The Criterion Collection Complete

LESTER, Richard (United Kingdom) The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers: Two Films by Richard Lester [1973-74] Spine #1263 Blu-ray Alexandre Dumas’s immortal tale of adventure and camaraderie received perhaps the finest of its numerous screen adaptations with this two-part swashbuckling spectacular from  A Hard Day’s Night  director Richard Lester. Featuring Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, and Richard Chamberlain as the swaggering swordsmen, who thrust and parry their way through courtly intrigue in seventeenth-century France,  The Three Musketeers  and  The Four Musketeers  are also graced with an all-star supporting cast that includes Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Geraldine Chaplin, and Charlton Heston. Lester’s exuberant epic breathes new life into an oft-told classic through its boisterous slapstick invention, its meticulous attention to period detail, and a sense of pure, unbridled bravado that is thrilling to behold. The Three Musketeers 1...

BURNETT, Charles (United States) Killer of Sheep [1978] Spine #1262 Blu-ray A quiet revelation of American independent filmmaking, Charles Burnett’s lyrical debut feature unfolds as a mosaic of Black life in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), a father worn down by his job in a slaughterhouse, and his wife (Kaycee Moore) seek moments of tenderness in the face of myriad disappointments. Equally attuned to the world of children and that of adults, Burnett—acting as director, writer, producer, cinematographer, and editor—finds poetry amid everyday struggles in indelible images that glow with compassionate beauty. Largely unseen for decades following its completion in 1977,  Killer of Sheep  is now recognized as a touchstone of the groundbreaking LA Rebellion movement, and a masterpiece that brought Black American lives to the screen with an aching intimacy like no film before. 80 minutes Monaural Black and White 1:33:1 Criterion Release 2025 ...

KIAROSTAMI, Abbas (Iran) The Wind Will Carry Us [1999] Spine #1261 Blu-ray The mysteries of everyday life come into astonishing focus in one of Abbas Kiarostami’s greatest cinematic achievements. A slyly self-reflexive commentary on the director’s own artistic practice,  The Wind Will Carry Us  unfolds with unhurried majesty as it follows an undercover documentarian (Behzad Dorani) whose assignment to cover a small village’s funeral rites is continually frustrated by an elderly woman’s refusal to die. Along the way, though, he forges surprising, unsettling, and enlightening connections with those he meets. Suffused with Kiarostami’s love for people, poetry, and the arid beauty of rural Iran, this meditative masterpiece reflects upon the boundaries between intimacy and alienation, tradition and modernity, with the utmost grace. 118 minutes Monaural Color in Persian 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2025 Directors/Writer Abbas Kiarostami  was 59 when he directed The Wind Will Carr...