The Criterion Collection Complete

JUSU, Nikyatu (United States) Nanny [2022] Spine #1196 Blu-ray A spellbinding blend of social observation and artful shocks, the debut feature from Nikyatu Jusu plunges into the increasingly fractured consciousness of Aisha (Anna Diop), a Senegalese immigrant who takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy white family in New York City. Separated from her own son and casually exploited by her employers, Aisha finds herself consumed by unsettling visions and a growing rage—one that could either destroy or empower her. This visually captivating tour de force—the first horror movie to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival—distills complex ideas about motherhood, inequality, and cultural dislocation into a work of dreamlike dread. 98 minutes 5.1 Surround Color In English and Wolof 2:00:1 Criterion Release 2023 Director/Writer Nikyatu Jusu was 40 when she directed Nanny . The Film a Film Rating (0-60): 60 The Extras The Booklet Commentary Video tribute Documentary 1 Documentary...

AMENÁBAR, Alejandro (Spain) The Others [2001] Spine #1195 Blu-ray A remote manor; hushed, candlelit atmosphere; and shivery, supernatural menace. With his first English-language feature, Chilean Spanish writer-director-composer Alejandro Amenábar resurrected the classic gothic chiller to create a ghost story of uncommon emotional resonance. Nicole Kidman stars as a World War II–era mother whose imperiousness masks a terrifying pain, as she keeps her light-sensitive children enshrouded in darkness on her country estate. The arrival of three new servants punctures her insular world—and seems to disturb the balance between the living and the dead. With each stunning twist and turn, Amenábar immerses us more deeply in a realm haunted not only by spirits but also by guilt, trauma, and repression. 104 minutes Dolby Atmos Color 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2023 Director/Writer Alejandro Amenábar was 29 when he directed The Others . The Film a Film Rating (0-60): 60 The Extras The Booklet Comme...

BROWNING, Tod (United States) The Mystic [1925] Spine #1194c Blu-ray A fantastically atmospheric but rarely seen missing link in the development of Tod Browning’s artistry, set amid his favored milieu of shadowy sideshows and clever criminals,  The Mystic  provides a striking showcase for silent-era diva Aileen Pringle, who sports a series of memorably outré looks (courtesy of art-deco designer Erté) as Zara, a phony psychic in a Hungarian carnival who, under the guidance of a Svengali-like con man (Conway Tearle), crashes—and proceeds to swindle—American high society. Browning’s fascination with the weird is on full display in the eerie séance sequences, while his subversive moral ambiguity extends surprising sympathy to even the most seemingly irredeemable of antiheroes. 73 minutes Monaural Black and White 1:33:1 Criterion Release 2023 Director/Writer Tod Browning was 45 when he directed The Mystic . Other Browning films in the Collection: #1194a: Freaks (1932) #1194b: Th...

BROWNING, Tod (United States) The Unknown [1927] Spine #1194b Blu-ray The most celebrated and exquisitely perverse of the many collaborations between Tod Browning and his legendary leading man Lon Chaney,  The Unknown  features a wrenchingly physical performance from “the Man of a Thousand Faces” as the armless Spanish knife thrower Alonzo (he flings daggers with his feet) whose dastardly infatuation with his beautiful assistant (Joan Crawford)—a woman, it just so happens, who cannot bear to be touched by the hands of any man—drives him to unspeakable extremes. Sadomasochistic obsession, deception, murder, disfigurement, and a spectacular Grand Guignol climax—Browning wrings every last frisson from the lurid premise. 67 minutes Monaural Black and White 1:33:1 Criterion Release 2023 Director/Writer Tod Browning was 47 when he directed The Unknown . Other Browning films in the Collection: #1194a: Freaks (1932) #1194c: The Mystic (1925) The Film a Film Rating (0-60): 60 The Ex...

BROWNING, Tod (United States) Freaks [1932] Spine #1194a Blu-ray The most transgressive film produced by a major American studio in the 1930s, Tod Browning’s crowning achievement has haunted the margins of cinema for nearly one hundred years. An unforgettable cast of real-life sideshow performers portray the entertainers in a traveling circus who, shunned by mainstream society, live according to their own code—one of radical acceptance for the fellow oppressed and, as the show’s beautiful but cruel trapeze artist learns, of terrifying retribution for those who cross them. Received with revulsion by viewers upon its initial release,  Freaks  effectively ended Browning’s career but can now be seen for what it is: an audacious cry for understanding and a singular experience of nightmarish, almost avant-garde power. 64 minutes Monaural Black and White 1:37:1 Criterion Release 2023 Director/Writer Tod Browning was 52 when he directed Freaks . Other Browning films in the Collecti...

BROWNING, Todd (United States) Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers (1925-1932) Spine #1194 Blu-ray The world is a carnival of criminality, corruption, and psychosexual strangeness in the twisted pre-Code shockers of Tod Browning. Early Hollywood’s edgiest auteur, Browning drew on his experiences as a circus performer to create subversive pulp entertainments set amid the world of traveling sideshows, which, with their air of the exotic and the disreputable, provided a pungent backdrop for his sordid tales of outcasts, cons, villains, and vagabonds. Bringing together two of his defining works ( The Unknown  and  Freaks ) and a long-unavailable rarity ( The Mystic ), this cabinet of pre-Code curiosities reveals a master of the morbid whose ability to unsettle is matched only by his daring compassion for society’s most downtrodden. Criterion Release 2023 #1194a: Freaks (1932) #1194b: The Unknown (1927) #1194c: The Mystic (1925) By Director By Spine #