Criterion Collection (Firm)
1) EO
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Legendary director Jerzy Skolimowski created one of his freest and most visually inventive films yet with this story of a gray donkey named EO. After being removed from an itinerant circus, EO begins a trek across the countryside, experiencing cruelty and kindness from a cast of characters including an Italian countess and a Polish soccer team. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature, and featuring stunning cinematography by...
2) Easy rider
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A generation-defining movie about friends who engage in a motorcycle journey across the country to discover the true America. Bonus features include: CD Songtrack, making of documentary, commentary, and British Film Institute Modern Classic Book.
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A classic tale is reborn through the inspired imagination of cinematic dream-weaver Guillermo del Toro, directing alongside Mark Gustafson. Realized through boundary-pushing, breathtakingly intricate stop-motion animation, this dark rendering of the fable of the puppet boy and his maker, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, daringly transfers the story to Fascist Italy, where the irrepressible Pinocchio gradually learns what it means...
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A caustic inside look at the Washington news media, stars Holly Hunter in her breakout role, as a feisty television producer torn between an ambitious yet dim anchorman and her closest confidant, a cynical veteran reporter. James L. Brooks' witty, gently prophetic entertainment is a captivating transmission from an era in which ideas on love and media were rapidly changing.
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At once a rousing paean to artistic creation, a delicate evocation of divine grace, and the ultimate film about food, the Oscar-winning Babette's Feast is a layered tale of a French housekeeper with a mysterious past who brings quiet revolution in the form of one exquisite meal to a circle of starkly pious villagers in late nineteenth-century Denmark.
8) The Blob
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Science fiction film in which residents of a small Pennsylvania town combat a slimy space invader.
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As the brawling, rough-and-tumble saloon singer Frenchy, Dietrich shed her exotic love-goddess image and launched a glorious career comeback, while Stewart cemented his amiable everyman persona with a charming turn as a gun-abhorring deputy sheriff who uses his wits to bring law and order to the frontier town of Bottleneck. A sparkling script, a supporting cast of virtuoso character actors, and rollicking musical numbers come together to create an...
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Captures all the fun, excitement, and unforgettable music of John, Paul, George, and Ringo at the height of Beatlemania. The Beatles perform their songs and look for adventure, all while avoiding hordes of screaming fans. Packed with all-time Beatle favorites, including A Hard Day's Night; All My Loving; Can't Buy Me Love; I Should Have Known Better; She Loves You; Tell Me Why; and more.
12) Belle de jour
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The porcelain perfection of Catherine Deneuve hides a cracked interior in the actress's most iconic role: Severine, a chilly Paris housewife by night, a bordello prostitute by day.
13) La llorona
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A country's bloody history stains the present in the Guatemalan auteur Jayro Bustamante's transfixing fusion of folk horror and searing political commentary, inspired by the real-life indictment of the authoritarian Efraín Ríos Montt for crimes against humanity. A notorious, now aging former military dictator stands trial for atrocities committed against Guatemala's Mayan communities. While battling legal repercussions and the people's demands...
14) Naked lunch
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Part-time pest-control man and full-time drug addict Bill Lee (Weller) seeks escape from his troubled existence in 1953 New York and flees to Interzone (a hallucinatory version of Tangiers) where reality and fantasy have merged. It's a strange, surreal landscape inhabited by mugwumps, half-alien, half-insect creatures, man-sized centipedes, carnivorous typewriters and bizarre humans. Compelled to make sense of this alien territory, he writes a book...
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This haunting silent thriller tells the tale of a mysterious young man who takes up residence at a London boardinghouse, just as a killer who preys on blonde women, known as the Avenger, descends upon the city. The film is animated by the palpable energy of a young stylist at play, decisively establishing the director's formal and thematic obsessions.
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Filmmaker Les Blank considered this free-form feature documentary about singer-songwriter Leon Russell, filmed between 1972 and 1974 while Blank was living at the Russell/Shelter records recording studio compound on Grand Lake of the Cherokees in NE Oklahoma, but unreleased due to creative differences and music clearance problems, to be one of his greatest accomplishments. Includes scenes of Russell and his band and others performing, both in concert...
18) Nashville
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A cornerstone of 1970s American filmmaking from Robert Altman. It is a view of the country's political and entertainment landscapes set in the nation's music capital. It weaves the stories of 24 characters--from country star to wannabe to reporter to waitress--into a cinematic tapestry that is equal parts comedy, tragedy, and musical. It showcases Altman's ability to get to the heart of American life via its eccentric byways, and barrels forward to...
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Two years after his wife's unexpected death, Yusuke Kafuku arrives in Hiroshima to direct a production of Uncle Vanya for a theater festival and, through relationships with an actor with whom he shares a tangled history and a chauffeur with whom he develops a surprising rapport, finds himself confronting emotional scars. This quietly mesmerizing tale of love, art, grief, and healing is ultimately a cathartic exploration of what it means to go on living...
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An actor has dinner with his friend, a theater director, at an Upper West Side restaurant. Together they discuss everything from money to death to love and all the superstition in between. Playing variations on their own New York-honed personas, the two dive in with introspective, intellectual gusto. All captured in a delicate, but artful detachment.