The Criterion Collection Complete

BROOKS, Albert (United States) Mother [1996] Spine #1232 Blu-ray Reeling after his second divorce and struggling with writer’s block, sci-fi novelist John Henderson (Albert Brooks) resolves to figure out where his life went wrong, and hits on an unorthodox solution: moving back in with his relentlessly disapproving, cheerfully passive-aggressive mother (Debbie Reynolds), whose favorite son has always been John’s younger brother, Jeff (Rob Morrow). It’s an experiment that, however harebrained, delivers surprising results. Brooks’s film perfectly blends the writer-director-star’s biting wit with insight and inviting warmth, while giving him a formidable foil in the delightful Reynolds, triumphant in a comeback role that’s equal parts caustic and charming. 104 minutes 2.0 Surround Color 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Albert Brooks  was 49 when he directed Mother . Other Brooks films in the Collection: #887: Lost in America (1985) #1071: Defending Your Life (1991) #1231...

BROOKS, Albert (United States) Real Life [1979] Spine #1231 Blu-ray Decades before reality television reigned supreme, there was Albert Brooks’s debut feature,  Real Life,  a brilliantly deadpan, stylistically innovative satire about the perils and pitfalls of trying to capture the truth on film. The writer-director plays “Albert Brooks,” a narcissistic Hollywood filmmaker who plans to spend the year in Phoenix embedded with Warren and Jeanette Yeager (Charles Grodin and Frances Lee McCain) and their two children, deploying an arsenal of cutting-edge equipment (including the over-the-head Ettinaur 226XL camera) to capture an American family’s ordinary day-to-day. Chronicling the project’s disastrous fallout, as the meddlesome Albert can’t help getting too close to his subjects, this pioneering mockumentary is more relevant than ever amid today’s media landscape. 99 minutes Monaural Color 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Albert Brooks  was 32 when he directed...

COOLIDGE, Martha (United States) Not a Pretty Picture [1975] Spine #1230 Blu-ray Trailblazing filmmaker Martha Coolidge made her feature debut with this unflinchingly personal hybrid of documentary and fiction. Centered on an intense reenactment of Coolidge’s experience of rape in her adolescence, the film casts Michele Manenti (also a survivor) as the director’s younger self, and observes the actor and her castmates as they engage in a profound dialogue about what it means to recreate these traumatic memories, and about their attitudes concerning consent and self-blame. A high-stakes experiment in metacinema that broke new ground with its uncompromising examination of date rape,  Not a Pretty Picture  brings a stunning immediacy to questions about the on-screen representation of sexual violence and the limits of artistic catharsis. 82 minutes Monaural Color 1:33:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Martha Coolidge  was 29 when she directed Not a Pretty Picture . The...

MURATOVA, Kira (Soviet Union/Ukraine) Brief Encounters/The Long Farewell [1967/1971] Spine #1229 Blu-ray Nobody made films like Kira Muratova. Uncompromising and uncategorizable, the Ukrainian iconoclast withstood decades of censorship to realize her singular vision in hypnotically beautiful, expressionistically heightened films that remain unique in their ability to evoke complex interior worlds. Her first two solo features,  Brief Encounters  and  The Long Farewell,  are fascinatingly fragmented portraits of women navigating work, romance, and family life with a mix of deep yearning and playful pragmatism. Long suppressed by Soviet authorities, these films became legendary—along with their maker—and they now make for a revelatory introduction to this most fearlessly original of artists. Kira Muratova’s first solo feature already displays her sui generis approach to cinema, in an impressionistic portrait of women at work and in love. Through an intricate play of fla...

CHEN, Kaige (China) Farewell My Concubine [1993] Spine #1228 Blu-ray A breathtakingly intimate romance unfolds against a sweeping backdrop of social upheaval in renowned director Chen Kaige’s sumptuous saga of passion, fate, and the transcendent possi­bilities of art. Spanning fifty years of twentieth-century Chinese history,  Farewell My Concubine  follows aspiring actors Cheng Dieyi (a heartbreaking Leslie Cheung) and Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) as they emerge from a childhood of brutal training to become Beijing-opera stars, with life mirroring art as Dieyi’s  unrequited love for Xiaolou and the country’s changing political  tides engulf them in their own personal tragedies of jealousy and betrayal. The first Chinese film to win the Palme d’Or is  epic filmmaking of the highest order—visually and emotionally ravishing from frame to exquisite frame. 171 minutes 5.1 Surround Color in Mandarin 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Kaige Chen  was 4...

