The Criterion Collection Complete

MARDER, Darius (United States) Sound of Metal [2019] Spine #1151 Blu-ray In  Sound of Metal , a tale of sound, fury, and self-discovery, Riz Ahmed delivers an intensely committed performance as the volatile Ruben, who has found new purpose as a drummer in a noise-metal duo, playing blistering live shows with his singer girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke). When Ruben suddenly loses much of his hearing, he is launched on a profound odyssey—through denial, anger, grief, and, gradually, acceptance—as he comes to understand what it means to live as a deaf person and to discover deafness as not a disability but a rich culture and community. Through stunningly immersive, Academy Award–winning sound design, director Darius Marder invites us to experience the world as Ruben does, capturing a sonic spectrum in which silence comes in a thousand shades. 120 minutes Color 5.1 Surround in English and American Sign Language 2:39:1 Criterion Release 2022 Director/Writers Story by Darius Marder and ...

EGOYAN, Atom (Canada) Exotica [1994] Spine #1150 Blu-ray One of the defining independent films of the 1990s, Atom Egoyan’s mesmerizing international breakthrough  Exotica  takes the conventions of the psychological thriller into bold new territory—unsettling, dreamlike, and empathetic. At the neon-drenched Toronto strip club of the film’s title, a coterie of lost and damaged souls—including a man haunted by grief (Bruce Greenwood), a young woman with whom he shares an enigmatic bond (Mia Kirshner), an obsessive emcee (Elias Koteas), and a smuggler of rare bird eggs (Don McKellar)—search for redemption as they work through the traumas of their mysteriously interconnected histories in an obsessive cycle of sex, pain, jealousy, and catharsis. Masterfully weaving together past and present, Egoyan constructs a spellbinding narrative puzzle, the full emotional impact of which doesn’t hit until the last piece is in place. 103 minutes Color 2.0 Surround 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2022...

BAKER, Sean and TSOU, Shih-Ching (United States) Take Out [2004] Spine #1149 Blu-ray The American dream has rarely seemed so far away as in the raw, vérité  Take Out,  by Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou, an immersion in the life of an undocumented Chinese immigrant struggling to get by on the margins of post-9/11 New York City. Facing violent retaliation from a loan shark, restaurant deliveryman Ming Ding (Charles Jang) has until nightfall to pay back the money he owes, and he encounters both crushing setbacks and moments of unexpected humanity as he races against time to earn enough in tips over the course of a frantic day. From this simple setup, Baker and Tsou fashion a kind of neorealist survival thriller of the everyday, shedding compassionate light on the too often overlooked lives and labor that keep New York running. 88 minutes Color Stereo in Mandarin and English 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2022 Director/Writers Sean Baker was 33 when he and Shih-Ching Tsou  wrot...

SHANKAR, Uday (India) Kalpana [1948] Spine #1148 Blu-ray A riot of ecstatic imagery, performance, and set design, the only film by the visionary dancer and choreographer Uday Shankar is a revolutionary celebration of Indian dance in its myriad varieties and a utopian vision of cultural renewal. Unfolding as an epic film within a film,  Kalpana  tells the story of an ambitious dancer (Shankar) determined to open a cultural center devoted to breathing new life into India’s traditional artistic forms; meanwhile, the obvious adoration between him and his lead dancer (Shankar’s wife and collaborator, Amala Uday Shankar) arouses the jealousy of his enterprising companion (Lakshmi Kanta). Swirling surrealist dance spectacles—featuring dance masters and young performers, many of whom would become stars in their own right—are interwoven with anticolonial, anticapitalist commentary for a radical, proto-Bollywood milestone that is one of the most influential works in Indian cinema. 152...

TOTH, André de (Hungary) Two Girls on the Street [1939] Spine #1147 Blu-ray The maverick Hollywood stylist André de Toth sharpened his craft in his native Hungary, where he directed five films, including this chic, dynamically paced melodrama studded with deco decor and jazzy musical interludes. Mária Tasnádi Fekete and Bella Bordy sparkle as upwardly mobile working women—one a musician in an all-girl band, the other a bricklayer—who join forces as they both try to make it in Budapest, supporting each other through changing economic fortunes, the advances of lecherous men, and the highs and heartbreaks of love. Kinetic camera work, brisk editing, and avant-garde imagery abound in  Two Girls on the Street,  an often strikingly modern ode to the power of working-class female solidarity. 79 minutes Black and White Monaural in Hungarian 1:37:1 Criterion Release 2022 Director/Writers Based on a play by Rezsö Török  and  Tamás Emod . André de Toth  was 26 when he w...

