The Breakfast Club: Criterion Collection
April 4, 2018
John Hughes’ movies were a cultural touchstone for an entire generation of young people in the 1980s. With Sixteen Candles (1984), Pretty in Pink (1986), and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), he had an uncanny ability to tap into how teenagers felt...
Personal Shopper: Criterion Collection
March 6, 2018
Since starring in the popular Twilight movies, Kristen Stewart has used the clout and financial freedom she got from them to work on smaller, more creatively rewarding projects like On the Road (2012) and Certain Women (2016) where she didn’t have the...
Certain Women: Criterion Collection
March 6, 2018
Kelly Reichardt is a highly regarded filmmaker known for her quietly understated, slice of life dramas like Wendy and Lucy (2008) and Meek’s Cutoff (2010). Her latest film is Certain Women (2016), an adaptation of three short stories by Maile Meloy,...
Sid and Nancy: Criterion Collection
September 9, 2017
Amidst the chaos and confusion of the British punk rock scene in the late 1970s, the Sex Pistols emerged as the most notorious band to come out of that period. It seems like they couldn’t make a move without courting controversy. The band dynamic was...
Good Morning: Criterion Collection
July 31, 2017
From its whimsical score playing over the opening credits, Good Morning (1959) establishes a playful tone – something that was atypical of the work of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, known mostly for serious dramas like Tokyo Story (1953). Yet to dismiss...
Tampopo: Criterion Collection
July 20, 2017
Tampopo (1985) is a playful yet sincere ode to the art of making and enjoying ramen noodles. Early on, the film schools us as an older, sensei type instructs his young protégé how to appreciate and savor the meal. One dark and stormy night, a hungry...
Being There: Criterion Collection
July 6, 2017
Released at the end of the 1970s, Hal Ashby’s Being There (1979), an adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski’s novel of the same name, was a last gasp from the idealistic 1960s, a humanistic voice amidst a decade marked by paranoia, fashionable nihilism, and...
The Before Trilogy: Criterion Collection
April 7, 2017
Few people saw Before Sunrise when it was released in 1995 but those who did really loved it. In its own subtle and unassuming way, Richard Linklater’s film flew in the face of most romantic films at the time. It refused to be dated by obvious, trendy...
Something Wild: Criterion Collection
March 22, 2017
Founded in 1947, the Actors Studio became known as a mecca for Method actors to hone their craft, producing such famous alumni as James Dean, Paul Newman and Marlon Brando. The 1950s and 1960s saw many Hollywood films populated by these actors and a rare...
The Squid and the Whale: Criterion Collection
January 10, 2017
In writer/director Noah Baumbach’s career there is a demarcation line as represented by The Squid and the Whale (2005). There are the films he did before it that are more conventional romantic comedies that owe a lot of Woody Allen and the ones that...