The Best Mature Movies and TV Shows on The Criterion Channel

What it's about: A mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feed his urge for violent action, attempting to save a preadolescent prostitute in the process.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix & The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX, The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: In Mexico, two teenage boys and an attractive older woman embark on a road trip and learn a thing or two about life, friendship, sex, and each other.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Google Play & Prime Video).

What it's about: Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel & Hoopla) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: On the planet Ygam, the Draags, extremely technologically and spiritually advanced blue humanoids, consider the tiny Oms, human beings descendants of Terra's inhabitants, as ignorant animals. Those who live in slavery are treated as simple pets and used to entertain Draag children; those who live hidden in the hostile wilderness of the planet are periodically hunted and ruthlessly slaughtered as if they were vermin.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX & The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX, The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Prime Video).

What it's about: Two college roommates have 24 hours to make the ultimate choice as they finalize arrangements for a black market abortion.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Prime Video & Vudu).

What it's about: In a Turkish village, five orphaned sisters live under strict rule while members of their family prepare their arranged marriages.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 3 services (Google Play, Prime Video & Vudu).

What it's about: Police sergeant Neil Howie is called to an island village in search of a missing girl whom the locals claim never existed. Stranger still, however, are the rituals that take place there.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Google Play & Vudu).

What it's about: In this bifurcated crime narrative, a disillusioned hitman attempts to escape from his violent lifestyle against the wishes of his partner, who is infatuated with him, and an eccentric mute repeatedly encounters, then subsequently falls for a depressed woman looking for the prostitute who supposedly stole her ex-boyfriend's affections.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel).

What it's about: Twelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX, The Criterion Channel & Kanopy).

What it's about: In medieval Japan a compassionate governor is sent into exile. His wife and children try to join him, but are separated, and the children grow up amid suffering and oppression.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Prime Video).

What it's about: Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Google Play & Prime Video).

What it's about: An unfaithful wife encounters the zombie of her dead lover while the demonic cenobites are pursuing him after he escaped their sadomasochistic underworld.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Shudder, The Criterion Channel & 1 other) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: This loosely plotted coming-of-age tale follows the life of 15-year-old Laurent Chevalier as he stumbles his way over the burgeoning swell of adolescence in 1950s France. After having his first sexual experience with a prostitute and dodging the lips of a priest, Chevalier contracts a case of scarlet fever. When the fever leaves him with a heart murmur, Chevalier is placed in a sanatorium, along with his over-attentive and adulterous mother.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel & Kanopy).

What it's about: In the questionable town of Deer Meadow, Washington, FBI Agent Desmond inexplicably disappears while hunting for the man who murdered a teen girl. The killer is never apprehended, and, after experiencing dark visions and supernatural encounters, Agent Dale Cooper chillingly predicts that the culprit will claim another life. Meanwhile, in the more cozy town of Twin Peaks, hedonistic beauty Laura Palmer hangs with lowlifes and seems destined for a grisly fate.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX & The Criterion Channel), stream on a TV everywhere service (TCM) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: When the warren belonging to a community of rabbits is threatened, a brave group led by Fiver, Bigwig, Blackberry and Hazel leave their homeland in a search of a safe new haven.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX & The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Google Play & Prime Video).

What it's about: With Masculin féminin, ruthless stylist and iconoclast Jean-Luc Godard introduces the world to "the children of Marx and Coca-Cola," through a gang of restless youths engaged in hopeless love affairs with music, revolution, and each other. French new wave icon Jean-Pierre Leaud stars as Paul, an idealistic would-be intellectual struggling to forge a relationship with the adorable pop star Madeleine. Through their tempestuous affair, Godard fashions a candid and wildly funny free-form examination of youth culture in throbbing 1960s Paris, mixing satire and tragedy as only Godard can.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX & The Criterion Channel).

What it's about: An artist in crisis is haunted by nightmares from the past on a windy island. Between midnight and dawn, he tells his wife about his most painful memories.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Vudu).

What it's about: This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel).

