Tag: Criterion Collection
Criterion Collection: Dragon Inn (1967) | Blu-ray Review
If martial arts could be spliced into opera, it would look something like King Hu’s 1967 cult classic Dragon Inn, the second of his...
Criterion Collection: Dietrich and von Sternberg in Hollywood | Blu-ray Review
She would be revered as one of the most famous sex symbols of the twentieth century. He would become renowned as one of early...
Criterion Collection: Manila in the Claws of Light | Blu-ray Review
Before a modern art-house renaissance of Filipino cinema thanks to the international acclaim of directors like Lav Diaz and Brillante Mendoza (who have dominated...
Criterion Collection: Beyond the Hills | Blu-ray Review
For his third film, and his follow-up to his 2007 Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Cristian Mungiu, titan of...
Criterion Collection: Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters | Blu-ray Review
With unprecedented providence! Criterion re-releases Paul Schrader’s 1985 masterpiece Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters the same month the neglected auteur’s equally superb First...
Criterion Collection: Moonrise | Blu-ray Review
For a two-time Academy Award winning director, Frank Borzage remains one of the most neglected studio auteurs of Hollywood’s childhood, one of the few...
Criterion Collection: The Color of Pomegranates | Blu-ray Review
It’s difficult to approach Sergei Parajanov’s 1969 masterpiece The Color of Pomegranates without the permeation of the troubled history of both its reception and...
Criterion Collection: Eclipse #46 – Ingrid Bergman’s Swedish Years | DVD Review
If her status as one of the most prominent fixtures of the Criterion Collection had been in contention before, Ingrid Bergman’s presence is now...
Criterion Collection: Women in Love (1969) | Blu-ray Review
Although it’s a rather libelous label often originated or thrust upon outré or idiosyncratic French directors, Britain’s Ken Russell is perhaps the epitome of...
Criterion Collection: Baal (1970) | Blu-ray Review
A missing cornerstone of Brechtian and New German Wave cinema is at last recuperated with the resurrection of Baal, a 1970 German television...
Criterion Collection: Tom Jones | Blu-ray Review
It’s difficult to imagine how an adaptation of Henry Fielding’s celebrated eight-hundred page-plus 1749 novel The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling would be...
Criterion Collection: The Hero (1966) | Blu-ray Review
Although the title may put contemporary audiences in mind of Brett Haley’s 2017 Sam Elliott homage (which, coincidentally, shares many similar themes and motifs),...
Criterion Collection: Kameradschaft | Blu-ray Review
A progressive call to unity between the historically at odds French and German cultures, G.W. Pabst’s 1931 classic Comradeship (Kameradschaft) which concerns a team...
Criterion Collection: Westfront 1918 | Blu-ray Review
Criterion taps into the first wave of sound films from iconic German director G.W. Pabst which solidified the auteur’s reputation (and successful crossover from...
Criterion Collection: Election (1999) | Blu-ray Review
During the final throes of the 1990s, as the last vestiges of Generation X began to crown into adulthood and the budding millennials were...
Criterion Collection: Desert Hearts (1985) | Blu-ray Review
As impressive a directorial debut as it is a cinematic landmark, Donna Deitch’s 1985 masterpiece Desert Hearts joins the ranks of the Criterion Collection...
Criterion Collection: Jabberwocky (1977) | Blu-ray Review
It was rather a rough start for Terry Gilliam’s solo directorial career. While 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which Gilliam co-directed with...
Criterion Collection: Barry Lyndon (1975) | Blu-ray Review
Within the omnipresent and overpowering narration guiding Barry Lyndon, a passage on the title character’s wife describes her as “not very much more important...
Criterion Collection: Personal Shopper | Blu-ray Review
One of French auteur Olivier Assayas’ most divisive films to date (it drew jeers at its premiere at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, but...
Criterion Collection: The Lure | Blu-ray Review
Agnieszka Smoczynska’s idiosyncratic directorial debut The Lure has cult classic written all over it. A fairy tale about two siren sisters in 1980’s Warsaw...
Criterion Collection: The Piano Teacher | Blu-ray Review
Rare are the performers who can surpass the sadistic tendencies of an oligarchically inclined auteur, but there exists no finer example of this than...
Criterion Collection: La poison (1951) | Blu-ray Review
Groucho Marx once drolly remarked, “Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?” Such is the state of the...
Criterion Collection: Stalker | Blu-ray Review
Mystical, existential journeys appear in cinematic form every so often, sometimes challenging our understandings of the world around us as well as the social...
Criterion Collection: Lost in America (1985) | Blu-ray Review
Smack dab in the middle of the age of excess, Albert Brooks’ third directorial feature Lost in America (1985) opened theatrically, a satirical...
Criterion Collection: The Breaking Point | Blu-ray Review
A superb classic begging for a proper recuperation, Michael Curtiz’s 1950 title The Breaking Point finally gets the release it deserves courtesy of the Criterion Collection....
