The Criterion Collection Complete

ASSAYAS, Olivier (France) Irma Vep (1996) Spine #1074 Blu-ray The live-wire international breakthrough of Olivier Assayas stars a magnetic Maggie Cheung as a version of herself: a Hong Kong action-movie star who arrives in Paris to play the latex-clad lead in a remake of Louis Feuillade's classic silent crime serial Les vampires . What she finds is a behind-the-scenes tangle of barely controlled chaos as egos clash, romantic attractions simmer, and an obsessive director (a cannily cast Jean-Pierre Léaud) drives himself to the brink to realize his vision. Blending blasts of silent cinema, martial-arts flicks, and the music of Sonic Youth and Luna into a hallucinatory swirl of postmodern cool, Assayas composes a witty critique of the nineties French film industry and the eternal tension between art and commercial entertainment. 99 minutes Black and White/Color 5.1 Surround 1:66:1 aspect ratio Criterion Release 2021 Director/Writer Oliver Assayas was 41 when he wrote a...

BONG, Joon Ho (South Korea) Memories Of Murder (2003) Spine #1073 Blu-ray In his breakthrough second feature, Bong Joon Ho explodes the conventions of the policier with thrillingly subversive, genre-defying results. Based on the true story of a string of serial killings that rocked a rural community in the 1980s, Memories of Murder stars New Korean Cinema icon Song Kang Ho as the local officer who reluctantly joins forces with a seasoned Seoul detective (Kim Sang Kyung) to investigate the crimes -- leading each man on a wrenching, yearslong odyssey of failure and frustration that will drive him to the existential edge. Combining a gripping procedural with a vivid social portrait of the everyday absurdity of life under military rule, Bong fashions a haunting journey into ever-deepening darkness that begins as a black-comic satire and ends as a soul-shattering encounter with the abyss. 131 minutes Color 5.1 Surround 1:85:1 aspect ratio Criterion Release 2021 Director/Wr...

BORZAGE, Frank (United States) History Is Made At Night [1937] Spine #1072 Blu-ray Suffused with intoxicating romanticism, History Is Made at Night  is a sublime paean to love from Frank Borzage, classic Hollywood's supreme poet of carnal and spiritual desire. On the run through Europe from her wealthy, cruelly possessive husband, an American (Jean Arthur) is thrown together by fate with a suave stranger (Charles Boyer) -- and soon the two are bound in a consuming, seemingly impossible affair that stretches across continents and brings them to the very edge of catastrophe. Lent a palpable erotic charge by the chemistry between its leads, this delirious vision of lovers beset by the world passes through a dizzying array of tonal shifts -- from melodrama to romantic comedy to noir to disaster thriller -- smoothly guided by Borzage's unwavering allegiance to the power of love. 97 minutes Black and White Monaural 1:37:1 aspect ratio Criterion Release 2021 Director...

BUÑUEL, Luis (France) Three Films By Luis Buñuel (1972-1977) Spine #0000E Blu-ray More than four decades after he took a razorblade to an eyeball and shocked the world with Un chien andalou , arch-iconoclast Luis Buñuel capped his astonishing career with three final provocations -- The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom of Liberty, and That Obscure Object of Desire -- in which his renegade, free-associating surrealism reached its audacious, self-detonating endgame. Working with such key collaborators as screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière and his own frequent on-screen alter ego Fernando Rey, Buñuel laced his scathing attacks on religion, class pretension, and moral hypocrisy with savage violence to create a trio of subversive, brutally funny masterpieces that explore the absurd randomness of existence. Among the director's most radical works as well as some of his greatest international triumphs, these films cemented his legacy as cinema's most incendiary revolut...