Posts Tagged ‘Criterion Collection’

464 results.
Nov25

Copie conforme / Certified Copy (2010) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Artificial Eye, 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

by movieworld on November 25th, 2020 at 18:37
Posted In: .Other movies, Drama, Romance

Certified Copy 2010
From acclaimed director Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry, The Wind Will Carry Us) comes the story of a couple’s apparent chance meeting in beautiful Tuscany.

James Miller (William Shimel) is a British author who is in Italy to promote his controversial art book. He contends that copies are often as good as the original and challenge us to see creativity in a fresh way. As he speaks, an unnamed woman (Juliette Binoche) arrives late with her bored son (Adrian Moore). She is a gallery owner eager to talk about art. The woman leaves her number.

They meet the next day and drive to Lucignano where original art and copies abound. He autographs several copies of his book and then she takes him for a coffee. When Miller exits to talk on his cell phone, the coffee shop proprietor assumes that he is her husband and begins a lecture on the mysteries of love and the challenges of marriage. When Miller returns, the woman speaks of him as her husband of 15 years. He does the same and soon we are wondering, Are they really husband and wife? Has their meeting as strangers been a concocted drama to bring some adventure to their marriage ?

Captivating and hugely entertaining, this romantic tale playfully and provocatively blurs the lines between reality and imagination.
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Oct12

Scorsese Shorts: What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963), It’s Not Just You, Murray! (1964), The Big Shave (1967), Italianamerican (1974), American Boy: A Profile of – Steven Prince 1978) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

by movieworld on October 12th, 2020 at 13:17
Posted In: .Other movies, Comedy, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Horror

Scorsese Shorts
“A filmmaker shows what his career will be in his first 150 feet of film,” François Truffaut once wrote. He was talking about Jean Vigo at the time, but he might as well have been talking about Martin Scorsese, whose early short films — from the narrative works of his student years at New York University and immediately afterward to the midlength documentaries he made as his feature-filmmaking career was getting underway — reveal the energy, eclecticism, and invention that would make him one of the most exciting American directors of the seventies and, eventually, one of the great artists of our time.

Criterion’s release of five early Martin Scorsese shorts reveals that the filmmaker knew the kind of artist he was and wanted to be at a young age. All of the films included in this set contain seeds of future Scorsese classics, and they’re all formally playful and sophisticated, with lasting career reverberations: Four of the five shorts center around the rapture and mythology of storytelling, while the fifth plumbs the theme of self-annihilation that would become a Scorsese leitmotif. Collectively, the five films span two distinct periods in Scorsese’s career: as an N.Y.U. student and graduate in the early-to-mid 1960s, and as a rising filmmaker in the mid-to-late ‘70s.

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Oct07

Cristo si e fermato a Eboli / Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

by movieworld on October 7th, 2020 at 12:47
Posted In: .Other movies, Drama

Christ Stopped at Eboli 1979
An elegy of exile and an epic immersion in the world of rural Italy during the regime of Benito Mussolini, Francesco Rosi’s sublime adaptation of the memoirs of the painter, physician, and political activist Carlo Levi brings a monument of twentieth-century autobiography to the screen with quiet grace and solemn beauty.
Banished to a desolate southern town for his anti-Fascist views, Levi (Gian Maria Volontè) discovers an Italy he never knew existed, a place where ancient folkways and superstitions still hold sway, and that gradually transforms his understanding of both himself and his country.
Presented for the first time on home video in its original full-length, four-part version, Christ Stopped at Eboli ruminates profoundly on the political and philosophical rifts within Italian society — between North and South, tradition and modernity, Fascism and freedom — and the essential humanity that transcends all.

BD50 | 1080p AVC | 03:41:49 | 44.8 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Italian
Subtitles: English

Director: Francesco Rosi
Cast: Gian Maria Volonte, Paolo Bonacelli, Alain Cuny
Country: Italy, France
Genre: Drama
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Oct05

La regle du jeu / The Rules of the Game (1939) 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

by movieworld on October 5th, 2020 at 13:42
Posted In: .Other movies, Comedy, Drama

The Rules of the Game 1939
A tragicomic masterpiece and an all-around great, inventive, sparkling, deservedly revered movie, Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (released in 1939) is the last, most powerful gasp of France's great cinematic tradition of poetic realism before World War II and German occupation put that humanistic tendency to a premature death. Even before the war, however, the film was violently rejected by its target audience, the Parisian bourgeoisie, who responded defensively to the film's satirizing of their hypocrisy, complacency, and decadence.

