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12 CHANGES - DECEMBER 2022

 

Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Blue Blu-ray replaced by Criterion 4K UHD (projected)

Bride of Frankenstein 4K UHD added - Haxan Blu-ray removed

Casablanca Blu-ray replaced by Warner 4K UHD

Cléo from 5 to 7 Criterion Blu-ray added - The Princess Bride Blu-ray removed

Double Indemnity Blu-ray replaced by Criterion 4K UHD

In the Mood For Love Blu-ray replaced by Criterion 4K UHD

Night of the Living Dead Blu-ray replaced by Criterion 4K UHD

Raging Bull Criterion 4K UHD added - The Graduate Blu-ray removed

Singin' in the Rain Blu-ray replaced by Warner 4K UHD

Shadow of a Doubt 4K UHD added - A Matter of Life and Death Blu-ray removed

Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot 4K UHD added - Playtime Blu-ray removed

Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr Masters of Cinema Blu-ray added - Henri-George Clouzot's The Wages of Fear Blu-ray removed!

 

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One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (Otto e Mezzo) turns one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema.

 Throughout film history, Hollywood has produced a number of sweeping epics and generation-defining movies. However, one film – Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments – has stood the test of time. Universally recognized among critics as a cinematic masterpiece, this unforgettable motion picture has also been recognized by The American Film Institute as one of the “Top Ten” epics of all time. Initializing with the ascension of humankind, and a recreation of the most important event in our history, immediately informs the viewer of the immense grandeur of Stanley Kubrick's heralded masterpiece.

Immediately suppressed by the Soviets in 1966, Andrei Tarkovsky’s epic masterpiece is a sweeping medieval tale of Russia’s greatest icon painter. Too experimental, too frightening, too violent, and too politically complicated to be released officially, Andrei Rublev has existed only in shortened, censored versions until this Criterion Collection edition.

 In the tradition of such obsessively driven directors as Erich von Stroheim and Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola approached the production of Apocalypse Now as if it were his own epic mission into the heart of darkness. As epic a film as the journey of its protagonist - operatic in style and bludgeoning in its depth. A shell-shocked captain treks up river to assassinate a renegade colonel - immortalized by Brando's enigmatic performance.

 

 

 

 

   

A girl mysteriously disappears on a yachting trip. While her lover and her best friend search for her across Italy, they begin an affair. Antonioni’s penetrating study of the idle upper class offers stinging observations on spiritual isolation and the many meanings of love.

A make-or-break risk for MGM Studios that took six years to prepare before the first frame was shot. The epic film adaptation of a Biblical era classic becomes an emotionally exhausting masterpiece that eclipsed all other epics.

Gregg Toland's pure camerawork gives a clinic on the most effective use of deep focus and Wyler's masterwork is further defined by eliciting several unselfish, yet commanding, performances.

Simple in construction and dazzlingly rich in human insight, Bicycle Thieves embodied all the greatest strengths of the neorealist film movement in Italy - emotional clarity, social righteousness, and brutal honesty.

Released in 1998 the Coen brothers film The Big Lebowski introduces us to characters that are stuck in the 70's and who are unable or unwilling to adapt to the 90's. The story continues with a focal backdrop of the unique community that has fashioned itself around the American pastime of... bowling. The Coens also found time in the films 118 minutes to pay homage to past film genre's including westerns and Busby Berkley musicals..

 

 

   

  

 

The human story begins in a San Francisco pet shop and culminates at the home in Bodega Bay, where the characters' sense of security is slowly eroded by the curious behaviour of the birds in the area. The deliberate, measured pace builds tension and mystery progressively in each scene. Watching it in 4K UHD adds further value to this, already essential set. The major themes include independence, loneliness, paranoia, credibility, bias....

In his first film as writer / director, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Dario Argento single-handedly creates the Giallo genre and instantly emerged as the filmmaker critics worldwide hailed as 'The Italian Hitchcock.' In this pulse-pounding suspense thriller - an American writer in Rome who witnesses - and is helpless to stop - a brutal assault, the cunning vengeance of a maniac, and the heart-stopping horror that lives - and kills - deep in the dark.

