Criterion Collection (Firm).

The story of Jean Valjean, the ex-convict who rises against all odds from galley slave to mayor, and the fanatical police inspector, Javert, who dedicates his life to recapturing Valjean.

Roman Polanski imbues his unflinchingly violent adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy of ruthless ambition and murder in medieval Scotland with grit and dramatic intensity. Jon Finch and Francesca Annis star as a decorated warrior rising in the ranks and his driven wife, scheming together to take the throne by any means.

Based on E.M. Forster's novel of requited love. A young, independent-minded, upper-class Edwardian woman who is trying to sort out her burgeoning romantic feelings, divided between an enigmatic free spirit she meets on vacation in Florence and the priggish bookworm to whom she becomes engaged back in the more corseted Surrey. Funny, sexy, and sophisticated, this gargantuan art-house hit.

After more than a decade of sober political dramas and social-minded periodpieces, the great Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this rapturously stylized quartet of ghost stories. Featuring colorfully surreal sets and luminous cinematography, these haunting tales of demonic comeuppance and spiritual trials, adapted from writer Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folklore, are existentially frightening and meticulously...

"In this irresistible musical, the legendary dancing duo Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are at the pinnacle of their art as a feckless gambler and the shrewd dancing instructor in whom he more than meets his match. Director George Stevens laces their romance with humor and clears the floor for the movie's showstopping dance scenes, in which Astaire and Rogers take seemingly effortless flight in a virtuosic fusion of ballroom and tap styles. Buoyed...

A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next. At once disturbing and oddly amusing, Oshima's constantly surprising film is a subversive and surreal indictment of both capital punishment and the treatment of Korean immigrants in his country.

"One of the British New Wave's most versatile directors, John Schlesinger came to New York in the late 1960s to make Midnight Cowboy, a picaresque story of friendship that captured a city in crisis and sparked a new era of Hollywood movies. Jon Voight delivers a career-making performance as Joe Buck, a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy city women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum...

Freaks: A tale of love, deception, and retribution set among troupe of carnival sideshow performers, shunned by society because of their physical deformities. The unknown: An unrequited infatuation leads a circus knife-thrower on the run from the law into a troubled state, but when the circus owner discovers the desperate man's secret identity, things become markedly worse. The mystic: A confederacy of unsavory characters conspire to cheat an heiress...

Brings the world of Gilbert and Sullivan to life as a dramatization of the staging of the duo's legendary 1885 comic opera, The Mikado. The world-famous Victorian librettist and composer, along with their troupe of temperamental actors, must battle personal and professional demons while mounting this major production becomes an epic about the harsh realities of creative expression.