A Hard Day’s Night: Criterion Collection
July 10, 2014
When A Hard Day’s Night (1964) was released in theaters, the Beatles had already performed on The Ed Sullivan Show and conquered America with their insanely catchy songs. Richard Lester’s irreverent film cemented their reputation as the most popular...
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: Criterion Collection
May 27, 2014
There’s always a certain amount of trepidation when a filmmaker like Wes Anderson, known for making intimate and personal films, starts making movies on a more ambitious scale – bigger budgets and movie stars in an attempt to appeal to larger audience...
Il Sorpasso: Criterion Collection
May 15, 2014
Il Sorpasso (1962) starts off, appropriately enough for a road movie, with one its main characters driving through the city streets of Rome to brassy be-bop jazz blasting away on the soundtrack. It sets a fun, energetic pace right from the get-go. Often...
The Freshman: Criterion Collection
April 2, 2014
Many cineastes consider The Freshman (1925) to be silent comedian Harold Lloyd’s undisputed masterpiece. It was the pinnacle of his “Glasses Character,” a bespectacled protagonist that left home to succeed out in the world. In the case of this film,...
Fantastic Mr. Fox: Criterion Collection
February 21, 2014
When it was announced that Wes Anderson would be adapting Roald Dahl’s short story Fantastic Mr. Fox, it came as something of a surprise. Up to that point, Anderson had only made films based on original material that he created himself or with a co-collaborator....
It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: Criterion Collection
February 19, 2014
Thanks to the massive success of Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Hollywood started cranking out epic, big-budgeted movies populated by a slew of movie star cameos. It was an attempt to get people away from their television screens and back into the...
City Lights: Criterion Collection
December 4, 2013
By the time he made City Lights (1931), Charles Chaplin was the undisputed master of the silent film comedy, having achieved just the right mix of “laughter and tears,” or “comedy and dreadful pathos,” as Gary Giddins’ liner notes for the Criterion...
Nashville: Criterion Collection
December 3, 2013
At the time, Nashville (1975) was Robert Altman’s magnum opus, a sprawling tale featuring 24 characters over five days. Not only does he manage to juggle all of these storylines, but is able to seamlessly interconnect them in major or minor ways. The...
Frances Ha: Criterion Collection
November 25, 2013
Noah Baumbach started off with Kicking and Screaming (1995), a film, which chronicled his generation of well-off and educated twentysomethings. With Frances Ha (2013) he’s come full circle, dramatizing a new twentysomething generation in a funny and...
I Married A Witch: Criterion Collection
October 16, 2013
Screwball comedies don’t come more full of charm then I Married A Witch (1942), and this is due in large part to the casting of Veronica Lake as a sexy sorceress who casts a spell on a man descended from the Salem puritan that burned her at the stake...