All the elements of cinematic arts are perfectly fused in Powell and Pressburger’s fascinating study of the age-old conflict between the spirit and the flesh - astonishingly set against the grandeur of the snowcapped peaks of Kanchenjunga.

One of the most visually influential science fiction films ever made, Blade Runner has a history as labyrinthine as any of its futuristic film noir sets. A fascinatingly contemplative detective story about a world-weary android-killer and his renegade prey, it has attracted a sizeable cult audience and retains a unique place in cinema.

In 1966, Michelangelo Antonioni transplanted his existentialist ennui to the streets of swinging London for this international sensation, the Italian filmmaker’s first English-language feature. A countercultural masterpiece about the act of seeing and the art of image making, Blow-Up takes the form of a psychological mystery, starring David Hemmings as a fashion photographer who unknowingly captures a death on film after following two lovers in a park.

 

 

 

  

  

Kieslowski's elliptical time-lapses in Blue support a sober examination of one devastated woman who chooses to create a new, anonymous and wholly independent life for herself.

 Based on Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel, this film from Francis Ford Coppola and screenwriter James Victor Hart offers a full-blooded portrait of the immortal Transylvanian vampire... Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) is motivated more by romance than by bloodlust, Anthony Hopkins is obsessed vampire hunter Van Helsing, while Keanu Reeves takes on the role of Jonathan Harker, and Tom Waits plays bug-eating Renfield. Pitting the imagination of common man Sam Lowry (the brilliantly befuddled Jonathan Pryce) against the oppressive storm troopers of the Ministry of Information, Terry Gilliam's Brazil has come to be regarded as an anti-totalitarianism cautionary tale equal to the works of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr..

This greatest of all Frankenstein movies begins during a raging thunderstorm. Warm and cozy inside their palatial villa, Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon), Percy Shelley (Douglas Walton), and Shelley's wife Mary (Elsa Lanchester) engage in morbidly sparkling conversation as to what happened next.

Enigmatic propagandist subtexts defined by a brooding faux anti-hero and his past Parisian flame. It all takes place in his jazz-soaked Moroccan gin-joint giving birth to an iconic film where nearly half the world recognizes the key dialogue.

 

 

   

 

Made when he was only 26, Welles masterpiece still unfurls like a dream and carries the viewer along the mysterious currents of time and memory to reach a mature (if ambiguous) conclusion: people are the sum of their contradictions, and can't be known easily.

Charles Chaplin’s City Lights is so much more than a simple slapstick roughhouse stitched together with melodramatic sentimentality, like the films that many of his silent-era contemporaries would produce. This is it folks.

Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer (Corinne Marchand) set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina..

The Deer Hunter follows a group of Pennsylvania steelworkers from their blue-collar lives, hunting in the woods of the Alleghenies, to the hell of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Academy Award winners Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken star in this unforgettable saga of friendship and courage. Experience the brutality of war and the depths of emotional strain on the human spirit in this extraordinarily powerful film classic..

Diagnosing moral ambiguities with simplistic and gripping realism is only scratching the surface of this probing and infinitely everlasting series of short films that bind themselves together on a ultimately fascinating premise of the scriptures and the tablets of Moses.

  

 

 

 

From Dario Argento, maestro of the macabre and the man behind some the greatest excursions in Italian horror comes Deep Red arguably the ultimate giallo movie. Aided by a throbbing score from regular Argento-collaborators Goblin, Deep Red (aka Profondo Rosso and The Hatchet Murders) is a hallucinatory fever dream of a giallo punctuated by some of the most astonishing set-pieces the sub-genre has to offer.

From Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist (Tom Neal) finds himself with a dead body on his hands and nowhere to run—a waking nightmare that goes from bad to worse when he picks up the most vicious femme fatale in cinema history, Ann Savage’s snarling, monstrously conniving drifter Vera.

