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.
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The new Criterion Blu-ray of Ang Lee’s ‘The Ice Storm’, with its excellent transfer and illuminating features, should raise the film’s stature as a modern classic.
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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.
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The Criterion Collection’s new Blu-ray of Ingmar Bergman’s extraordinary 1957 film Wild Strawberries is superlative and serves an a perfect introduction to the director’s work.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 […]
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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.
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Two Japanese folk tales come to life with starkly different approaches in the latest Blu-ray restorations from The Criterion Collection.
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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.
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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.
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Universal probably wanted an exciting film filled with fast cars and faster women that would match up with their souped-up tagline for the movie: “Their lives begin at 140 m.p.h.!” What they got was a quiet, existential masterpiece that has turned into a bonafide cult classic.
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‘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.
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Clément presents the devious and seemingly amoral Tom Ripley (a star-making turn from Alain Delon) with a huge amount of ambiguity concerning his motives. Minghella’s movie (with Matt Damon in the title role) went more into the detail and backstory of Highsmith’s book, while Clément makes Ripley seem more quiet, distant, and dangerous.
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