Stop-motion animation is a painstakingly long process, one point made perfectly clear by many of the excellent special features on the Criterion Dual Format Blu-ray-DVD combo of Wes Anderson‘s 2009 Roald Dahl adaptation Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Experienced completely through the eyes of an 11-year-old boy named Bud, Terence Davies’ 1992 film The Long Day Closes is a deeply personal impressionistic triumph, out in a dual-format Blu-ray and DVD from The Criterion Collection.
Director Michael Mann may be best known for the crime film ‘Heat,’ but ‘his debut, 1981’s Thief’ is a moody precursor, out in a new Criterion Blu-ray/DVD edition now.
Seth Rogen is one of those actors who who seems like he might have sprouted fully formed from a movie like Slacker. He’s actually Canadian, but his comedic tendencies seem to have evolved from a similar worldview as the Austin fringe thinkers.
To watch Seconds is to enter a special kind of Hell that leaves no one unscathed. It indicts the money-grubbing culture of businessmen and the burgeoning hippie aesthetic as equally hollow with a simple, sinister premise.
There is an extra prick of instinctive excitement in watching Safety Last! today because we know quite well that computer-generated effects didn’t exist in 1923. Besides the creative and thrilling staging of his building climb with an actual cityscape in the background (not a matte or a composite shot), the rest of Safety Last! is filmed with a real cinematic eye and the newly restored 2K digital film transfer looks fantastic.
Ten years before he lensed the lush outdoor images of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, Wexler directed Medium Cool, a fictional narrative that combined actual documentary footage of the riots and other lightning-rod political moments to explore the blurred lines between fact and fiction.
Besides being a stirring portrait of a youth culture in crisis, ‘Band of Outsiders’ is very charming and accessible — especially for anyone that’s experienced teen alienation.
Pierre Etaix mastered an almost wordless, deadpan comic delivery in the Buster Keaton vein and a deliberate pace that assured that his carefully planned gags came to fruition with a minimal amount of cutting. Criterion’s box set is a must-have for serious film fans.
Director Delmer Daves‘ 1957 western about a cattle rancher forced into the role of getting a dangerous killer out of town finds new life on home video as 3:10 to Yuma is the latest classic to get the Criterion treatment. Dan Evans (Van Heflin) is a struggling rancher with a wife (Leora Dana), two sons […]
David Cronenberg’s adaptation of ‘Naked Lunch’ is out now from The Criterion Collection in an extras-packed Blu-ray. The cinema’s most intellectual purveyor of psychological torment masquerading as body horror proved himself up to the task of bringing Burroughs’ hallucinatory masterwork to the screen.
Two Japanese folk tales come to life with starkly different approaches in the latest Blu-ray restorations from The Criterion Collection.
Cyril is an 11-year-old boy who refuses to believe that his father has just up and left him, even going so far as selling his sole possession — the bicycle his father gave him. An active camera darts around, projecting Cyril’s kinetic energy and his unwillingness to be contained, until he’s exactly where he wants to be.
Ivan’s Childhood was Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky’s first feature-length film. A poetic journey through the life of a young child scarred by war, the film has only grown in stature since its 1962 release, with filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman and Krzysztof Kieślowski naming it as a prime influences on their work.
‘The Tin Drum’ is a fascinating blend of magical realism and black comedy, all told from the point of view of a super-intelligent three-year old boy in Danzig, Poland who realizes the ridiculousness and futility of adulthood at a young age and refuses to grow older.