The Criterion Collection

Letter Never Sent

Mikhail Kalatozov

Oliver Twist

David Lean

Savages

James Ivory

Heaven’s Gate

Michael Cimino

Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta

Young Törless

Volker Schlöndorff

Harakiri

Masaki Kobayashi

The Devil and Daniel Webster

William Dieterle

General Idi Amin Dada

Barbet Schroeder

Aleksi: “Clowns are scary. Clowns who don't know they're clowns are absurd. When such psychopathic, charismatic clowns wield power it's horrifying - and comic.”

The Kid with a Bike

Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne

Eclipse Series 31: Three Popular Films by Jean-Pierre Gorin

Jean-Pierre Gorin

Aleksi: “Fascinating little "small-scale epics" that stick in your head because they're so rich and dense with social, personal, and philosophical associations”

Stage and Spectacle: Three Films by Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir

Aleksi: “Delightfully delirious films, Renoir exults in the joy of bringing us lavish entertainments where all of life is a stage. Overflows with joie de vivre”

Il Generale Della Rovere

Roberto Rossellini

Aleksi: “Another powerfully humanistic Rossellini movie. Based on true story, an ethically conflicted conman finds cathartic redemption. Excellent supplements.”

Night and Fog

Alain Resnais

Straw Dogs

Sam Peckinpah

Aleksi: “A great director at the height of his powers makes a masterpiece of supreme tension as Hoffman transforms from peaceful victim into bloodlust warrior.”

The Last Days of Disco

Whit Stillman

Brand upon the Brain!

Guy Maddin

Aleksi: “A great film artist's unique renewal of the repressed via an unholy, explosive discharge straight from his subconscious onto celluloid. Awesome”

Trilogy of Life

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Weekend

Jean-Luc Godard

Aleksi: “Godard pulls out all the stops in an audacious, bilious black comedy, a cry against a society structured on consumption and conflict. Inspired & heady”

Eclipse Series 30: Sabu!

Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura

Shohei Imamura

Hobson’s Choice

David Lean

Aleksi: “A simmering stew of class, gender and family tensions that boils into one of the funniest comedies ever. I applaud Criterion for releasing this gem!”

Häxan

Benjamin Christensen

Aleksi: “Incredible art direction, like watching wood engravings from Medieval alchemical grimoires come to life. Unique, iconic, and astonishing in every way.”

Withnail and I

Bruce Robinson

Aleksi: “Bittersweet funny lovehate lifeslice of two dissolute actor friends on cusp of feared adulthood go on a sodden vacation. Brilliant dialogue & acting.”

How to Get Ahead in Advertising

Bruce Robinson

Aleksi: “An absurdist satire not just on advertising, but on capitalism itself. Intelligent; funny; great acting. The broken window parable was seldom funnier.”

Mona Lisa

Neil Jordan

Aleksi: “Though conventional and flawed it's well done. Emotions and chrs are credible in gangster-whore-savior-romance, thus a step up from most of its peers.”

Wise Blood

John Huston

Aleksi: “A difficult, unlikable, but compelling movie. The dissonant tone is the lighthearted packaging of a tragic battle between, say, surface versus depth.”

Les visiteurs du soir

Marcel Carné

Aleksi: “Love triumphs in unique costume fantasy/romance suffused with poetry and menace (and subtext?). Wish I got it on BluRay, even despite its longeurs.”

Shallow Grave

Danny Boyle

Aleksi: “Not only is the premise fatally flawed, the story & chrs demand too many allowances to be credible. Very stylish, but little else. 'Shallow' is right.”

Eclipse Series 33: Up All Night with Robert Downey Sr.

Monty Python’s Life of Brian

Terry Jones

Aleksi: “It just gets better with each passing year... A sure sign of a classic.”

Harold and Maude

Hal Ashby

Dazed and Confused

Richard Linklater

Aleksi: “Well made and interesting; but there's a troubling nonchalant acceptance of meanspiritedness that blunts the 'fun' yet gives insight to USian culture.”

The Long Good Friday

John Mackenzie

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Wes Anderson

Aleksi: “Dafuq I just watch?! Rich, multilayered, fascinating, funny, even touching, with moments of magic. Will require multiple viewings to fathom its depths”

Jubilee

Derek Jarman

Aleksi: “Jarman's unique sensibility thuds highbrow sensitivity with punk aesthetics to spew a raw, messy, angry indictment against Thatcherism. Ham-handed Fun”

Identification of a Woman

Michelangelo Antonioni

Aleksi: “Exquisite compositions, gorgeously shot, full of portentous heft in story of failed relationships elliptically told. The Muse gazes; the Gaze muses.”

Clean, Shaven

Lodge Kerrigan

3 Women

Robert Altman

Aleksi: “Liquid identities of solipsistic awarenesses, disconnected from anything other than their own nebulous interests in a jejune world. Genuine cinema art”

Last Year at Marienbad

Alain Resnais

Fat Girl

Catherine Breillat

Aleksi: “Thematically interesting, with good acting by the girls; but dull. The 'shocking ending' was symbolically too obvious, and just flat-out stupid. Fail.”

The Honeymoon Killers

Leonard Kastle

Aleksi: “An odd, sardonic, unexpectedly powerful movie that gets darker yet surprisingly more touching as it goes. Shirley Stoler steals every movie she's in.”

For All Mankind

Al Reinert

Simon of the Desert

Luis Buñuel

Aleksi: “A hagiographic satire that might strike home for a specialist but, for such a big target, otherwise misses the mark. Has its moments, but sub-par Luis”

The Spirit of the Beehive

Víctor Erice

Godzilla

Ishiro Honda

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Peter Weir

Aleksi: “Fey, in its various meanings.”

Jigoku

Nobuo Nakagawa

Aleksi: “Expressionistic, theatrical, & nonsensical. Think David Lynch channeling Dante via Mad Magazine in 1960 Japan. Very filmic, but an awfully silly movie”

The Royal Tenenbaums

Wes Anderson

Aleksi: “I despised Rushmore, but I liked this one quite a lot. And Life Aquatic blew me away. I must revisit Wes Anderson -- there's a major filmmaker here.”

White Material

Claire Denis

Aleksi: “Nicely crafted: the elliptical temporal structure unites form with content to baffle simple causality in explaining complex psycho-historical events.”

Tout va bien

Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin

Aleksi: “I quite like this film. It's a pastiche of improvisatory, deconstructive intellectual self-examination of the filmmaker in his 'historical context'.”

The Complete Jean Vigo

Antichrist

Lars von Trier

Aleksi: “A (seemingly?) profound ontological allegory about nature, life, evil, reality, love, sex... Deliberately provocative, yet philosophically rich film.”

Carlos

Olivier Assayas

Aleksi: “A "page-turner" of a movie: serious, and seriously fun. People as pawns in terms of both geopolitical games, and of their own psyches. Fascinating.”

Ride with the Devil

Ang Lee

Aleksi: “An excellent addition to the Collection, and gorgeous on Blu-Ray. An important intervention in U.S. history. Destined to become an American classic.”

Gomorrah

Matteo Garrone

Aleksi: “This nervewracking movie illustrates our future under neoliberalism: no safe haven from dehumanizing, ubiquitous corruption and cronyism. Chilling. A+”

Brute Force

Jules Dassin

Life During Wartime

Todd Solondz

Aleksi: “Raises good questions about forgiveness; but other than Solondz's sincerity exploring his themes nothing rings true in derivative, if worthy, failure.”

My Life as a Dog

Lasse Hallström