What it's about: The last of Rohmer's Six Moral Tales. Frederic leads a bourgeois life; he is a partner in a small Paris office and is happily married to Helene, a teacher expecting her second child. In the afternoons, Frederic daydreams about other women, but has no intention of taking any action. One day, Chloe, who had been a mistress of an old friend, begins dropping by his office. They meet as friends, irregularly in the afternoons, till eventually Chloe decides to seduce Frederic, causing him a moral dilemma.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX, The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Prime Video).

What it's about: A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores, takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet. Slowly, her ritualized daily routines begin to fall apart.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Prime Video & Vudu).

What it's about: A lonely shoe salesman and an eccentric performance artist struggle to connect in this unique take on contemporary life.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Microsoft).

What it's about: On the eve of his wedding, on holiday on the Lake Annecy shore, a career diplomat visits an old acquaintance, perhaps a former girlfriend. Through her he meets an intense teenager, Laura, and then lusts after her sister, Claire. Whilst Laura attempts to flirt with him, his fantasy becomes focused on wanting to caress Claire's knee.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel & Kanopy).

What it's about: Follows a woman's fight and survival amid the vicissitudes of life and the cruelty of the society.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel).

What it's about: When linguistics professor Henry Higgins boasts that he can pass off Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle as a princess with only six months' training, Colonel George Pickering takes him up on the bet. Eliza moves into Higgins's home and begins her rigorous training after the professor comes to a financial agreement with her dustman father, Alfred. But the plucky young woman is not the only one undergoing a transformation.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX, The Criterion Channel & 2 others).

What it's about: Two teenage girls, both named Marie, decide that since the world is spoiled they will be spoiled as well; accordingly they embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world about them. This freewheeling, madcap feminist farce was immediately banned by the government.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX, The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 1 service (iTunes).

What it's about: Remy Germain is a doctor in a French town who becomes the focus of a vicious smear campaign, as letters accusing him of having an affair and performing unlawful abortions are mailed to village leaders. The mysterious writer, who signs each letter as "Le Corbeau" (The Raven) soon targets the whole town, exposing everyone's dark secrets. This allegorical film was highly controversial at the time of its release, and was banned in France after the Liberation.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel).

What it's about: Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older. She's of an age when she must choose: to seek marriage (difficult given her tarnished occupation), to be a kept woman, or to borrow money to buy a bar of her own. Each route has dangers, including investors demanding a return on their loans. Keiko has a quiet dignity that attracts men, but are they what they seem? Does she actually have choices?

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel).

What it's about: Based on a true story set in pre-war Japan, a man and one of his servants begin a torrid affair. Their desire becomes a sexual obsession so strong that to intensify their ardor, they forsake all, even life itself.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 1 service (Prime Video).

What it's about: Germany in the autumn of 1957: Lola, a seductive cabaret singer-prostitute exults in her power as a temptress of men, but she wants out—she wants money, property, and love. Pitting a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building commissioner, Lola launches an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale. Shot in childlike candy colors, Fassbinder’s homage to Josef von Sternberg’s classic The Blue Angel stands as a satiric tribute to capitalism.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX & The Criterion Channel).

What it's about: A bombastic, womanizing art dealer and his painter friend go to a seventeenth-century villa on the Riviera for a relaxing summer getaway. But their idyll is disturbed by the presence of the bohemian Haydée, accused of being a “collector” of men.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel & Kanopy).

What it's about: Recently released from a mental hospital, Ricky ties up Marina, a film star he once had sex with and keeps her hostage.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX, The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Prime Video).

What it's about: Franck, a fit gay man, seeks love at a lakeside gay cruising beach. Among the mostly pudgy nude sunbathers, he befriends Henri, a depressed middle-aged bi-sexual who enjoys the quiet but accepts Franck's company. When Michel appears, Franck finally spots a man he'd like to know sexually. Unfortunately, he also spots him drowning his gay lover but opts not to tell anyone in order to consider having a relationship with this handsome yet remorseless killer.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder, The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 1 service (Prime Video).

What it's about: A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 3 services (Google Play, Prime Video & YouTube).