Criterion Collection: L’Argent | Blu-ray Review
In more ways than one, L’Argent, the stunning final film of Robert Bresson, (anointed ‘patron saint of cinema’), plays like an eerie prequel to...
The Criterion Collection: Ugetsu | Blu-ray Review
A cornerstone of Japanese cinema, Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1953 masterpiece Ugetsu at last receives an updated transfer from the Criterion collection. In the middle of...
The Criterion Collection: The Marseille Trilogy | Blu-ray Review
Marcel Pagnol’s famed Marseille Trilogy receives a loving placement in the Criterion Collection after its theatrical US restoration release in early 2017 courtesy of...
Criterion Collection: Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 2 | Blu-ray Review
In 2007, Martin Scorsese founded the World Cinema Project, a nonprofit organization committed to restoring neglected and marginalized cinema from countries where major restorations...
Criterion Collection: Dheepan | Blu-ray Review
Almost exactly two years after he won the Palme d’Or for Dheepan at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Jacques Audiard finagles his way into...
Criterion Collection: Good Morning | Blu-ray Review
Criterion re-releases one of its early additions to the collection for the first time on Blu-ray, Yasujiro Ozu’s poignant late period comedy, Good Morning...
Criterion Collection: Woman of the Year | Blu-ray Review
“Success is no fun unless you share it with someone,” confirms a composed Fay Bainter in George Stevens’ 1942 comedy classic Woman of...
Criterion Collection: Blow-Up | Blu-ray Review
Italian auteur Michelangelo Antonioni ended the 1960s, his most consequential and revered cinematic period, with a legendary bang. Following his quartet of brooding treatments...
Criterion Collection: Multiple Maniacs | Blu-ray Review
Since the possibility of a new John Waters feature now seems unlikely (considering his last film was 2003’s A Dirty Shame), it’s with colossal...
Criterion Collection: Canoa: a Shameful Memory | Blu-ray Review
Described as “one of Mexico’s most highly regarded works of political cinema,” Criterion resurrects the highly charged 1976 documentary, Canoa: A Shameful Memory, from...
Criterion Collection: The Before Trilogy | Blu-Ray Review
The cornerstone of Richard Linklater’s filmography (no, not Boyhood) finally assumes a space in the Criterion Collection, the auteur now proliferating the label with...
Criterion Collection: Black Girl | Blu-ray Review
To speak of African cinema, one must begin with a discussion of Ousmane Sembene, the Senegalese auteur credited as the father of African film....
Criterion Collection: Something Wild | Blu-ray Review
Love means never having to say you’re sorry, or so we were told by Ali McGraw in Arthur Hiller’s famous 1970 adaptation of the...
Criterion Collection: His Girl Friday | Blu-ray Review
When it comes to Howard Hawks, it’s easy to forget the prolific American auteur set the gold standard for a number of film genres,...
Criterion Collection: The Exterminating Angel | Blu-ray Review
It might be difficult to fathom in contemporary cultural climates (although with varying degrees of ideological permissiveness) just how incendiary a cinematic figure Spanish...
Criterion Collection: Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams | Blu-ray Review
Arguably the most revered and influential filmmaker to come out of the Japanese New Wave, Akira Kurosawa’s vast filmography spanned six decades, beginning with...
Criteron Collection: Pan’s Labyrinth | Blu-ray Review
A decade has passed since Guillermo Del Toro unleashed his glorious period piece Pan’s Labyrinth, a dark, magical fable set in 1944 Spain, in...
Criterion Collection: The Executioner | Blu-ray Review
Aided by significant cultural and social subtexts, Luis Garcia Berlanga’s seminal 1963 film The Executioner is a black comedy delivering all the gallows’ humor...
Criterion Collection: McCabe & Mrs. Miller | Blu-ray Review
Glancing over the cinematic output from any particular year in the 1970s confirms the era to stand as a fossilized epoch from America’s mainstream...
Criterion Collection: Boyhood | Blu-ray Review
Director Richard Linklater managed in cinematic first in 2014 when he unveiled his long gestating project Boyhood, which filmed over the course of twelve...
Criterion Collection: Dekalog | Blu-ray Review
Since the inception of cinema, there are few filmmakers who have successfully achieved a simultaneous mixture of formidable narrative scope and cinematographic prowess. But...
Criterion Collection: Cat People | Blu-ray Review
The concept of ‘psychological horror’ is a genre notion all but extinct in modern cinematic renderings of thriller narratives, a once lucrative subgenre considered...
Criterion Collection: The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum | Blu-ray Review
Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1939 title The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum, championed by some as the Japanese auteur’s masterwork (arguably, he had several), arrived shortly...
Criterion Collection: Blood Simple | Blu-Ray Review
Now among the most distinctive of American auteurs, it’s hard to believe Joel and Ethan Coen had a difficult time getting their first film,...
Criterion Collection: Night Train to Munich | Blu-ray Review
Criterion re-releases an early critical favorite from Carol Reed, 1940’s Night Train to Munich, a droll espionage effort set specifically in the year preceding...
