The Criterion Collection Complete

LEE, Spike (United States) Malcolm X [1992] Spine #1160 Blu-ray One of the most electrifying heroes of the twentieth century receives an appropriately sweeping screen biopic, rich in both historical insight and propulsive cinematic style, courtesy of visionary director Spike Lee. Built around an extraordinary performance from Denzel Washington,  Malcolm X  draws on the iconic civil rights leader’s autobiography to trace his journey of empowerment, from a childhood riven by white-supremacist violence to a life of petty crime to his conversion to Islam and rebirth as a fearless fighter for Black liberation, whose courage and eloquence inspired oppressed communities the world over. An epic of impeccable craft that was made with Lee’s closest creative collaborators and is buoyed by commanding performances from Delroy Lindo, Angela Bassett, Al Freeman Jr., and others, this is a passionate monument to a man whose life continues to serve as a model of principled resistance. 201 minu...

LAU, Andrew and MAK, Alan (Hong Kong) Infernal Affairs III [2003] Spine #1159c Blu-ray Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau Tak-wah return for the cathartic conclusion of the  Infernal Affairs  trilogy, which layers on even more deep-cover intrigue while steering the series into increasingly complex psychological territory. Dancing back and forth in time to before and after the events of the original film,  Infernal Affairs III  follows triad gangster turned corrupt cop Lau Kin-ming (Lau) as he goes to dangerous lengths to avoid detection, matches wits with a devious rival in the force (Leon Lai), and finds himself haunted by the fate of his former undercover nemesis (Leung). A swirl of flashbacks, memories, and hallucinations culminates in a dreamlike merging of identities that drives home the trilogy’s vision of a world in which traditional distinctions between good and evil have all but collapsed. 118 minutes Black and White/Color 5.1 Surround Cantonese 2:35:1 Criter...

LAU, Andrew and MAK, Alan (Hong Kong) Infernal Affairs II [2003] Spine #1159b Blu-ray The first of two sequels to follow in the wake of the massively successful  Infernal Affairs  softens the original’s furious pulp punch in favor of something more sweeping, elegiac, and overtly political. Flashing back in time,  Infernal Affairs II  traces the tangled parallel histories that bind the trilogy’s two pairs of adversaries: the young, dueling moles (here played by Edison Chen Koon-hei and Shawn Yue Man-lok), and the ascendant crime boss (Eric Tsang Chi-wai) and police inspector (Anthony Wong Chau-sang) whose respective rises reveal a shocking hidden connection. Unfolding against the political and psychological upheaval of Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China, this elegant, character-driven crime drama powerfully connects its themes of split loyalties to the city-state’s own postcolonial identity crisis. 119 minutes Color 5.1 Surround Cantonese 2:35:1 Criterion Rel...

LAU, Andrew and MAK, Alan (Hong Kong) Infernal Affairs [2002] Spine #1159a Blu-ray Two of Hong Kong cinema’s most iconic leading men, Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau Tak-wah, face off in the breathtaking thriller that revitalized the city-state’s twenty-first-century film industry, launched a blockbuster franchise, and inspired Martin Scorsese’s  The Departed.  The setup is diabolical in its simplicity: two undercover moles—a police officer (Leung) assigned to infiltrate a ruthless triad by posing as a gangster, and a gangster (Lau) who becomes a police officer in order to serve as a spy for the underworld—find themselves locked in a deadly game of cat and mouse, each racing against time to unmask the other. As the shifting loyalties, murky moral compromises, and deadly betrayals mount,  Infernal Affairs  raises haunting questions about what it means to live a double life, lost in a labyrinth of conflicting identities and allegiances. 101 minutes Black and White/Co...

LAU, Andrew and MAK, Alan (Hong Kong) Infernal Affairs [2002] Spine #1159 Blu-ray The Hong Kong crime drama was jolted to new life with the release of the  Infernal Affairs  trilogy, a bracing, explosively stylish critical and commercial triumph that introduced a dazzling level of narrative and thematic complexity to the genre with its gripping saga of two rival moles—played by superstars Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau Tak-wah—who navigate slippery moral choices as they move between the intersecting territories of Hong Kong’s police force and its criminal underworld. Set during the uncertainty of the city-state’s handover from Britain to China and steeped in Buddhist philosophy, these ingeniously crafted tales of self-deception and betrayal mirror Hong Kong’s own fractured identity and the psychic schisms of life in a postcolonial purgatory. Infernal Affairs (2002) Infernal Affairs II (2003) Infernal Affairs III (2003) By Director By Spine #

CAMPION, Jane (United States) The Power of the Dog [2021] Spine #1158 Blu-ray Jane Campion returns to the kind of mythic frontier landscape—pulsating with both freedom and menace—that she previously traversed in  The Piano  in order to plumb the masculine psyche in  The Power of the Dog,  set against the desolate plains of 1920s Montana and adapted by the filmmaker from Thomas Savage’s novel. After a sensitive widow (Kirsten Dunst) and her enigmatic, fiercely loving son (Kodi Smit-Mcphee) move in with her gentle new husband (Jesse Plemons), a tense battle of wills plays out between them and his brutish brother (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose frightening volatility conceals a secret torment, and whose capacity for tenderness, once reawakened, may offer him redemption or destruction. Campion, who won an Academy Award for her direction here, charts the repressed desire and psychic violence coursing among these characters with the mesmerizing control of a master at the hei...

CHYTILOVÁ, Věra (Czechoslovakia) Daisies [1966] Spine #1157/Eclipse Series 32 Blu-ray If the entire world is bad, why shouldn’t we be? Adopting this insolent attitude as their guiding philosophy, a pair of hedonistic young women (Ivana Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová), both named Marie, embark on a gleefully debauched odyssey of gluttony, giddy destruction, and antipatriarchal resistance, in which nothing is safe from their nihilistic pursuit of pleasure. But what happens when the fun is over? Matching her anarchic message with an equally radical aesthetic, director Věra Chytilová, with the close collaboration of cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera, unleashes an optical storm of fluctuating film stocks, kaleidoscopic montages, cartoonish stop-motion cutouts, and surreal costumes designed by Ester Krumbachová, who also cowrote the script. The result is  Daisies,  the most defiant provocation of the Czechoslovak New Wave, an exuberant call to rebellion aimed squarely at those who uphold...