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Criterion Collection: Naked [Blu-ray] | DVD Review
While the film has a number of hilarious moments, it can only be considered a comedy in the broadest sense. The film is like a dark plunge into icy forbidden waters; the resultant shock heightening the senses just enough to make one fully aware of the disorienting perils that lie ahead. The London Town depicted here is not a charming cloister of regal palaces and fine tailor shops, but a forlorn purgatory of rancid smells, tawdry temptations and perpetual insolence; a besotted city whose morals are crumbling as fast as its bricks.
DVD Review: Criterion Collection: The Makioka Sisters [Blu-ray]
"...Kon Ichikawa builds a flashpoint in the conflict between the staid traditions of Japanese culture and the liberated yearnings of the modern world. The film’s surface features the placid opaqueness of a formal tea ceremony, but simmering deep within the pretty porcelain are the fears and confusions of a family, and a national culture, in the midst of profound transition."
Criterion Collection: The Makioka Sisters [Blu-ray] | DVD Review
"...Kon Ichikawa builds a flashpoint in the conflict between the staid traditions of Japanese culture and the liberated yearnings of the modern world. The film’s surface features the placid opaqueness of a formal tea ceremony, but simmering deep within the pretty porcelain are the fears and confusions of a family, and a national culture, in the midst of profound transition."
DVD Review: Criterion Collection: People on Sunday [Blu-ray]
"In many ways a forerunner of today’s independent films, People on Sunday was created on a microscopic budget – mainly with money borrowed from relatives – and features amateur actors essentially portraying themselves and performing their real-life occupations. This undercurrent of realism was something of a revelation in 1930, and the film was rewarded with glowing notices and packed theatres."
DVD Review: Criterion Collection: Zazie dans le métro [Blu-ray]
"As the film begins to scale up toward its monumental conclusion – and monumental is the only word for it – Malle’s vision of Paris devolves into a nihilist, gridlocked netherworld of juggling polar bears, fascist restaurants, dream sequences, food fights, dancing girls, destroyed automobiles and enough broken champagne bottles to launch a thousand ships. Just when you thought the film had reached a critical mass of absurdity, there’s always a new, even broader exercise in cinematic Dadaism emerging from the rubble. Eventually both the film and the subway strike resolve and the imaginative world of Zazie returns to normal, but most viewers will find that reentry difficult and even slightly depressing."