BRICKMAN, Paul (United States) Risky Business [1983] Spine #1227 Blu-ray A sly piece of pop subversion, this irresistible satire of Reagan-era materialism features Tom Cruise in his star-is-born breakthrough as a Chicago suburban prepster whose college-bound life spirals out of control when his parents go out of town for the week and an enterprising call girl (Rebecca De Mornay) invites him to walk on the wild side. While Cruise boogying in his briefs yielded one of the most iconic pop-cultural moments of the 1980s, it is the film’s unexpected mix of tender romance (enhanced by a moody synth score by Tangerine Dream) and sharp-witted capitalist critique that remains fresh and daring. 99 minutes 5.1 Surround Color 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Paul Brickman  was 34 when he directed Risky Business. The Film a Film Rating (0-60): 60 The Extras The Booklet Commentary Video tribute Documentary 1 Documentary 2 Documentary 3 Controversial altered ending Theatrical trailer...

WENDERS, Wim (Japan) Perfect Days [2023] Spine #1226 Blu-ray A perfect song that hits at just the right moment, the play of sunlight through leaves, a fleeting moment of human connection in a vast metropolis: the wonders of everyday life come into breath­taking focus in this profoundly moving film by Wim Wenders. In a radiant, Cannes-award-winning perfor mance of few words but extraordinary expressiveness,  Koji Yakusho plays a public-toilet cleaner in Tokyo whose rich inner world is gradually revealed through his small exchanges with those around him and with the city itself. Channeling his idol Yasujiro Ozu, Wenders crafts a serenely minimalist ode to the miracle that is the here and now. 124 minutes 5.1 Surround Color in Japanese 1:33:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Wim Wenders  was 78 when he directed Perfect Days. Other Wenders films in the Collection: #814: Alice in the Cities (1974) #815: Wrong Move (1975) #816: Kings of the Road (1976) #793: The American Frie...

ROCHA, Glauber (Brazil) Black God, White Devil [1964] Spine #1225 Blu-ray Myth, mysticism, and revolution collide in a blistering existential western from Glauber Rocha, a pioneer of Brazil’s socially committed Cinema Novo movement. After killing his swindling boss, ranch hand Manoel (Geraldo Del Rey) goes on the run with his wife, Rosa (Yoná Magalhães). In the stark hinterlands, they join forces with armed bandits and pledge allegiance to a self-styled holy man who preaches revolt against rich landowners while perpetrating unspeakable acts of violence against the innocent. Suffused with antiauthoritarian fervor and the intensity of life in the desert, this landmark work of radical cinema is a scorched-earth allegory about mindless fanaticism and the allure of dead-end ideologies. 118 minutes Monaural Black and White in Portuguese 1:37:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Glauber Rocha was 25 when he directed Black God, White Devil. The Film a Film Rating (0-60): 60 The Extras Th...

PECKINPAH, Sam (United States) Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid [1973] Spine #1224 Blu-ray Sam Peckinpah’s cycle of genre-redefining westerns came to a close with this blood- and dust-caked elegy for the American West, which marries his renegade style with a fatalistic sense of finality. As newly minted lawman Pat Garrett (James Coburn) stalks the outlaw Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) across the plains, their old friendship is twisted into rivalry, and mythic ideals of freedom come up against an emerging ruling-class order—all to the strains of a haunting soundtrack by Bob Dylan (who also appears as the mercurial Alias).  Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid —presented here for the first time in three separate versions—stands as perhaps the maverick auteur’s richest, most mature work, a world-weary ballad that bears the solemn weight of history passing into legend. 106 minutes Monaural Color 2:35:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Sam Peckinpah  was 48 when he directed Pat Ga...