Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence: Criterion Collection
September 28, 2010
Nagisa Oshima’s film Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) was based on Laurens van der Post’s mostly autobiographical 1963 novel The Seed and the Sower about a British military officer and a poorly treated prisoner-of-war set in the lush Javanese tropics...
The Thin Red Line: Criterion Collection
September 16, 2010
After Terrence Malick made Days of Heaven in the late 1970s, he didn’t make another film for two decades. Because he shunned the press like the cinematic equivalent of Thomas Pynchon, speculation was rampant as to the reasons why. It was rumored that...
Sharpe – The Complete Series
July 13, 2010
Sharpe is one of those great British TV series that manages to unite the sexes. Men love it because it’s about wartime, features loads of battles and shooting the French. Women love it because of Sean Bean. Not to sound too sexist with this, but a little...
Ride with the Devil: Criterion Collection
April 27, 2010
Ang Lee is a filmmaker not afraid to take chances. He brought a historical epic steeped in spectacular martial arts to the mainstream and Oscar glory with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Less successfully, he tried to merge his soulful aesthetic...
Che: Criterion Collection
January 14, 2010
Che (2008) began as a personal project for actor Benicio del Toro around the time he was making Traffic (2000) with Steven Soderbergh. Originally, he planned on making the film about iconic revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara with Terrence Malick...
The Last Metro: Criterion Collection
April 20, 2009
The Last Metro (1980) has been described as the most popular film of Francois Truffaut’s latter career. It was also one of his most personal – relying on his childhood memories of German-occupied France during World War II. At the time of the film’s...
Tropic Thunder: 2-Disc Director’s Cut
November 25, 2008
For the last few years, Ben Stiller has been coasting on his patented, one-note neurotic doormat shtick in films like Night at the Museum (2006), The Heartbreak Kid (2007), and others. What happened to the guy who could play a self-destructive junkie...
Stop-Loss
July 25, 2008
It has been almost ten years since Kimberly Peirce’s critically acclaimed, award-winning independent film, Boys Don’t Cry (1999). She’s returned with her first studio film – a drama about the current war in Iraq. So far, this kind of film has...
The Fall of the Roman Empire: Limited Collector’s Edition
April 24, 2008
It’s a cliché to say but they really don’t make films like The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) anymore. Anthony Mann’s magnum opus is part of a grand tradition of big budget historical epics like Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), and El Cid (1961)....
Walker: Criterion Collection
February 11, 2008
Walker (1987) is an unconventional biopic that effectively burned any remaining bridges Alex Cox had with Hollywood. He took a modest amount of studio money and made a film about William Walker, an opportunistic American who invaded Nicaragua and became...