All at once cynical, sly, dark... a 'hard-boiled' suspense involving adulterous behavior, graft and murder. With Stanwyck as the comely femme fatale seductress, MacMurray as the duped sap and Edward G. Robinson as the street-wise superior with intuition...

The conclusion of Antonioni’s informal trilogy on modern malaise. A story of alienation is told using the architecture of Rome as a backdrop for a couple’s doomed affair.

  

 

   

 

 

Controversial and popular from the moment it opened, The Exorcist marks its historic Blu-ray premiere. The frightening and realistic tale of an innocent girl inhabited by a terrifying entity, her mother's frantic resolve to save her and two priests--one doubt-ridden, the other a rock of faith--joined in battling ultimate evil always leaves viewers breathless. This greatest supernatural thriller of all time astonishes and unsettles like no other movie.

Ingmar Bergman was quoted as saying Fanny and Alexander is “the sum total of my life as a film-maker”. From all of the reels of shooting Bergman created a 5-hour cut of the film to eventually be shown on television.

 Mr. Disney and his troop of little men, together with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra and a corps of sound engineers, have fashioned with music and colors and animated figures on a screen a creation so thoroughly delightful and exciting in its novelty that one's senses are captivated by it, one's imagination is deliciously inspired.

From Russia with Love, along with its successor, Goldfinger, represents Bond at his best. Although the series has run for more than thirty years with seventeen "official" entries, it has yet to better, or even equal, what it achieved in 1963-1964 with the release of these two films. By combining solid storylines, tightly-paced action sequences, memorable villains, and Sean Connery in top form, Russia and Goldfinger mark the cinematic apex for Ian Fleming's 007.

 

 

  

 

This unnerving procedural thriller painstakingly details an all-too-plausible nightmare scenario in which a mechanical failure jams the United States military’s chain of command and sends the country hurtling toward nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Working from a contemporary best seller, screenwriter Walter Bernstein and director Sidney Lumet wrench harrowing suspense from the doomsday fears of the Cold War era, making the most of a modest budget and limited sets to create an atmosphere of clammy claustrophobia and astronomically high stakes..

From sun-drenched panoramas to bold hard close-ups, exceptional camerawork captures the beauty and cruelty of the barren landscape and the hardened characters who stride unwaveringly through it. Hailed as the best directed movie of all time by Quentin Tarantino, this epic masterpiece was directed by the great Sergio Leone and co-stars Lee Van Cleef as Angel Eyes and Eli Wallach in the role of Tuco. Music by legendary composer Ennio Morricone.

One of the great treasures of the American cinema, the film stars the legendary Gary Cooper as lawman Will Kane, a marshal who stands alone to defend a town of cowardly citizens against a gang of killers out for revenge. Engaged in the fight of his lifetime, Kane stands to lose everything when the clock strikes noon his friends, his honor, and his Quaker bride, played by Grace Kelly in one of her first screen roles.

Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping Bing, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past two decades of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career..

  

 

 

There's something strange going on in Santa Mira. Children don't recognize their parents. Husbands have become estranged from their wives. Mass hysteria? Mass alienation more likely. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was added to the U.S. National Film Registry in 1994, a nod to its status as one of the few truly transcendent genre pictures.

This great American fable is buoyed by its unwavering faith in the wealth of the human spirit. Capra wanted to make a film to help shake America out of a post-Second World War funk, but ironically, the movie has only gained true popularity in the more cynical modern era.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, Jaws set the standard for edge-of-your-seat suspense quickly becoming a cultural phenomenon and forever changing the movie industry. Featuring an unforgettable score that evokes pure terror, Jaws remains one of the most influential and gripping adventures in motion picture history..

On the outskirts of town, the hard-nosed Vienna (Joan Crawford) owns a saloon frequented by the undesirables of the region, including Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady) and his gang. Another patron of Vienna's establishment is Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a former gunslinger and her lover.

