberpunk crime procedurals on TV. There’s also the Monika Treut retrospective, “Sex, Gender, and Seduction,” spanning narrative and documentary work that helped define queer cinema’s transgressive, inquisitive edge. New exclusives include “Happyend,” Neo Sora’s dystopian near-future Tokyo coming-of-age tale, plus the Kaufman short highlighted above.
For rediscoveries, Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project returns with restored classics (each introduced by Scorsese), while director spotlights dig deep into Robert Bresson and William Klein—two filmmakers who, in very different registers, made form feel like rebellion. And if you want a few extra side doors to walk through, March also brings in titles like “Cruel Intentions,” “El Planeta,” “Talking About Trees,” and “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair,” plus a trio of Ja’Tovia Gary shorts and the Oscar-nominated short “Perfectly a strangeness.”
Complete list of films premiering on the Criterion Channel this month:
12:08 East of Bucharest, Corneliu Porumboiu, 2006
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Cristian Mungiu, 2007
52 Pick-Up, John Frankenheimer, 1986
American Dharma, Errol Morris, 2018
Aurora, Cristi Puiu, 2010
The Big Hit, Kirk Wong, 1998
Bleeder, Nicolas Winding Refn, 1999
Body Double, Brian De Palma, 1984
Chronicle of the Years of Fire, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina, 1975
Clerks, Kevin Smith, 1994*
Cruel Intentions, Roger Kumble, 1999
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Cristi Puiu, 2005
The Devil, Probably, Robert Bresson, 1977
Didn’t Do It for Love, Monika Treut, 1997
Drive My Car, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021
An Ecstatic Experience, Ja’Tovia Gary, 2015
Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther, William Klein, 1970
The Fall of Otrar, Ardak Amirkulov, 1991
Female Misbehavior, Monika Treut, 1992
The Fisher King, Terry Gilliam, 1991
Four Nights of a Dreamer, Robert Bresson, 1971
Genderation, Monika Treut, 2021
Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities, Monika Treut, 1999
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Kenji Kamiyama, 2002–2003
The Giverny Document, Ja’Tovia Gary, 2019
Gomorrah, Matteo Garrone, 2008
Gunbuster: The Movie, Hideaki Anno and Shoichi Masuo, 2006*
How to Shoot a Ghost, Charlie Kaufman, 2025
Jackals & Fireflies, Charlie Kaufman, 2023
Kummatty, G. Aravindan, 1979
Lancelot du lac, Robert Bresson, 1974
Lou Reed’s Berlin, Julian Schnabel, 2007
Muhammad Ali, the Greatest, William Klein, 1974*
My Father Is Coming, Monika Treut, 1991
Not Fade Away, David Chase, 2012*
Nothing Sacred, William A. Wellman, 1937
Oh Yeah!, Nick Canfield, 2025
perfectly a strangeness, Alison McAlpine, 2024
A Perfect Murder, Andrew Davis, 1998
El Planeta, Amalia Ulman, 2021
Police, Adjective, Corneliu Porumboiu, 2009
Quiet as It’s Kept, Ja’Tovia Gary, 2023
Re-Wind, Hisayasu Sato, 1988
Remote Control, Jeff Lieberman, 1988
Ring, Hideo Nakata, 1998
The Ring, Gore Verbinski, 2002*
Seduction: The Cruel Woman, Monika Treut and Elfi Mikesch, 1985
Sieranevada, Cristi Puiu, 2016
The Storms of Jeremy Thomas, Mark Cousins, 2021
Tiny Furniture, Lena Dunham, 2010
Tuesday, After Christmas, Radu Muntean, 2010
Two Lovers, James Gray, 2008*
Videodrome, David Cronenberg, 1983
Videoheaven, Alex Ross Perry, 2025*
Virgin Machine, Monika Treut, 1988
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Jane Schoenbrun, 2021
Who Killed Teddy Bear, Joseph Cates, 1965
Yam daabo, Idrissa Ouédraogo, 1987
*Available in the U.S. only
