The Criterion Collection Complete

WU, Alice (United States) Saving Face [2004] Spine #1276 Blu-ray A queer romantic comedy set in vibrant, multicultural New York City, Alice Wu’s irresistible feature debut breathed fresh life into the genre by combining snappy dialogue and a swooning love story with a poignant narrative about a mother and daughter coming to terms with each other. Just as Wil (Michelle Krusiec), a harried young surgical resident, begins a promising romance with the flirtatious dancer Vivian (Lynn Chen), her life is turned upside down when her more traditional Chinese mother (Joan Chen)—unwed and unexpectedly pregnant—moves in with her, forcing both women to confront the generational and cultural barriers that have long troubled their relationship. Both embracing and cleverly subverting rom-com conventions, Wu delivers a bighearted ode to the Chinese American diaspora, and the liberating joy of living one’s truth. 97 minutes 5.1 Surround Color in English, Mandarin 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2025 Directors...

YANG, Edward (Taiwan) Mahjong [1996] Spine #1275b Blu-ray Edward Yang’s follow-up to  A Confucian Confusion  is another dizzying comedy set in a globalized Taipei, but with a darker, more caustic edge. Amid a rapidly changing cityscape, the lives of a disparate group of swindlers, hustlers, gangsters, and expats collide, with a naive French teenager (Virginie Ledoyen) and a sensitive young local (Lawrence Ko) who tries to protect her caught dangerously in the middle. By turns brutal, shocking, tender, and bitingly funny,  Mahjong  is a dazzling vision of a multicultural Taipei where nearly every relationship has a price and newfound prosperity comes at the expense of the human soul. 120 minutes 5.0 Surround Color in Mandarin, English 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2025 Directors/Writer Edward Yang was 49 when he directed  Mahjong . Other Yang films in the Collection: #879: Taipei Story (1985) #804: A Brighter Summer Day (1991) #1275a: A Confucian Confusion (1994) #3...

YANG, Edward (Taiwan) A Confucian Confusion [1994] Spine #1275a Blu-ray Edward Yang’s first foray into comedy may have been a surprising stylistic departure, but in its richly novelistic vision of urban discontent, it is quintessential Yang. This relationship roundelay centers on a coterie of young Taipei professionals whose paths converge at an entertainment company where the boundaries between art and commerce, love and business, have become hopelessly blurred. Evoking the chaos of a city infiltrated by Western chains, logos, and attitudes,  A Confucian Confusion  is an incisive reflection on the role of traditional values in a materialistic, amoral society. 129 minutes 5.0 Surround Color in Mandarin 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2025 Directors/Writer Edward Yang was 47 when he directed  A Confucian Confusion . Other Yang films in the Collection: #879: Taipei Story (1985) #804: A Brighter Summer Day (1991) #1275b: Mahjong (1996) #339: Yi Yi (2000) The Film a Film Rating (0...

YANG, Edward (Taiwan) A Confucian Confusion / Mahjong: Two Films By Edward Yang [1994/1996] Spine #1275 Blu-ray In this pair of sharp, sprawling satires, one of Taiwan’s most celebrated filmmakers, Edward Yang, captures the anything-can-happen mood of Taipei at the end of the twentieth century. Made in between his epic dramas  A Brighter Summer Day  and  Yi Yi, A Confucian Confusion  and  Mahjong  find Yang applying a lighter but no less masterly touch to his explorations of human relationships in an increasingly globalized, hypercapitalistic world. These intricately constructed ensemble comedies—one set in a cutthroat corporate milieu, the other in a shady criminal underworld—reveal the absurdity and cynicism at the heart of modern urban life. 1275a: A Confucian Confusion (1994) 1275b: Mahjong (1996) By Director By Spine #

DAVIS, Zeinabu irene (United States) Compensation [1999] Spine #1274 Blu-ray A poignant portrait of Deaf African Americans and the complexities of love at both ends of the twentieth century, Zeinabu irene Davis’s film is a groundbreaking story of inclusion and visibility. In dual performances, Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks play an educated dressmaker and an illiterate migrant in 1910s Chicago, and a resilient graphic artist and an endearing librarian living in the same city eight decades later. Employing archival photography, an original score blending ragtime and African percussion, and lyrical editing, Davis deftly intertwines the two couple’s stories, in ways both tender and tragic.  Compensation  is a landmark of American independent cinema that confronts the social forces and prejudices that hinder love. 92 minutes Stereo Black and White 1:33:1 Criterion Release 2025 Directors/Writer Zeinabu irene Davis was 38 when she directed Compensation . The Film a Fil...

CHAHINE, Youssef (Egypt) Cairo Station [1958] Spine #1273 Blu-ray Youssef Chahine established his international reputation with this masterpiece, which, though initially a commercial failure in Egypt, would become one of the most influential and celebrated works in all of Arab cinema. The director himself stars as Kenawi, a disabled newspaper hawker whose obsession with a sultry drink seller (Hind Rostom, known as the “Marilyn Monroe of Arabia”) leads to tragedy of operatic proportions on the streets of Cairo. Blending elements of neorealism with provocative noir-melodrama,  Cairo Station  is a work of raw populist poetry that explores the individual’s search for a place in Egypt’s new postrevolutionary political order. 76 minutes Monaural Black and White in Arabic 1:37:1 Criterion Release 2025 Directors/Writer Youssef Chahine  was 32 when he directed Cairo Station . The Film a Film Rating (0-60): 60 The Extras The Booklet Commentary Video tribute Documentary 1 Document...

DE SICA, Vittorio (Italy) Shoeshine [1946] Spine #1272 Blu-ray An international breakthrough for neorealism, Vittorio De Sica’s Academy Award–winning film is an indelible fable of innocence lost amid the hardscrabble reality of 1940s Italy. On the streets of Rome, two boys—best friends Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni) and Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi)—set out to raise the money to buy a horse by shining shoes. When they are inadvertently caught up in a robbery and sent to a brutal juvenile detention center, their loyalty to each other is severely tested. A devastating portrait of economic struggle made all the more haunting by its child’s-eye perspective,  Shoeshine  stands as one of the defining achievements of postwar Italian filmmaking. 91 minutes Monaural Black and White in Italian 1:37:1 Criterion Release 2025 Directors/Writer Vittorio De Sica  was 45 when he directed Shoeshine . Other De Sica films in the Collection: #323: The Children Are Watching Us (1944) #374: Bicy...