What it's about: High school athlete Cyd Loughlin lives alone with her depressive father in South Carolina, perpetually longing to get away from it all. When her aunt, famous novelist Miranda Ruth, agrees to host her for a few weeks during the summer, Cyd jumps at the opportunity. While there, she falls for a girl in the neighborhood, even as she and her aunt gently challenge each other in the realms of sex and spirit.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Hulu, The Criterion Channel & 1 other) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Three people who have lost everything, a soldier tired of fighting, a young woman and a little girl, pose as a family to escape the civil war in Sri Lanka. They emigrate to France and settle in a chaotic neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris, where apparently the law no longer exists; but they, who barely know each other, struggle to survive there, even when the ghosts of war begin to haunt them again.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Andula, an innocent Czech girl from a factory town, is desperately in search of love. She believes she's found it when she beds Milda, a charming young musician visiting from Prague. Milda, however, is only looking for a casual encounter, and leaves town assuming he'll never see Andula again. But when Andula doesn't hear from him, she packs up and heads to Prague, to the surprise of Milda and his parents.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel).

What it's about: The residents of a suburban high-rise apartment building are being infected by a strain of parasites that turn them into mindless, sex-crazed fiends out to infect others by the slightest sexual contact.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi & PopcornFlix), stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: A portrait of youth in bloom; a tale of one family's dissolution; a reflection upon the danger and the mystery in living. Sandrine Bonnaire plays Suzanne, a free spirit and the vessel for an almost Brontëan choler. She's 16, and men exist — diverse lovers, an overbearing brother, and the father portrayed by director Maurice Pialat himself in an unforgettable turn that displays the full magnitude of the cinema giant's tenderness, force-of-will, and presence of being.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel).

What it's about: As the city of Paris and the French people grow in consumer culture, a housewife living in a high-rise apartment with her husband and two children takes to prostitution to help pay the bills.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX & The Criterion Channel).

What it's about: A relatively boring Los Angeles couple discover a bizarre, if not murderous way to get funding for opening a restaurant.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX, The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Prime Video).

What it's about: A shallow, provincial wife finds her relationship with her preoccupied husband strained by romantic notions of love, leading her further towards Paris and the country wilderness.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel).

What it's about: In the far future, a highly sexual woman is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Durand-Durand. Along the way she encounters various unusual people.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Valerie, a Czechoslovakian teenager living with her grandmother, is blossoming into womanhood, but that transformation proves secondary to the effects she experiences when she puts on a pair of magic earrings. Now seeing the world around her in a different light, Valerie must endure her sexual awakening while attempting to discern reality from fantasy as she encounters lecherous priest Gracian, a vampire-like stranger and otherworldly carnival folk.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Parisian everyman Antoine Doinel has married his sweetheart Christine Darbon, and the newlyweds have set up a cozy domestic life of selling flowers and giving violin lessons while Antoine fitfully works on his long-gestating novel. As Christine becomes pregnant with the couple's first child, Antoine finds himself enraptured with a young Japanese beauty. The complications change the course of their relationship forever.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel & Kanopy).

What it's about: 18th century English aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney leads a double life. He appears to be merely the effete aristocrat, but in reality is part of an underground effort to free French nobles from Robespierre's Reign of Terror.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, HBO MAX & The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $2.00 on 1 service (Prime Video).

What it's about: Professor Sinigaglia (Marcello Mastroianni) is the title character in this darkly comedic Italian drama about mistreated factory workers in the city of Turin. Toiling away in appalling conditions in a textile mill, these employees have no one to stand up for them until Sinigaglia puts his academic career on the line by helping them to start a strike. Although the teacher comes under scrutiny by unsympathetic authorities, he maintains his dedication to the workers' cause.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel).

What it's about: A concentration camp survivor discovers her former torturer and lover working as a porter at a hotel in postwar Vienna. When the couple attempt to re-create their sadomasochistic relationship, his former SS comrades begin to stalk them.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX, The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Prime Video).

What it's about: France, World War II. In order to somehow make ends meet, the mother of two children, Marie Latour, does underground abortions and rents a room to a familiar prostitute. She doesn't pay any attention to her husband, who returned from the war because of his injury and lives her own life. Abortions gradually begin to bring a good income, and boredom can be easily dispelled by starting a young lover ...

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (The Criterion Channel).