Criterion Adds New Search Options For Their Hulu Plus Channel

Criterion has listened to our complaints and finally made all of their Hulu titles available to browse and search via their website.

When Hulu launched their redesign in August of 2012 all efficient search options for Criterion films were scrapped for a nice looking but ultimately user-unfriendly page.  It was frustrating for us fans who were on board with Criterion’s jump to Hulu, and it seemed like we were at the mercy of their random featured picks of lumped together Criterion films such as “Amour Fou,” “Crush! Kill! Destroy!” or “Popular Criterion Movies” without a means of searching by specifics including director or country. When you watched a Masaki Kobayashi film for instance, there was no intuitive or easy way to find another film of his, or if you wanted to look for Bergman films from the 60s it was up to you to figure it out and search the titles on Hulu.

Now it’s as easy as searching a particular name or country and clicking through to the film’s Hulu page; you can even sort each option alphabetically and in ascending or descending order. The featured titles are still searchable, but now you can also browse the “online-only” Criterion films without a physical disc release too. Perhaps the best option is the way you can view all 800+ films on a single page to pick and choose from. It’s a Criterion control freak’s dream.

What’s surprising to me is just how many available titles I had no idea about because of the limited Hulu page. Who knew that so much early Chaplin was there or that the online-only Keisuke Kinoshita titles were so extensive!?

It is, however, still just a glorified list, but it’s a start, and hopefully they’ll eventually add more options to it. I’m hoping to see plot descriptions when you mouse-over the titles on the list or maybe even cover art added, but for now it’s pretty great to have this resource available to make the Criterion/Hulu experience so much easier.

Head on over to Criterion.com/Hulu and start searching!