The story of the film concerns a weekend gathering of wealthy French socialites at a country estate. The focus is on various romantic flirtations and infidelities, involving servants and gentry alike, and as such and with its allusions to Beaumarchais’s Marriage of Figaro, it has all the external trappings of a light comedy of manners. Somehow, though, Renoir managed to mold this seemingly conventional material into a multi-layered and profound commentary on the nature of love, society, and the human condition. In the background, of course, was the generally shared feeling of impending catastrophe and social breakdown that would accompany another devastating world war.

Within a year the French Vichy government had banned the film, and during the war the original film negative was destroyed, and the original director’s cut was permanently lost. The version of The Rules of the Game that exists today is the result of a painstaking reconstruction from some existing, cut-down production prints some twenty years later, and it is not precisely what Renoir originally released.

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Oct02

Naked Lunch (1991) 2 x DVD and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

by movieworld on October 2nd, 2020 at 15:43
Posted In: .Other movies, Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Naked Lunch 1991
Loosely based on the works (and less loosely on the life) of infamous author William S. Burroughs, David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch is the perfect cinematic blend of art house, crime noir, horror and surrealism. Seeing as how Naked Lunch (the novel) is a totally free form work that really hasn't got much of an actual narrative, Cronenberg made the artistic decision to base his film of the same name on parts of the titular novel and the rest on actual events from Burroughs' life.

The main character is a failed writer turned bug exterminator who discovers that he is short on bug powder because his wife, Joan (Judy Davis), has started shooting up on it. Instead of trying to get her off the powder, Bill decides to experiment with it and see if it is as good as Joan claims. Soon after, his typewriter turns into a giant talking bug that urges him to head to the Interzone, a magical place where lost souls can rebuild their lives and roam free...

Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm
Country: Canada, UK, Japan
Genre: Drama

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Oct02

Utvandrarna / The Emigrants (1971), Nybyggarna / The New Land (1972) 3 x DVD9 and 2 x Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

by movieworld on October 2nd, 2020 at 11:52
Posted In: .Other movies, Drama, History, Western

The Emigrants The New Land
In every country there is a book which every schoolchild knows or an author who’s embedded in the fabric of the culture. The Emigrants Suit, written by Wilhelm Moberg, comprises four books (The Emigrants, Unto a Good Land, The Settlers and The Last Letters Home). The novels are classics and considered to be amongst the best examples of Swedish literature. Adapting them to the screen was a daunting task but one Jan Troell was more than a match for. Along with Bengt Forslund, they condensed the tomes into two epic films, The Emigrants and The New Land.

The films tell the story of a group of poor country folk from the province of Smaland in Sweden. In over seven hours of considered yet riveting filmmaking, we follow their fortunes all the way to eventually settling in the United States. Set in 1850, there story largely revolves around Karl-Oskar Nilsson (Max von Sydow) and his wife, Kristina Johansdotter (Liv Ullmann). They live on a small farm with their four children, Karl-Oscar’s parents and his wayward younger brother Robert (Eddie Axberg). Despite struggling to make ends meet on the small family farm, they vow to plough on. That changes after their eldest daughter dies due to the side-effects of malnutrition.

Along with Robert, several friends, family and other members of the province, they make the decision to emigrate to the United States. They dream of the promises of fertile land and freedom the new land offers. After an arduous and gruelling voyage, they disembark to find themselves in a strange country with highly limited grasp of the language. The family struggles on to build their new lives, with the perils of the natives and new country to contend with. Meanwhile, Robert tries to make his fortune in the Gold Rush.
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Oct01

Show Boat (1936) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

by movieworld on October 1st, 2020 at 12:50
Posted In: .Other movies, Comedy, Drama, Musical, Romance

Show Boat 1936
Credited as the Broadway musical that shifted the form away from frivolous comedies to dramatic plays, Show Boat is based on Edna Ferber’s popular multi-generational novel about the fortunes of a river-going entertainment troupe.

