From The New York Times Magazine, a brief history of the Criterion Collection:

Over four decades, through a combination of luck, obsession and good taste, this 55-person company has become the arbiter of what makes a great movie, more so than any Hollywood studio or awards ceremony.

I’ve been a Criterion fan since the early 2000s when I noticed they had good taste: slick typography on the DVD covers, an insistence on preserving original aspect ratios, and lots of Ozu titles.