Breathless: Criterion Collection
March 19, 2014
Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) is arguably the most famous example of the French New Wave, a group of film critics who were inspired by classic Hollywood films to become filmmakers themselves. Breathless certainly wasn’t the first French New...
Tess: Criterion Collection
March 18, 2014
Based on Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Tess (1979) ended a prolific decade of memorable films for Roman Polanski who, at this point in his career, had been exiled to Europe due to legal problems in the United States. The film featured...
The Long Day Closes: Criterion Collection
February 4, 2014
Despite being hailed as Britain’s greatest living film director by the London Evening Standard, Liverpool’s Terence Davies is not widely known. Over a 37-year career, he has only made six feature films, most of which are deeply personal stories about...
Throne of Blood: Criterion Collection
January 23, 2014
Using Shakespeare’s Macbeth as his jumping off point, Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957) takes a fascinating look at the chaotic swirl of turmoil and treachery that was feudal Japan. The play dealt with notions of civil disorder and battles for...
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...
Parkland
November 19, 2013
Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) reignited the American public’s fascination with the John F. Kennedy assassination, spawning several other films that took a look at either the peripheral figures involved (Ruby) or its impact on society (Love Field). In...
La notte: Criterion Collection
November 4, 2013
Michelangelo Antonioni’s La notte (1961) examines the turbulent marriage between a writer and his wife over the span of just under a day. The film begins with Giovanni (Mastroianni) and Lidia (Moreau) visiting a friend sick with cancer in the hospital....
Autumn Sonata: Criterion Collection
October 16, 2013
Autumn Sonata (1978) features a simple story – Eva (Ullman) invites her mother Charlotte (Bergman) for a visit – but the emotional baggage that exists between these two characters is quite complex. It’s been seven years since the matriarch’s last...
