Criterion Collection (Firm)
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This classic documentary by Errol Morris showcases workers in the animal burial industry while dealing with heavier existential questions regarding mortality and the afterlife. The first pet mortician featured is Floyd "Mac" McClure, who believes that a graceful burial is as important for pets as it is for people. The film chronicles his struggles to keep his niche business afloat, and interviews several of his associates and one of his competitors,...
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A story of four women's search for spiritual peace. Agnes, a spinster who lives with her housekeeper, is dying of cancer, and is visited one last time by her two sisters, Karin and Maria. These two become entangled in feelings of jealousy, manipulation and selfishness. Yet Agnes, tortured by cancer, is able to transcend her sisters' pettiness to remember moments of staggering beauty as well as horror.
3) 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...
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Wayne Wang's follow-up to his watershed indie Chan Is Missing is a family portrait that gracefully combines the director's signature gentle humanism and eye for poignant detail. Offering another fresh perspective on San Francisco's Chinese American community, Wang takes a bittersweet look at the generational pas de deux between an aging immigrant widow and her devoted daughter, torn between filial duty and her desires.
5) After hours
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Desperate to escape his mind-numbing routine, uptown Manhattan office worker Paul Hackett ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman. So begins the wildest night of his life, as bizarre occurrences involving underground-art punks, a distressed waitress, a crazed Mister Softee truck driver, and a bagel-and-cream-cheese paperweight pile up with anxiety-inducing relentlessness and thwart his attempts to get home.
6) Holiday
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An acrobatically inclined free spirit, following a whirlwind engagement, literally tumbles into the lives of his fiancě₂s aristocratic family, setting up a clash of values with her staid father while firing the rebellious imagination of her brash, black-sheep sister. With a sparkling surface and an undercurrent of melancholy, the film is an enchanting ode to nonconformists and pie-in-the-sky dreamers everywhere, as well as a thoughtful reflection...
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A grand-scale adventure as only Akira Kurosawa could make one. A general charged with guarding his defeated clan's princess as the two smuggle royal treasure across hostile territory. Accompanying them are a pair of bumbling, conniving peasants who may or may not be their friends. This rip-roaring ride is among the director₂s most beloved films and was a primary influence on George Lucas₂s Star Wars. Delivers Kurosawa₂s trademark deft blend...
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Struggling to cope with his erratic temper, novelty toilet plunger salesman Barry Egan spends his days collecting frequent-flyer-mile coupons and dodging the insults of his seven sisters. The promise of a new life emerges when Barry inadvertently attracts the affections of a mysterious woman named Lena. But their budding relationship is threatened when he falls prey to the swindling operator of a phone sex line and her deranged boss.
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In an instant, nurse Manuela loses the teenage son she raised on her own. Grief-stricken, she sets out to search for the boy's long-lost father in Barcelona, where she reawakens into a new maternal role, at the head of a surrogate family that includes a pregnant, HIV-positive nun; an illustrious star of the stage; and a transgender sex worker.
10) The New World
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The apocryphal story of the meeting of British explorer John Smith and Powhatan native Pocahontas as a romantic idyll between spiritual equals. It then follows Pocahontas through her marriage to John Rolfe and her life in England.
13) The Blob
Description
Science fiction film in which residents of a small Pennsylvania town combat a slimy space invader.
15) Heart of a dog
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In this essay film, multimedia artist Laurie Anderson presents a monologue touching upon her relationship with her rat terrier Lolabelle, the death of her mother, the heightening of surveillance following 9/11, and other topics.
16) The magic flute
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A scintillating screen version of Mozart's beloved opera showcases Ingmar Bergman's deep knowledge of music and gift for expressing it cinematically. Casting some of Europe's finest soloists, the director lovingly recreated the baroque theater of Sweden's Drottningholm Palace to stage the story of the prince Tamino and his zestful sidekick Papageno, who are sent on a mission to save a beautiful princess from the clutches of evil.
17) Vernon, Florida
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Errol Morris changed the face of documentary filmmaking in the US. Here he travels to a languorous southern backwater and meets a handful of fascinating folks; a determined turkey hunter, a curious minister, and a laconic policeman, engaged in individualistic, sometimes absurd pursuits.
18) 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...
19) Videodrome
Description
When Max Renn goes looking for edgy new shows for his sleazy cable TV station, he stumbles across the pirate broadcast of a hyperviolent torture show called Videodrome. As he struggles to unearth the origins of the program, he embarks on a hallucinatory journey into a shadow world of right-wing conspiracies, sadomasochistic sex games, and bodily transformation.