Covering a time period from about the 1890s to the 1920s, the story follows the life of Magnolia Hawks-Ravenal (Irene Dunne), the daughter of a Show Boat captain. (A Show Boat was a paddle-wheeler that traveled the Mississippi River, putting on stage shows and advertising in each town with a parade like those of old-time circuses.) Her mother has always forbidden her from acting in the stage shows; but when the leading couple are forced out of the troupe by a local sheriff because the lady is a mixed-race person posing as white, Magnolia’s father lets her play the female lead and gives the male lead to an attractive riverboat gambler. Against mother's dictates, the new pair falls deeply in love...

Director: James Whale
Cast: Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Charles Winninger, Paul Robeson
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Musical, Romance
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Sep28

Brute Force (1947) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

by movieworld on September 28th, 2020 at 16:27
Posted In: .Other movies, Crime, Drama, Thriller

Brute Force 1947
Jules Dassin's Brute Force (1947) is unrelenting drama that doesn't believe in justice or redemption for its characters, who seem to exist in a horrible purgatory. The 'system' criticized in this protest film is a state prison, but the script by Richard Brooks takes the attitude that it's really a microcosm of existence itself: Life is Hell, and "nobody really escapes".

At Westgate Penitentiary, the inmates live a harsh existence made even harsher by Captain Munsey, the sadistic head of the guard staff who runs the prison under the cowardly warden. In cell R17 reside a group of men, led by Joe Collins, who all committed crimes motivated by love and share a brotherly bond. When Munsey drives one of them to commit suicide, they decide it is time to follow through with their often talked about escape plans...

BD50 | 1080p AVC | 01:40:49 | 37.5 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: English

Director: Jules Dassin
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Yvonne De Carlo
Country: USA
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller
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Sep28

Beau travail / Good Work (1999) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

by movieworld on September 28th, 2020 at 15:34
Posted In: .Other movies, Drama, War

Beau travail 1999
The imaginative French director Claire Denis proved her ability to beautifully choreograph a movie with her first effort Chocolat, released in 1989. This drama, also set in Africa, is inspired by Herman Melville's Billy Budd. Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant) is in charge of the men in a small French Foreign Legion outpost. These muscular soldiers spend their days in training, doing guard duty, and playing war games. For rest and relaxation, they swim in the ocean and dance in an open-air disco. The Africans in the town view them as strange outsiders from another world.

Bored with the routine of his life, Galoup finds himself upset by the interest of his commander (Michel Subor) in Sentain (Gregoire Colin), a new recruit who seems to impress everyone with his selflessness and generosity. Envy is a vicious emotion, bitter and vindictive. In this meticulously staged drama, Galoup comes up with a scheme to do away with Sentain.

Director: Claire Denis
Cast: Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Gregoire Colin
Country: France
Genre: Drama, War

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Sep28

An Unmarried Woman (1978) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

by movieworld on September 28th, 2020 at 13:27
Posted In: .Other movies, Comedy, Drama, Romance

An Unmarried Woman 1978
When writer-director Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman opened in 1978, it had the slogan, “She laughs, she cries, she feels angry, she feels lonely, she feels guilty, she makes breakfast, she makes love, she makes do, she is strong, she is weak, she is brave, she is scared, she is… an unmarried woman.” This makes the film sound hokey, but it’s actually an unpretentious look at a woman’s life turned upside down.

Jill Clayburgh is terrific as Erica, a Manhattan gallery worker who has to forge a new life after her husband (a deliciously self-absorbed Michael Murphy) leaves her for a younger woman. Clayburgh delineates each stage of Erica’s transformation into an independent woman – from abandonment and grief to anger, reconciliation, and empowerment – with delicacy and wit, and Mazursky captures the performance with a visual style that alternates elegant, formal compositions and freewheeling handheld camerawork to perfectly accentuate his title character’s rollercoaster journey.

Director: Paul Mazursky
Cast: Jill Clayburgh, Alan Bates, Michael Murphy
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

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