DIKONGUÉ-PIPA Muma moto [1975] Spine #1146 Blu-ray Director Dikongué-Pipa forged a new African cinematic language with  Muna moto , a delicate love story with profound emotional resonance. In a close-knit village in Cameroon, the rigid customs governing courtship and marriage mean that a deeply in love betrothed couple (David Endéné and Arlette Din Belle) can be torn apart by the lack of a dowry and by another man’s claiming of the young woman as his own wife—a rupture that sets the stage for a clash between a patriarchal society and a modern generation’s determination to chart its own course. Luminous black-and-white cinematography and stylistic flourishes yield images of haunting power in this potent depiction, told via flashback, of the challenges of postcolonialism and the devastating consequences of a community’s refusal to deviate from tradition. 89 minutes Black and White Monaural in French 1:37:1 Criterion Release 2022 Director/Writers Dikongué-Pipa was 35 when he ...

ASLANI, Mohammad Reza (Iran) Chess of the Wind [1976] Spine #1145 Blu-ray Lost for decades after screening at the 1976 Tehran International Film Festival, this rediscovered jewel of Iranian cinema reemerges to take its place as one of the most singular and astonishing works of the country’s prerevolutionary New Wave. A hypnotically stylized murder mystery awash in shivery period atmosphere,  Chess of the Wind  unfolds inside an ornate, candlelit mansion where a web of greed, violence, and betrayal ensnares the potential heirs to a family fortune as they vie for control of their recently deceased matriarch’s estate. Melding the influences of European modernism, gothic horror, and classical Persian art, director Mohammad Reza Aslani crafts an exquisitely restrained mood piece that erupts into a subversive final act in which class conventions, gender roles, and even time itself are upended with shocking ferocity. 99 minutes Color Monaural in Farsi 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2022 ...

SOFFICI, Mario (Argentina) Prisioneros de la tierra [1939] Spine #1144 Blu-ray The most acclaimed film by one of classic Argentine cinema’s foremost directors, Mario Soffici’s gut-punching work of social realism, shot on location in the dense, sweltering jungle of the Misiones region, simmers with rage against the oppression of workers. A group of desperate men are conscripted into indentured labor on a treacherous, disease-ridden yerba maté plantation under the control of the brutal foreman Köhner (Francisco Petrone)—a situation that boils over in an explosive act of rebellion led by the defiant Podeley (Ángel Magaña), and made all the more tense by the fact that Köhner and Podeley love the same woman: Andrea (Elisa Galvé), the sweet-spirited daughter of the camp’s doctor. The expressionistic, shadow-sculpted cinematography of Pablo Tabernero evokes the feverish dread of a place where suffocating heat, economic exploitation, and unremitting cruelty lead inexorably to madness and viol...

MALDOROR, Sarah (Angola) Sambizanga [1972] Spine #1143 Blu-ray A bombshell by the first woman to direct a film in Africa, Sarah Maldoror’s chronicle of the awakening of Angola’s independence movement is a stirring hymn to those who risk everything in the fight for freedom. Based on a true story,  Sambizanga  follows a young woman (Elisa Andrade) as she makes her way from the outskirts of Luanda toward the city’s center looking for her husband (Domingos Oliveira) after his arrest by the Portuguese authorities—an incident that ultimately helps to ignite an uprising. Scored by the language of revolution and the spiritual songs of the colonized Angolan people, and featuring a cast of nonprofessional actors—many of whom were themselves involved in anticolonial resistance—this landmark work of political cinema honors the essential roles of women, as well as the hardships they endure, in the global struggle for liberation. 97 minutes Color Monaural in Portuguese, Lingala, and Kimbu...

Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project No. 4 Spine #1142 Blu-ray Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007, The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project has maintained a fierce commitment to preserving and presenting masterpieces from around the globe, with a growing roster of dozens of restorations that have introduced moviegoers to often overlooked areas of cinema history. This collector’s set gathers six important works, from Angola ( Sambizanga ), Argentina ( Prisioneros de la tierra ), Iran ( Chess of the Wind ), Cameroon ( Muna moto ), Hungary ( Two Girls on the Street ), and India ( Kalpana ). Each title is an essential contribution to the art form and a window onto a filmmaking tradition that international audiences previously had limited opportunities to experience. Criterion Release 2022 #1143: MALDOROR, Sarah: Sambizanga (1972) #1144: SOFFICI, Mario: Prisioneros de la tierra (1939) #1145: ASLANI, Mohammad Reza: Chess of the Wind (1976) #1146: DIKONGUÉ-PIPA: Muna moto (19...