THE movie for many fans who greet it with just as much amazement and enjoyment as the multitude of initial viewers anticipating the original release way back in 1933. What it must have been like waiting in line over 70 years ago to get into a 'movie house' and watch the greatest spectacle of the sound era.

 

 

 

 

"Last Year at Marienbad" is infuriating for those who do not conform and accept its enigmatic, static beauty. Director Resnais' intentional confusion adds to the poetic mystery with stilted camera angles of emotionless, well-kempt opulence shown in soft, black and white, contrasting stills.

One of the most powerful of Yasujiro Ozu’s family portraits, Late Spring tells the story of a widowed father who feels compelled to marry off his only, beloved daughter. A story which remains as potent today as ever—almost by itself justifying Ozu’s inclusion in the pantheon of cinema’s greatest directors.

A stirring film biography of the eccentric British soldier who changed the course of World War 1 with his command of Middle Eastern Arabic tribes. "Lawrence of Arabia" is recognized as 'THE' war epic, with very little else of comparable proportions. An enduring classic of cinema.

The film recreates, with nostalgia, drama, and opulence, the tumultuous years of Italy’s Risorgimento—when the aristocracy lost its grip and the middle classes rose and formed a unified, democratic Italy. Burt Lancaster stars as the aging prince watching his culture and fortune wane in the face of a new generation, represented by his upstart nephew (Alain Delon) and his beautiful fiancée (Claudia Cardinale).

A simple, haunting phrase whistled off-screen tells us that a young girl will be killed. “Who is the murderer?” pleads a nearby placard as serial killer Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) closes in on little Elsie Beckmann… In his harrowing masterwork, Fritz Lang merges trenchant social commentary with chilling suspense, creating a panorama of private madness and public hysteria that to this day remains the blueprint for the psychological thriller.

 

 

 

  

Adapted from Booth Tarkington's barely remembered Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about social change in turn-of-the-century Indianapolis, The Magnificent Ambersons was in production when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

All the characters in Magnolia are enslaved, not by a Pharaoh (Exodus 8:2 - as obvious "8"s and "2"s are embedded throughout the film), but by their pasts, by circumstances, by loneliness, by resentment, by hatred, by shame, by guilt...

During the entire story’s meticulous development we’re slowly ensnared in a resolute depiction of one man. We become integrated with his intelligent and persistent manner, with his struggles and his hopes, and eventually, his escape attempt.

 Fritz Lang's Metropolis is perhaps the most famous German film of all time, and certainly one of the most influential of all silent films. Lavish and spectacular, with elaborate sets and jawdropping production values, Metropolis stands today as a testament to Lang's ambitious vision of what cinema could be.

  

 

  

   

 

Tarkovsky states "It is an autobiographical film." Infused with dense, personal references from memory and an inaccessible use of time, space and performances, this is considered the director most artistically bold work being steeped in layered constructions. In examining his entire body of work this tends to be a catalyst of his vision of transcendency.

Robert Bresson plumbs great reservoirs of feeling with Mouchette, one of the most searing portraits of human desperation ever put on film. Faced with a dying mother, an absent, alcoholic father, and a baby brother in need of care, the teenage Mouchette seeks solace in nature and daily routine, a respite from her economic and pubescent turmoil. An essential work of French filmmaking, Bresson’s hugely empathetic drama elevates its trapped protagonist into one of the cinema’s great tragic figures.

Pandora couldn't resist opening the forbidden box containing all the delusions of mankind, and let's just say in Mulholland Drive David Lynch indulges a similar impulse. Employing a familiar film noir atmosphere to unravel, as he coyly puts it, "a love story in the city of dreams", Lynch establishes a foreboding but playful narrative in the film's first half before subsuming all of Los Angeles and its corrupt ambitions into his voyeuristic universe of desire.

The Night of the Hunter—incredibly, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed—is truly a standalone masterwork. Graced by images of eerie beauty and a sneaky sense of humor, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic—also featuring the contributions of actress Lillian Gish and writer James Agee—is cinema’s quirkiest rendering of the battle between good and evil.

