The Criterion Collection Complete

KORINE, Harmony (United States) Gummo [1997] Spine #1238 Blu-ray Harmony Korine’s debut feature is an audacious, lyrical evocation of America’s rural underbelly, and an elegy in the southern-gothic tradition of William Faulkner and William Eggleston. Shot in Korine’s native Nashville—standing in for the tornado-ravaged Xenia, Ohio—the rough-hewn film follows two young friends, Tummler and Solomon, as they ride around town, huffing glue and hunting stray cats, their every local encounter charged with vaudevillian anarchy as well as deep pathos. At once transgressive and empathetic, disturbing and undeniably beautiful,  Gummo  is a one-of-a-kind portrait of angelic and devilish souls caught in a cultural void, circumscribed by poverty and the depleted, alienated spiritual life of late-twentieth-century America. 89 minutes 2.0 Surround Color 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Harmony Korine  was 24 when he directed Gummo . The Film a Film Rating (0-60): 60 The Ex...

SHINODA, Masahiro (Japan) Demon Pond [1979] Spine #1237 Blu-ray Japanese New Wave renegade Masahiro Shinoda transforms a classic Kabuki tale with his own extravagant visual style in this dimension-shattering folk-horror fantasia. When a lone traveler (Tsutomu Yamazaki) stumbles upon a remote, drought-stricken village, he finds himself engulfed in a whirlpool of myth, mystery, and magic: in a nearby pond reside spirits who hold the fate of the town’s inhabitants—including lovers Akira (Go Kato) and Yuri (Kabuki legend Tamasaburo Bando, who also plays the ethereal princess reigning over the water)—in their hands. Set to the swirling strains of electronic-music pioneer Isao Tomita’s synth score,  Demon Pond  blends theatrical artifice with cinematic surrealism for an aquatic-apocalyptic fable of human love and folly caught in the current of nature’s wrath. 124 minutes Monaural Color in Japanese 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Masahiro Shinoda  was 48 when he d...

TOURNEUR, Jacques / ROBSON, Mark (United States) I Walked with a Zombie [1943] / The Seventh Victim [1943] Spine #1236 Blu-ray Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur elevated the horror film to new heights of poetic abstraction with this entrancing journey into the realm between life and death. When she takes a job caring for a comatose woman on a Caribbean island, a young nurse (Frances Dee) finds herself plunged into a mysterious world where the ghosts of slavery haunt the present and witch doctors have the power to summon the living dead. Sugarcane swaying in a moonlit field, the hypnotic beat of voodoo drums, the relentless pull toward death—the otherworldly atmosphere of this bold reimagining of  Jane Eyre  is as close as studio-era Hollywood ever came to pure dream-state surrealism. 69 minutes Monaural Black and White 1:37:1 Criterion Release 2024 “Death is good” is how producer Val Lewton summarized the message of his films, a credo that received its most exp...