The Criterion Collection Complete

PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD, Gina (United States) Love & Basketball (2000) Spine #1097 Blu-ray Sparks fly both on and off the court in this groundbreaking feature debut by writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood ( The Old Guard ), which elevated the coming-of-age romance by giving honest expression to the challenges female athletes face in a world that doesn’t see them as equal. Sanaa Lathan ( Alien vs. Predator ) and Omar Epps ( Higher Learning ) make for one of the most iconic screen couples of the 2000s as the basketball-obsessed next-door neighbors who find love over flirtatious pickup games, fall apart under the strain of high-pressure college hoops and families, and drift in and out of each other’s lives as they pursue their twin aspirations of playing professionally. Aided by stellar supporting performances and an eclectic R&B soundtrack,  Love & Basketball  captures the intoxicating passions, heartbreaking setbacks, and sky-high ambitions that mark a young woman’s j...

PEEBLES, Melvin Van (United States) Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) Spine #1095 Blu-ray A landmark of Black and American independent cinema that would send shock waves through the culture,  Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song  was Melvin Van Peebles’s second feature film, after he walked away from a contract with Columbia in order to make his next film on his own terms. Acting as producer, director, writer, composer, editor, and star, Van Peebles created the prototype for what Hollywood would eventually co-opt and make into the blaxploitation hero: a taciturn, perpetually blank-faced performer in a sex show, who, when he’s pushed too far by a pair of racist cops looking to frame him for a crime he didn’t commit, goes on the run through a lawless underground of bikers, revolutionaries, sex workers, and hippies in a kill-or-be-killed quest for liberation from white oppression.  Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song ’s incendiary politics are matched by Van Peebles’s ...

PEEBLES, Melvin Van (United States) The Story Of A Three Day Pass (1967) Spine #1093 Blu-ray Melvin Van Peebles’s edgy, angsty, romantic first feature could never have been made in America. Unable to break into segregated Hollywood, Van Peebles decamped to France, taught himself the language, and wrote a number of books in French, one of which,  La permission,  would become the stylistically innovative  The Story of a Three Day Pass.  Turner (Harry Baird), an African American soldier stationed in France, is granted a promotion and a three-day leave from base by his casually racist commanding officer and heads to Paris, where he finds whirlwind romance with a white woman (Nicole Berger)—but what happens to their love when his furlough is over? Channeling the brash exuberance of the French New Wave, Van Peebles creates an exploration of the psychology of an interracial relationship as well as a commentary on France’s contradictory attitudes about race that is playf...

PEEBLES, Melvin Van (United States) Don't Play Us Cheap (1972) Spine #1096 Blu-ray Melvin Van Peebles’s film version of his own Tony Award–nominated Broadway musical is a bold blend of theater and nervy, New Wave–inflected cinematic invention. A cast of Black stage and screen luminaries including Esther Rolle, Mabel King, and Avon Long stars in this charmingly offbeat, fablelike fantasy in which a pair of mischief-making devil-bats dispatched by Satan assume human form in order to wreak havoc on a Saturday-night house party in Harlem—only to find their diabolical plan thwarted by their hosts’ infectious generosity of spirit. Staged with ebullience, the original blues- and gospel-infused songs by Van Peebles burst forth in a life-affirming celebration of Black joy, tenderness, resilience, and strength. 102 minutes Color Monaural 1:66:1 aspect ratio Criterion Release 2021 Director/Writer Martin Van Peebles was 40 when he wrote and directed Don't Play Us Cheap . The...

PEEBLES, Melvin Van (United States) Watermelon Man (1970) Spine #1094 Blu-ray Melvin Van Peebles’s only foray into Hollywood filmmaking,  Watermelon Man  is one of the most audacious, radically conceived works to be financed by a major American studio in the 1970s. Comedian Godfrey Cambridge delivers a virtuoso performance (initially in whiteface) as Jeff Gerber, a loudmouthed, bigoted white insurance salesman whose sitcomlike suburban existence is jarringly upended when he wakes up to discover, in a wild spin on Franz Kafka’s  The Metamorphosis , that he has become a Black man. What ensues is a ferocious satire of society’s racist double standards that gradually transforms into an empowering portrait of awakening Black consciousness, executed with a mix of acerbic irreverence and deadly serious political commentary by a relentlessly subversive Van Peebles. 110 minutes Color Monaural 1:85:1 aspect ratio Criterion Release 2021 Director/Writer Martin Van Peebl...