Directed by Jacques Tati • 1967 • France
Starring Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Georges Montant

Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apotheosis with PLAYTIME. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-y...

Directed by Louis Malle • 1960 • France
Starring Catherine Demongeot, Philippe Noiret

A brash and precocious ten-year-old (Catherine Demongeot) comes to Paris for a whirlwind weekend with her rakish uncle (Philippe Noiret); he and the viewer get more than they bargained for, however, in this ana...

Criterion Collection Edition #591

12 ANGRY MEN, by Sidney Lumet, may be the most radical courtroom drama in cinema history. A behind-closed-doors look at the American legal system that is as riveting as it is spare, this iconic adaptation of Reginald Rose’s teleplay stars Henry Fonda as the diss...

Directed by Carol Reed • 1955 • United Kingdom
Starring Jonathan Ashmore, Celia Johnson, Diana Dors

Set against a rich evocation of postwar London’s East End Jewish quarter, Carol Reed’s touchingly bittersweet Technicolor fable concerns a young boy (Jonathan Ashmore) who comes into possession...

Directed by Lotte Reiniger • 1926 • Germany

Widely believed to be the very first animated feature film, Lotte Reiniger’s astonishing 1926 adaptation of tales from “One Thousand and One Nights” uses striking silhouette cutouts and gorgeous color tinting to bring to life the story of an Arabian...

Directed by Lasse Hallström • 1985 • Sweden
Starring Anton Glanzelius, Tomas von Brömssen, Anki Liden

MY LIFE AS A DOG (MITT LIV SOM HUND) tells the story of Ingemar, a twelve-year-old from a working-class family sent to live with his uncle in a country village when his mother falls ill. There, ...

Directed by Robert Flaherty and Zoltán Korda • 1937 • United Kingdom

Robert Flaherty and Zoltán Korda shared best director honors at the Venice Film Festival for collaborating on this charming translation of Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” story “Toomai of the Elephants.” A harmonious mix of t...

Criterion Collection Edition #594

GODZILLA (a.k.a. GOJIRA) is the roaring granddaddy of all monster movies. It’s also a remarkably humane and melancholy drama, made in Japan at a time when the country was reeling from nuclear attack and H-bomb testing in the Pacific. Its rampaging radioactive be...

Directed by Satyajit Ray • 1955 • India
Starring Subir Banerjee, Kanu Banerjee, Karuna Banerjee

With the release in 1955 of Satyajit Ray’s debut, PATHER PANCHALI, an eloquent and important new cinematic voice made itself heard all over the world. A depiction of rural Bengali life in a style insp...

Criterion Collection Edition #91

Directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. • 1958 • United States
Starring Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe

A cult classic of gooey greatness, THE BLOB follows the havoc wreaked on a small town by an outer-space monster with neither soul nor vertebrae, with Steve ...

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...

Criterion Collection Edition #996

In the last film he made during the silent era, Charlie Chaplin revels in the art of the circus, paying tribute to the acrobats and pantomimists who inspired his virtuoso pratfalls. After being mistaken for a pickpocket, Chaplin’s Tramp flees into the ring of a ...

Directed by Zoltán Korda • 1942 • United Kingdom

This Korda brothers film is the definitive version of Rudyard Kipling's classic collection of fables. Sabu stars as Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves, who can communicate with all the beasts of the jungle, friend or foe, and who gradually reacclimati...

Directed by Jacques Tati • 1953 • France
Starring Jacques Tati, Nathalie Pascaud

Monsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati’s endearing clown, takes a holiday at a seaside resort, where his presence provokes one catastrophe after another. Tati’s masterpiece of gentle slapstick is a series of effortlessly well...

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1987 • Iran

The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing KOKER TRILOGY takes a simple premise—a boy searches for the home of his classmate, whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous, child’s-eye adventure of ...

Criterion Collection Edition #431

Directed by Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, and Tim Whelan • 1940 • United Kingdom
Starring John Justin, Sabu, June Duprez

Legendary producer Alexander Korda’s marvel THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, inspired by “The Arabian Nights,” is one of the most spectacular fantasy f...

Criterion Collection Edition #662

The comic genius of silent star Harold Lloyd is eternal. Chaplin is the sweet innocent, Keaton the stoic outsider, but Lloyd—the modern guy striving for success—is us. And with its torrent of perfectly executed gags and astonishing stunts, SAFETY LAST! is the pe...

Criterion Collection Edition #111

Directed by Jacques Tati • 1958 • France, Italy
Starring Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie

Slapstick prevails again when Jacques Tati’s eccentric, old-fashioned hero, Monsieur Hulot, is set loose in Villa Arpel, the geometric, oppressively ultr...

Directed by David Lean • 1946 • United Kingdom
Starring John Mills, Finlay Currie, Martita Hunt

One of the great translations of literature into film, David Lean’s GREAT EXPECTATIONS brings Charles Dickens’s masterpiece to robust on-screen life. Pip, Magwitch, Miss Havisham, and Estella populate...