“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (dir. Werner Herzog, 1972)
It’s November, which means that the Criterion Channel is serving up all the noir you could ever want. This year’s offerings come a shade darker than usual, as Noirvember 2025 is all about Blackout Noir — you know, the kind of films noir that hinge on memory holes, drunken blackouts, and narratively convenient intrusions of concussive amnesia. Programmed by Farran Smith Nehme and Glenn Kenny, the series spans from 1935’s wickedly titled “Remember Last Night?” to 1954’s “Blackout,” and highlights the gray areas of ambiguity that such lapses introduce into a genre defined by its use of black and white. For those who crave another side dish of shadowy characters, the Channel’s Howard Hawks includes a noir of its own (“The Big Sleep”), in addition to other classics like “Only Angels Have Wings” and “His Girl Friday.”
Elsewhere, the Channel is serving up a slightly warmer and more self-explanatory series of “Family Reunions,” whose inclusions range from poignant (“Rachel Getting Married”) to unsparing “The Celebration” to inescapable (“The Dead”). There’s unsurprisingly no overlap between that retro and the Channel’s massive, career-spinning tribute to the great Werner Herzog, whose films tend to focus less on togetherness than they do the humbling isolation of the human experience (though “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” our somewhat arbitrary pick of the month, is certainly a story of familiar bonds coming undone). The series reaches all the way back to Herzog’s essential first feature, 1968’s “Signs of Life,” and covers a wide array of his most enduring films — long and short — thru 2009’s “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done.”
In what could be seen as some deliciously pointed Thanksgiving counterprogramming, Adam Piron has assembled a slate of “Native Nonfiction” that surveys the last 40 years of Indigenous documentary filmmaking, touching on totemic works from the likes of Victor Masayesva Jr. (“Itam Hakin, Hopiit”) in addition to highlighting the next generation of Indigenous filmmakers, led by artists such as Sky Hopinka (“maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore”). Anyone still recovering from “It Was Just an Accident” — or desperately waiting for it to reach their local cinema — would do well to check out the Channel’s selection of Jafar Panahi classics, which mixes together some formative work (“The White Balloon”) alongside the four strongest films he made during his more recent ban from filmmaking (including “This Is Not a Film” and “Taxi”).
Last but certainly not least, the Channel has also assembled a comprehensive crash course on the “Pioneers of African American Cinema,” which highlights the “race films” that flourished between the 1920s and 1940s. If you’re looking to familiarize yourself with legendary artists like Oscar Micheaux, Paul Robeson, and Zora Neale Hurston, this collection — curated by scholars Charles Musser and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart — is the best possible place to start.
All films available to stream November 1.