8 years ago
Criterion (10 posts found)
In “The Brood,” Even Cronenberg’s Basics are Intricate
It’s a testament to the heady complexity of the later works of Canada’s proudest son David Cronenberg that a film as fully realized as 1979’s The Brood would be considered one of the basics of his deep filmography. He’s moved through so many phases as a stylis...
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Blu-ray Review: “My Own Private Idaho”
To watch My Own Private Idaho (1991) is to bask in the freedom and horror of the open road and its unpredictable rhythms and patterns. Molded by an imperfect, rough conceit, writer-director Gus Van Sant’s third directorial effort stands as an obvious precursor...
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Modern Love in “The Honeymoon Killers”
The Honeymoon Killers is the kind of title that hints at sensational thrills, a promise true crime movies usually fulfill. The genre enables audiences to engage in voyeuristic pleasures; it reminds them that the terrible scenes they are witnessing are not mere...
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“Moonrise Kingdom” Charts Wes Anderson’s Cozy World
There are movies we love and then there are movies we want to inhabit. Certain special films contain diegetic universes so immersive, so rich and seductively real, that the desire to be consumed and placed into their little worlds is a constant from viewer to ...
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Blu-ray Review: “The Killers”
With his "Iceberg Theory" laying the foundation for every college writing workshop, and his terse, conjunction-laden prose presenting a stark contrast to the verbosity favored by William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway remains ...
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Blu-ray Review: “Valerie and Her Week of Wonders”
Released just before the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia signaled the end of the country’s cinematic revolution, Jaromil Jires’s 1970 film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders has long been more known than seen. Residing in reputation somewhere between softcore ...
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The Criterion Collection: “The Merchant of Four Seasons”
Rainer Weiner Fassbinder almost never worked on just one project at a time. From 1969 to 1971, the well-known workaholic waltzed from directing more than 10 films to writing several stage plays. The production of The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971) proved to b...
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A World Filled With Schlemiels: On “Make Way for Tomorrow”
Make Way for Tomorrow is a prime example of the cinema functioning as an emergency broadcast system. Its timelessness is shocking to behold nearly 80 years after its release in 1937, primarily because it suggests that humanity, for all its pride in evolution, ...
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The Criterion Collection: “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”
Robert Mitchum always had a sluggish, loping gait, but in his prime, it suggested laconic virility and unsettling patience. However, when he enters The Friends of Eddie Coyle in a gray frame, wearing a gray suit and sporting gray hair and gray skin, the actor’...
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The Criterion Collection “The River”
Distributor: The Criterion Collection
Release Date: April 21, 2015
MSRP: $39.99
Order at Amazon
Movie: B+/ Video: A/ Audio: A-/ Extras: A-
The iconography most commonly associated with Jean Renoir’s The River (1951) can be linked, in most cases, not only to ...
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