Fellini orchestrates his story in waves of simple, pure emotion, telegraphed with silent screen gusto by Giulietta Masina. With her Noh eyebrows and white bobby socks, Masina is the missing link between Charlie Chaplin and Shirley MacLaine.

 

 

 

 

Tourneur had used MR James's short story Casting the Runes as the basis for a marvellous cinematic dialogue between belief and skepticism, fantasy and reality. Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon is considered to be one of the seminal horror films of Twentieth-Century cinema.

Shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget, by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark, Night of the Living Dead, directed by horror master George A. Romero, is a great story of independent cinema: a midnight hit turned box-office smash that became one of the most influential films of all time.

A key motif is make-believe and Hitchcock even creates somewhat of a parallelism between advertising and espionage, as “in advertising, there is no such thing as a lie”, which one might as well say about the world of espionage. Both worlds live by deceiving others, in fact their survival depends upon it.

A farmer’s family is torn apart by faith, sanctity, and love—one child believes he’s Jesus Christ, a second proclaims himself agnostic, and the third falls in love with a fundamentalist’s daughter. Putting the lie to the term “organized religion,” Ordet (The Word) is a challenge to simple facts and dogmatic orthodoxy.

Michelangelo Antonioni takes his own uniquely unanswerable and elliptical look at the basic precepts of identity and truth. Character study, suspense and road picture wrapped up into one intentionally-paced masterpiece of pure cinema. Again defining Antonioni as arguably the greatest Italian film-maker of all time, The Passenger is simply required viewing.

 

 

 

With its stunning camerawork and striking compositions, Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc convinced the world that movies could be art. Renée Falconetti gives one of the greatest performances ever recorded on film, as the young maiden who died for God and France.

Robert Bresson’s masterful investigation of crime and redemption tells the story of the young, arrogant Michel (Martin LaSalle), who spends his days learning the art of picking pockets in the streets, subway cars, and train stations of Paris. Tautly choreographed and stylistically rigorous, Pickpocket reveals Bresson at his enigmatic, virtuosic best.

Twenty years after it swept Australia into the international film spotlight, Peter Weir's stunning 1975 masterpiece remains as ineffable as the unanswerable mystery at its core. A lyrical, meditative film charged with suppressed longings.

 

 

 

 

Hitchcock's black-and-white original, featuring Anthony Perkins's haunting characterization of lonely motel keeper Norman Bates, has never been equaled. Bates presides over an out-of-the-way motel under the domineering spectre of his mother. The stage is set for this classic tale of horror--and one of the most famous scenes in film history.

Rear Window: Taken from the Masterpiece Collection. The movie’s overall narrative form of scanning past windows in a courtyard seems to anticipate channel surfing, but it reflects the way one turns a radio knob, tuning in and out of frequencies while the station indicator moves horizontally or vertically along the dial. The same pattern is apparent in the beautifully calibrated camera movements as well as the brilliantly mixed and nuanced sound recording.

“Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Rebecca’s haunting opening line conjures the entirety of Hitchcock’s romantic, suspenseful, elegant film. A young woman (Joan Fontaine) believes her every dream has come true when her whirlwind romance with the dashing Maxim de Winter culminates in marriage. But she soon realizes that Rebecca, the late first Mrs. de Winter, haunts both the temperamental, brooding Maxim and the de Winter mansion, Manderley.

This provocative look at the spiritual desolation of the technological age—about a disaffected woman, brilliantly portrayed by Antonioni muse Monica Vitti, wandering through a bleak industrial landscape beset by power plants and environmental toxins, and tentatively flirting with her husband’s coworker, played by Richard Harris—continues to keep viewers spellbound.

A glorious Technicolor pic that influenced generations of filmmakers, artists, and aspiring ballerinas, The Red Shoes intricately weaves backstage life with the thrill of performance. A young ballerina (Moira Shearer) is torn between two forces: the composer who loves her (Marius Goring), and the impresario determined to fashion her into a great dancer (Anton Walbrook).

