Criterion Collection (Firm).
Description
This evocative character study tells the story of a young American fashion assistant and spiritual medium who is living in Paris and searching for signs of an afterlife following the sudden death of her twin brother. A chilling meditation on modern modes of communication and the way one mourn those they love.
2) Love affair
Description
Golden-age Hollywood's humanist master Leo McCarey brings his graceful touch and relaxed naturalism to this sublime romance, one of cinema's most intoxicating tear-wringers. Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer are chic strangers who meet and fall in love aboard an ocean liner bound for New York. Though they are both involved with other people, they make a pact to reconnect six months later at the top of the Empire State Building, until the hand of fate...
3) Easy rider
Description
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.
Description
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...
5) The River
Description
The film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the holy Bengal River in India, around which their daily lives unfold.
7) Slacker
Description
Richard Linklater's Slacker presents a day in the life of a subculture of marginal, eccentric, and overeducated citizens in and around the University of Texas; a prescient look at an emerging generation of aggressive nonparticipants.
Appears on list
Description
Renowned filmmaker Vittorio De Sica followed up his international triumph Bicycle Thieves with this enchantingly playful neorealist fairy tale, in which he combines his celebrated slice-of-life poetry with flights of graceful comedy and storybook fantasy. On the outskirts of Milan, a band of vagabonds works together to form a shantytown. When it is discovered that the land they occupy contains oil, however, it's up to the cherubic orphan Tot ̣with...
9) The rock
Description
A retired US Marine general (Ed Harris) seizes a stockpile of chemical weapons and takes over Alcatraz with 81 tourists as hostages. His demand: restitution to families of soldiers who died in covert operations. A Navy SEAL team with support from an FBI chemical warfare expert (Nicolas Cage) and a former Alcatraz escapee (Sean Connery) assemble to penetrate the terrorists' defenses on the island and neutralize the threat before time runs out.
10) Night on earth
Description
Five cities, five taxis, and a group of strangers make for an interesting night. A collection of 5 stories that span continents, time zones, and languages.
11) La llorona
Appears on list
Description
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...
12) Mona Lisa
Description
The brilliant breakthrough film by writer-director Neil Jordan journeys into the dark heart of the London underworld to weave a gripping, noir-infused love story. Bob Hoskins received an Oscar nomination for his touchingly vulnerable, not-so-tough-guy portrayal of George, recently released from prison and hired by a sinister mob boss to chauffeur call girl Simone between high-paying clients. George's fascination with the elegant, enigmatic Simone...
Appears on list
Description
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...
16) Kumonosujō
Appears on list
Description
A vivid, visceral Macbeth adaptation, directed by Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai), sets Shakespeare's definitive tale of ambition and duplicity in a ghostly, fog-enshrouded landscape in feudal Japan. The film fuses classical Western tragedy with formal elements taken from Noh Theater to create an unforgettable cinematic experience.
Description
An absorbing portrait of the artist, as well as an intimate encounter with the man himself. From the privacy of his home and painting studio in the Hollywood Hills, a candid Lynch conjures people and places from his past, from his boyhood in Idaho and Virginia to his experiences at art school in Boston and Philadelphia to the beginnings of his filmmaking career in Los Angeles, in stories that unfold like scenes from his movies.
18) Shallow grave
Description
When three friends find their new roommate dead and a suitcase full of money under his bed, they have no trouble deciding how to dispose of the cash, but the body is a different story. Their troubles are compounded when they meet the men who come to retrieve the money.
19) The daytrippers
Description
When she discovers a love letter written to her husband by an unknown paramour, the distraught Eliza turns to her tight-knit Long Island family for advice. Soon the entire clan, strong-willed mom, taciturn dad, and jaded sister with pretentious boyfriend in tow, has squeezed into a station wagon and headed into Manhattan to find out the truth, kicking off a one-crazy-day odyssey full of unexpected detours and life-changing revelations.
20) Heaven's gate
Description
A Harvard graduate, turned federal Marshal in Wyoming, learns of a government sanctioned plot by cattle barons to kill the area's European settlers for their land. The resulting battle is based on the Johnson County War of 1892.