The Criterion Collection

The Uninvited

Lewis Allen

Aleksi: “Very strange on many levels, from its rapidly shifting tones to its odd sexual inferences. An unusual yet somehow fitting choice for the Collection.”

Paris Belongs to Us

Jacques Rivette

Jellyfish Eyes

Takashi Murakami

A Master Builder

Jonathan Demme

Aleksi: “A movie rife with 'special hidden significance' about the soul of an autocrat that resonates for our times. Elusive, silly, deep, absurd, & overripe.”

Death by Hanging

Nagisa Oshima

A Special Day

Ettore Scola

Aleksi: “Beautiful film in every way about two lonely souls who connect in a culture that denies them their authenticity. Exquisite cinematography. A real gem.”

The Shooting/Ride in the Whirlwind

Monte Hellman

The Red Shoes

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Aleksi: “The most remarkable thing about it is that it actually lives up to its exalted reputation. Clichés...? So? Classics make them fresh. Gorgeous & great!”

La Ciénaga

Lucrecia Martel

Aleksi: “Shards of tense narrative infested with ambient noise assemble into a caustic mosaic of cosmic alienation. Martel brilliantly melds form with content.”

Marketa Lazarová

František Vláčil

The Cranes Are Flying

Mikhail Kalatozov

My Winnipeg

Guy Maddin

Aleksi: “Metaphorically conflating autobiography with investigations of "mother" (-hood and -land), Maddin brilliantly shares his personal mental topography.”

Fellini Satyricon

Federico Fellini

Aleksi: “A masterpiece of cinema as oneiric medium. Almost unique in conveying a world based upon a truly alien morality, one which subtly excoriates our own.”

The Shop on Main Street

Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos

Aleksi: “Genuinely human(e) movie that gives overwhelming sense of real people caught in perilous historical times. Brilliant camerawork. A great, great film! ”

Eclipse Series 11: Larisa Shepitko

Larisa Shepitko

Aleksi: “Unique & extraordinary films by a rare and great talent. Were her life not tragically cut so short she may have become one of the titans of cinema.”

I Married a Witch

René Clair

Aleksi: “A well crafted, frothy bon-bon with a dash of farce. Veronica Lake is astonishing.”

Macbeth

Roman Polanski

Aleksi: “(In)Arguably the best transposition of Shakespeare from theatre to a truly filmic experience. Polanski created a beautiful cathartic masterpiece.”

Fanfan la Tulipe

Christian-Jaque

Boudu Saved from Drowning

Jean Renoir

Le million

René Clair

Aleksi: “Magical early sound film! Genuinely charming, inventive, playful, sophisticated, witty, fun, and funny. It's even slyly subversive. A real gem.”

À nous la liberté

René Clair

The Bad Sleep Well

Akira Kurosawa

Pierre Etaix

Pierre Etaix

Ministry of Fear

Fritz Lang

Anatomy of a Murder

Otto Preminger

Letter Never Sent

Mikhail Kalatozov

Aleksi: “If Franz Kline directed a socialist realism film set in Siberia scripted by Hemingway, would it look like this? Visually stunning, a real work of art.”

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

Aleksi: “A timeless (& timely) parable of greed. Truly unique Hollywood masterpiece that's a superlative example of the art and craft of storytelling via film”

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