Blindness
February 18, 2009
After the gritty realism of City of God (2002) and The Constant Gardener (2005), filmmaker Fernando Meirelles decided to shift gears with his next film Blindness (2008), a science fiction parable with a star-studded international cast. The end result...
Magnificent Obsession: Criterion Collection
January 26, 2009
Technicolor melodramas don’t get much better than the ones Douglas Sirk made: All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956) and Imitation of Life (1959). It was Magnificent Obsession (1954), however, that paved the way for those later masterpieces....
White Dog: Criterion Collection
January 6, 2009
White Dog (1982) was Samuel Fuller’s last Hollywood film and arguably his most controversial. No easy feat from the man who tackled racism with Shock Corridor (1963), patriotism with Pickup on South Street (1953), and made deeply profound anti-war films...
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold: Criterion Collection
December 9, 2008
Based on John le Carre’s best-selling novel of the same name, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965) is a classic example of the cold war espionage tale. It also provides a decidedly sober, more realistic antidote to the James Bond films that were...
Sunset Boulevard: The Centennial Collection
December 3, 2008
After directing cinematic masterpieces Double Indemnity (1944) and The Lost Weekend (1945), Billy Wilder took on Hollywood with Sunset Boulevard (1950) as seen through the eyes of a washed-up silent movie star obsessed with returning to the big screen....
Chungking Express: Criterion Collection
November 24, 2008
Chungking Express (1994) is a film obsessed with time. Not only are its characters consciously aware of and thinking about time passing, but the film itself plays around with the slowing down and speeding up of time. The camera lingers on close-ups of...
Missing: Criterion Collection
November 14, 2008
Costa-Gavras’ Missing (1982) was part of an exciting trend in early 1980s cinema that included films like The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), Under Fire (1983), The Killing Fields (1984), and Salvador (1986) – powerful, politically-charged exposes...
Chaplin: 15th Anniversary Edition
October 17, 2008
Adapted from My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin and Chaplin: His Life and Art by David Robinson, Chaplin (1992) was a prestigious, big budget biopic about the life of legendary English comedian Charles Chaplin. While the film was criticized for taking...
Deception
October 17, 2008
How can a film starring three marquee names like Ewan McGregor, Hugh Jackman and Michelle Williams get an extremely limited theatrical release with very little publicity? Collectively, they have appeared in some serious moneymakers: McGregor with the...
La Ronde: Criterion Collection
October 15, 2008
Vienna, 1900 and the author of La Ronde (1950) appears on a stage with a fake backdrop of the city, addressing the audience. He walks past the set and begins to establish the story and the two main characters: Leocadie (Signoret), the prostitute, and...
