The Criterion Collection Complete

SOLONDZ, Todd (United States) Happiness [1998] Spine #1235 Blu-ray As disturbingly funny as it is audaciously empathetic, auteur of unease Todd Solondz’s portrait of damaged souls reaching out for connection reveals the existential void underneath middle-class suburban “normalcy.” An extraordinary ensemble cast—including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jane Adams, Lara Flynn Boyle, Ben Gazzara, and Dylan Baker—embodies an array of loosely connected New Jersey deviants, depressives, and misfits, among them a frustrated phone-sex pest, an all-American dad concealing his pedophilic urges, and a lonely woman with a grisly secret, all of whom want just one thing: to be loved. One of the most controversial films of the 1990s, the unflinching  Happiness  unnerves precisely because it dares to see the humanity in those most often denied it. 140 minutes 2.0 Surround Color 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Todd Solondz  was 39 when he directed Happiness . Other Solondz films i...

HAIGH, Andrew (United Kingdom) All of Us Strangers [2023] Spine #1234 Blu-ray A metaphysical exploration of queer love and loneliness, familial grief and healing, this delicate but audacious chamber drama confirms director Andrew Haigh’s gift for bringing complicated emotions to the screen. Isolated in a seemingly empty new high-rise, London screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) finds his solitary existence upended when he begins a passionate romance with the impulsive Harry (Paul Mescal), then reconnects with his parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) in a reunion that pushes beyond the limits of time and space. Putting a deeply personal imprint on a novel by Japanese writer Taichi Yamada, Haigh reaches cosmic heights while never losing sight of the story’s achingly human heart. 105 minutes 5.1 Surround Color 2:39:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Andrew Haigh  was 50 when he directed All of Us Strangers . Other Haigh films in the Collection: #622: Weekend (2011) #861: 45 Years (2...

ARAKI, Gregg (United States) Nowhere [1997] Spine #1233c Blu-ray You can practically smell the pheromones wafting off this kaleidoscopic odyssey, which finds director Gregg Araki crossing soap-operatic elements with blasts of science fiction, indie-kid cool, and shiny pop-art subversion. On the day when the world is foretold to end, a group of terminally horny, disillusioned, zonked-out teens in Los Angeles see their lives explode in a glitter bomb of drugs, sex, death, and alien abduction. Bisexual lust, vaporizing Valley girls, sinister televangelists, nipple-ring S&M, murder by Campbell’s-soup can—Araki folds it all into an anarchic orgy that brings his Teen Apocalypse Trilogy to an explosively caustic close. 82 minutes Monaural Color 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Gregg Araki  was 38 when he directed Nowhere . Other Araki films in the Collection: #1233a: Totally F***ed Up (1993) #1233b: The Doom Generation (1997) The Film a Film Rating (0-60): 60 The Extras ...

ARAKI, Gregg (United States) The Doomed Generation [1995] Spine #1233b Blu-ray Gregg Araki takes a road trip to hell in this wild, meth- and fast-food-fueled joyride through the margins of a menacing American wasteland. When they inadvertently link up with a dangerously alluring drifter (Johnathon Schaech), a chilled-out Cali bro (James Duval) and his spiky, foulmouthed girlfriend (Rose McGowan) find themselves on an increasingly violent, kinky, and darkly comic journey in which erotic tensions rise along with the body count. Working with a significant budget for the first time, Araki employs boldly stylized lighting and art direction to create a heightened sense of unreality in a shocking, shoegaze-soundtracked chronicle of young lives careening toward oblivion. 83 minutes Monaural Color 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Gregg Araki  was 36 when he directed The Doom Generation . Other Araki films in the Collection: #1233a: Totally F***ed Up (1993) #1233c: Nowhere (199...

ARAKI, Gregg (United States) Totally F***ed Up [1993] Spine #1233a Blu-ray A delirious mix of punk nihilism and deadpan irony, the first film in Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy puts an audaciously queer spin on Jean-Luc Godard’s classic  Masculin féminin.  Across fifteen jagged episodes,  Totally F***ed Up  plunges headlong into the lives of a group of queer, disaffected Los Angeles teenagers who form a kind of makeshift family as they navigate desire and heartbreak, societal and familial rejection, and the alienation of growing up gay in an era of relentless moralizing. Both a defiantly raw anthem of outsiderhood and a furious reckoning with all-American homophobia, Araki’s answer to the 1980s teen comedy captures youthful angst with an immediacy that still bruises. 79 minutes Monaural Color 1:33:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Gregg Araki  was 34 when he directed Totally F***ed Up . Other Araki films in the Collection: #1233b: The Doom Generati...

ARAKI, Gregg (United States) Spine #1233 Blu-ray Take the conventions of the American teen movie, transpose them to Los Angeles’s freaky fringes, anchor them in an unapologetic vision of sexual fluidity, and top it all off with heavy doses of Gen X disillusionment, gonzo violence, and hallucinogenic surrealism, and you’ll end up with something like these audacious transgressions from New Queer Cinema renegade Gregg Araki. Gleefully mixing slacker irony with raw sincerity, Godardian cool with punk scuzz, the savagely subversive, hormone-fueled films that make up the Teen Apocalypse Trilogy pushed 1990s indie cinema into bold new aesthetic realms, while giving blistering expression to adolescent rage and libidinal desire. Criterion Release 2024 #1233a: Totally F***ed Up (1993) #1233b: The Doom Generation (1995) #1233c: Nowhere (1997) By Director By Spine #