The Criterion Collection Complete

TOWNSEND, Robert (United States) Hollywood Shuffle [1987] Spine #1173 Blu-ray This debut feature by Robert Townsend is an ingenious guerrilla satire that takes riotous aim at the typecasting of Black actors in 1980s Hollywood. The writer-director-star’s megawatt charisma propels  Hollywood Shuffle , the hilarious tale of a struggling actor attempting to break into an industry where the only roles available to Black performers seem to be hustlers, butlers, slaves, and “Eddie Murphy types”—forcing him to choose between selling out and maintaining his self-respect. Lampooning everything from film noir to zombie flicks to Siskel and Ebert, Townsend and cowriter Keenen Ivory Wayans cannily turn the frustrations of the Black artist into a subversively funny pop-culture critique. 81 Minutes Color Monaural 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2023 Director/Writers Written by Robert Townsend and Keenen Ivory Wayans . Townsend was 30 when he directed  Hollywood Shuffle . The Film a Film Rating (...

DURAS, Marguerite (France) Baxter, Vera Baxter [1977] Spine #1172b Blu-ray Marguerite Duras reunited with  India Song  collaborators Delphine Seyrig and composer Carlos d’Alessio for  Baxter, Vera Baxter,  a hypnotically unsettling journey into one woman’s existential emptiness. Ensconced in a sprawling rental villa, the world-weary Vera Baxter (Claudine Gabay) receives visits from two women, including a mysterious stranger (Seyrig) to whom she recounts a shocking story about her marriage, the way she lives, and the reasons for her malaise. Setting her languid images to d’Alessio’s incongruously breezy, endlessly looping score, Duras fashions a quietly shattering portrait of marriage as a kind of prison. 95 Minutes Color Monaural in French 1:66:1 Criterion Release 2023 Director/Writers Marguerite Duras was 63 when she wrote and directed  Baxter, Vera Baxter . Other Duras films in the Collection: #1172a: India Song (1975) The Film a Film Rating (0-60): 60 The ...

DURAS, Marguerite (France) India Song [1975] Spine #1172a Blu-ray Marguerite Duras’s most celebrated work is a mesmerizing, almost incantatory experience with few stylistic precedents in the history of cinema. Within the insular walls of a lavish, decaying embassy in 1930s India, the French ambassador’s wife (Delphine Seyrig) staves off ennui through affairs with multiple men—with the overpowering torpor broken only by a startling eruption of madness. Setting her evocatively decadent visuals to a desynchronized chorus of disembodied voices that comment on and counterpoint the action, with  India Song  Duras creates a haunted-house movie unlike any other. 119 Minutes Color Monaural in French 1:66:1 Criterion Release 2023 Director/Writers Marguerite Duras was 61 when she wrote and directed India Song . Other Duras films in the Collection: #1172b: Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977) The Film a Film Rating (0-60): 60 The Extras The Booklet Twenty-four page booklet featuring an essay by ...

DURAS, Marguerite (France) Spine #1172 Blu-ray Marguerite Duras had already established herself as one of the major figures of postwar French literature when she launched an equally fascinating and unclassifiable career in cinema, translating her elliptical, experimental style to the screen through an unprecedented fusion of hypnotic, highly stylized imagery and radically disjunctive sound. Boldly reimagining the possibilities of dialogue, music, silence, and architectural space, the tantalizing, sphinxlike evocations of soul-deep female malaise  India Song  and  Baxter, Vera Baxter  embody Duras’s singular multisensory approach, with each opening up new spaces for the expression of women’s interior worlds. Criterion Release 2023 #1172a: India Song (1975) #1172b: Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977) By Director By Spine #

ZEFFIRELLI, Franco (Italy) Romeo and Juliet (1968) Spine #1171 Blu-ray One of the great Shakespeare adaptations, this sublime take on the Bard’s immortal romantic tragedy by Franco Zeffirelli breathed new life into the oft-told tale by casting actual teenagers in the title roles. As the young lovers whose affair threatens to inflame the tensions between their feuding families in Renaissance Verona, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting vividly capture the mix of adolescent ardor and turmoil that fuels their destiny-driven liaison. A sensory banquet thanks to Nino Rota’s delicate score and the exquisite, Oscar-winning costumes and cinematography,  Romeo and Juliet  is Shakespeare at its most deeply felt and passionately alive. 138 minutes Color Monaural 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2023 Director/Writers Based upon the play by William Shakespeare . Screenplay by Franco Brusati , Masolino D'Amico , and Franco Zeffirelli . Zeffirelli was 45 when he directed Romeo and Juliet . The Film O...