Directed by Johnnie To • 2004 • Hong Kong
Starring Louis Koo, Aaron Kwok, Cherrie Ying

One of the most personal films by the prolific Hong Kong auteur Johnnie To is a thrilling love letter to both the cinema of Akira Kurosawa and the art and philosophy of judo. Amid the neon-drenched nightclubs ...

Criterion Collection Edition #711

Directed by Richard Lester • 1964 • United Kingdom

Meet the Beatles! Just one month after they exploded onto the U.S. scene with their Ed Sullivan Show appearance, John, Paul, George, and Ringo began working on a project that would bring their revolutionary tal...

Directed by Lynne Ramsay • 1999 • United Kingdom
Starring Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews, William Eadie

In her breathtaking and assured debut feature, Lynne Ramsay creates a haunting evocation of a troubled Glasgow childhood. Set during Scotland’s national garbage strike of the mid-1970s, RATCAT...

Directed by D. A. Pennebaker • 1970 • United States
Starring Stephen Sondheim, Elaine Stritch, Donna McKechnie

This legendary, long-unavailable documentary from Direct Cinema pioneer D. A. Pennebaker captures the behind-the-scenes drama that went into the making of a classic Broadway recording. ...

Directed by Federico Fellini • 1954 • Italy
Starring Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn, Richard Basehart

With this breakthrough film, Federico Fellini launched both himself and his wife and collaborator Giulietta Masina to international stardom, breaking with the neorealism of his early career in ...

Directed by David Cronenberg • 1981 • Canada
Starring Stephen Lack, Jennifer O’Neill, Michael Ironside

With SCANNERS, David Cronenberg plunges us into one of his most terrifying and thrilling sci-fi worlds. After a man with extraordinary—and frighteningly destructive—telepathic abilities is nabb...

Criterion Collection Edition #63

Directed by Herk Harvey • 1962 • United States
Starring Candace Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney Berger

A young woman (Candace Hilligoss) in a small Kansas town survives a drag race accident, then agrees to take a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City. En r...

Criterion Collection Edition #35

Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot • 1955 • France
Starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse

Before PSYCHO, PEEPING TOM, and REPULSION, there was DIABOLIQUE. This thriller from Henri-Georges Clouzot, which shocked audiences in Europe and the U.S., is ...

Criterion Collection Edition #584

Directed by Kaneto Shindo • 1968 • Japan
Starring Kichiemon Nakamura, Nobuko Otowa, Kei Sato

In this poetic and atmospheric horror fable, set in a village in war-torn medieval Japan, a malevolent spirit has been ripping out the throats of itinerant samurai. Whe...

Directed by Felipe Cazals • 1976 • Mexico
Starring Enrique Lucero, Ernesto Gómez Cruz, Rodrigo Puebla

One of Mexico's most highly regarded works of political cinema, CANOA: A SHAMEFUL MEMORY reimagines a real-life incident that had occurred just eight years before its release, when a group of ur...

Directed by Alan J. Pakula • 1971 • United States
Starring Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland

With her Oscar-winning turn in KLUTE, Jane Fonda reinvented herself as a new kind of movie star. Bringing nervy audacity and counterculture style to the role of Bree Daniels—a call girl and aspiring actor wh...

Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda • 1998 • Japan
Starring Arata, Erika Oda, Susumu Terajima

If you could choose only one memory to hold on to for eternity, what would it be? That’s the question at the heart of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s revelatory international breakthrough, a bittersweet fantasia in which...

Directed by Leon Gast • 1996 • United States
Starring Muhammad Ali

In 1974, Leon Gast traveled to Africa to film Zaïre 74, a music festival planned to accompany an unprecedented sports spectacle: the Rumble in the Jungle, in which late-career underdog Muhammad Ali would contend with the younger...

Directed by Todd Solondz • 2010 • United States
Starring Ally Sheedy, Allison Janney, Ciarán Hinds

In LIFE DURING WARTIME, independent filmmaker Todd Solondz explores contemporary American existence and the nature of forgiveness with his customary dry humor and queasy precision. The film functio...

Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1986 • United States
Starring Louise Smith, Ellen McElduff, Amanda Goodwin

Sex work is portrayed with radical nonjudgment in Lizzie Borden’s immersive, richly detailed look at the rhythms and rituals of society’s most stigmatized profession. Inspired by the experience...

Directed by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin • 1961 • France

Few films can claim as much influence on the course of cinema history as CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER. The fascinating result of a collaboration between filmmaker-anthropologist Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin, this vanguard work of what Mor...

Directed by Jacques Deray • 1969 • France
Starring Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet

The bright sun of the French Riviera is deceptive in this alluring work of slow-burn suspense from thriller specialist Jacques Deray and legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. Formerly one of Euro...

Criterion Collection Edition #600

Directed by Otto Preminger • 1959 • United States
Starring James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara

A virtuoso James Stewart plays a small-town Michigan lawyer who takes on a difficult case: the defense of a young army lieutenant (Ben Gazzara) accused of murderin...

Directed by Orson Welles • 1952 • Italy, United States
Starring Orson Welles, Suzanne Cloutier, Micheál MacLiammóir

Gloriously cinematic despite its tiny budget, Orson Welles’s OTHELLO is a testament to the filmmaker’s stubborn willingness to pursue his vision to the ends of the earth. Unmatched...

Directed by Steve James • 1994 • United States

Two ordinary inner-city Chicago kids dare to reach for the impossible, professional basketball glory, in this epic chronicle of hope and faith. Filmed over a five-year period, HOOP DREAMS, by Steve James, Frederick Marx, and Peter Gilbert, follows y...

Directed by Richard Linklater • 1991 • United States
Starring Richard Linklater, Kathy McCarty, Rudy Basquez

SLACKER, directed by Richard Linklater, presents a day in the life of a loose-knit Austin, Texas, subculture populated by eccentric and overeducated young people. Shooting on 16 mm for a ...

Directed by Mike Leigh • 1999 • United Kingdom
Starring Allan Corduner, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall

The world of Gilbert and Sullivan comes to vivid life in director Mike Leigh’s extraordinary dramatization of the staging of the duo’s legendary 1885 comic opera THE MIKADO. Jim Broadbent and All...