Richard Linklater’s Current Ten Favourite Criterion Films

November 7, 2026

Cinema

3 Minutes

Richard Linklater described his 2008 selection as an “ever-changing but current top ten.” That small qualification makes the list feel unusually honest. These are favourite Criterion films at a particular moment, gathered around spiritual searching, bodily life and a little comedy.

The ten places contain filmmakers from across the world, each with a different way of making time visible. The pleasure is in seeing the films beside one another, without pretending that they add up to a single rule.

Criterion Collection artwork accompanying Richard Linklater’s Current Ten Favourite Criterion Films

1. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)

A medieval icon painter travels through a violent, divided Russia and struggles to find a reason to keep making art. Tarkovsky’s historical film becomes a meditation on faith, responsibility and creation under pressure.

2. Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)

Balthazar, a donkey, passes between owners whose lives bring him affection, neglect and cruelty. Bresson’s restrained style lets small gestures carry enormous emotional weight.

3. The Flowers of St. Francis (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)

Episodes from the lives of Franciscan friars turn spiritual discipline into a gentle, often comic encounter with the world. Rossellini finds a kind of grace in simplicity.

4. Day of Wrath (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1943)

In seventeenth-century Denmark, a young woman accused of witchcraft becomes caught in the suspicions and desires of a pastor’s household. Dreyer’s measured compositions make private fear feel like a public sentence.

5. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)

An elderly couple travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children and discover how ordinary obligations have displaced attention. Ozu makes family change legible through pauses, rooms and the everyday passage of time.

Criterion Collection image from a film selected in Richard Linklater’s Current Ten Favourite Criterion Films

6. The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988)

Scorsese adapts Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel as an intimate, imagined account of Jesus confronting doubt, desire and the demands of his spiritual calling. Linklater’s inclusion sits naturally beside the list’s recurring interest in belief made human.

7. Unfaithfully Yours (Preston Sturges, 1948)

A conductor imagines elaborate responses to the suspected infidelity of his wife, then discovers that fantasy and reality do not behave alike. Sturges builds a farce around jealousy, pride and a man’s overconfidence in his own plan.

8. Fanny and Alexander: Television Version (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)

Bergman’s expansive family story follows two children through festive warmth, grief and the severity of an adult household. The television cut gives its many characters and episodes more room than the theatrical version.

9. Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)

A young Parisian thief treats pickpocketing as both a skill and a private theory of superiority. Bresson’s precise gestures turn the mechanics of theft into a study of isolation and moral choice.

10. I Know Where I’m Going! (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1945)

A determined young woman’s journey to marry a wealthy industrialist is interrupted by weather and a stay in the Hebrides. The filmmakers turn romance into a lively encounter between ambition, landscape and the unpredictable.

A top ten that keeps moving

Linklater’s list is full of people trying to live with conviction: artists, parents, believers, thieves and travellers. Some films approach that question through spiritual drama; others through a comic plan that falls apart.

His “current” is the word to keep. A favourite list can change because we change, and because a film keeps offering something new when we return to it.

Sources and further reading

Selection and film details checked against the cited Criterion Collection source on October 5, 2026. Film artwork remains the property of its respective rights holder.