Lonesome: Criterion Collection
August 27, 2012
Due to the passage of time that resulted in several of his films disappearing forever, Paul Fejos is a long-forgotten filmmaker from the silent era of cinema. Before picking up a movie camera, he had already studied medicine and served as an orderly in...
Rosetta: Criterion Collection
August 16, 2012
Rosetta (1999) marked Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s second film and one in which launched them internationally, winning the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Their film took a raw, unfiltered look at a young woman struggling to...
The Royal Tenenbaums: Criterion Collection
August 13, 2012
Set to the same wistful, sentimental tone as A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), The Royal Tenenbaums begins with a hilariously edited montage (narrated dryly by Alec Baldwin) that introduces the Tenenbaum children at an early age. Chas (Stiller) is a financial...
Butterfly Swords
July 5, 2012
Based loosely on the novel Liuxing Hudie Jian by Gu Long, Butterfly Swords a.k.a. Butterfly and Sword (1993) is a prime example of wuxia, a heroic martial arts genre best known in North America from the Ang Lee film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)....
Under the Tuscan Sun
July 3, 2012
From her screenplay for The Truth About Cats and Dogs (1996) to her directorial debut with Guinevere (1999), Audrey Wells has created films with strong female protagonists. She continues this thematic preoccupation with Under the Tuscan Sun (2003) with...
Summer with Monika: Criterion Collection
June 1, 2012
With the one-two punch of Summer Interlude (1951) and Summer with Monika (1953), Ingmar Bergman’s cinema was radically shifting from male-centric worlds to female ones. With this film, he presented two people that temporarily escape into another world...
Summer Interlude: Criterion Collection
May 31, 2012
When he was 18-years-old, Ingmar Bergman wrote a short story about a brief but intense love affair he had with a girl while in his teens. It would go on to provide the basis for his film Summer Interlude (1951), which would become a crucial turning point...
Certified Copy: Criterion Collection
May 25, 2012
Certified Copy (2010) marks Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s first feature film made outside of his native country. With the help of art house darling Juliette Binoche, the film went on to become his most successful effort to date. It explores the...
Being John Malkovich: Criterion Collection
May 17, 2012
Being John Malkovich (1999) heralded the arrival of not one but two unique voices in cinema: screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze. Both came from fairly modest origins, the former cutting his teeth writing for several television sitcoms...
The Organizer: Criterion Collection
May 3, 2012
Director Mario Monicelli made some of his best films during what many consider to be the golden age of Italian cinema when that country’s output was among the greatest in popular cinema. He was known for making socially conscious films that mixed comedy...