 

 

 

   

   

   

One of the best and most literate movies from the great days of horror,” The Most Dangerous Game stars Leslie Banks as a big game hunter with a taste for the world’s most exotic prey—his houseguests, played by Fay Wray and Joel McCrea. Before making history with 1933’s King Kong, filmmakers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack wowed audiences with their chilling adaptation of this Richard Connell short story.

With this stunningly visceral portrait of self-destructive machismo, Martin Scorsese created one of the truly great and visionary works of modern cinema. Robert De Niro pours his blood, sweat, and brute physicality into the Oscar-winning role of Jake La Motta, the rising middleweight boxer from the Bronx whose furious ambition propels him to success within the ring but whose unbridled paranoia and jealousy tatter his relationships with everyone in his orbit, including his brother and manager (Joe Pesci) and gorgeous, streetwise wife (Cathy Moriarty.)

Rosetta is in the same, grim realist mould as the Dardennes' earlier La Promesse; it, too, offers a glimmer of hope through the prospect of friendship. The Dardennes never sentimentalise their heroine but respect the mysteries of her soul; the result is a film almost Bressonian in its rigour and power to touch the heart.

Spielberg's meticulous period detail effectively re-creates the war-torn countryside of occupied France. The American soldiers visit two bombed-out towns where all that remains standing are the half-shattered husks of once-impressive structures. For those who are willing to brave the movie's shocking and unforgettable images, Saving Private Ryan offers a singular motion picture experience.

This incredible true story follows the enigmatic Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), who saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust. It is the triumph of one man who made a difference and the drama of those who survived one of the darkest chapters in human history because of what he did.

It’s not what is said and done in John Ford’s The Searchers that makes it such an effective film. It is what is not said and done—the actions that are implied but never seen, and the dialogue that is thought but never spoken. It is about two men’s five-year search for a girl kidnapped by Comanche Indians, but it is more interested in why they are searching than who they are searching for.

 

  

  

 

 

 

One of the most beloved movie epics of all time, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai features legendary actors Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura and seamlessly weaves philosophy and entertainment, delicate human emotions and relentless action into a rich, evocative, and unforgettable tale of courage and hope.

One of Hitchcock's finest films of the '40s, with Cotten as the infamous 'Merry Widow' murderer, who takes refuge with the small-town family of his sister (Collinge). Focusing on adoring niece Wright's dawning realisation that her kind, generous and handsome uncle is in fact a cold and cynical killer, the film is not only psychologically intriguing (both niece and uncle are called Charlie, and he arrives in town as if in answer to her prayers for excitement), but a sharp dissection of middle American life, in its own quiet way an ancestor of Blue Velvet.

King's book "The Shining" deals with, in his own words, "just a little story about writer's block". With collaboration by novelist Diane Johnson, Kubrick struck heavily upon themes of both communication and miscommunication as well as isolation. As was his penchant he used rich symbolic motifs. They repeat throughout the film as psychic ability or "Shining" as well as the major characters stymied authorship and spiral into madness.

The plot is also somewhat of a historical expression for the film genre with the prevalent mention of the advent of talkies, how it was done and the technical bridges that were crossed in that era. An all-time family favorite and one of the most exhilarating musicals of all time.

The remaining area in which Some Like It Hot stands apart from the competition is that Curtis and Lemmon remain believable throughout. Instead of acting camp, they play their roles straight and with conviction. Picking up on the quirks of being female, the outcome is far more amusing than might be expected. The costumes of Orry-Kelly help a great deal, as does Wilder's decision to shoot in black and white, but the credit must lie with Curtis and Lemmon.

Stanley Kubrick directed a cast of screen legends – including Kirk Douglas as the indomitable gladiator that led a Roman slave revolt – in the sweeping epic that defined a genre and ushered in a new Hollywood era. The assured acting, lush Technicolor cinematography, bold costumes and visceral fight sequences won Spartacus four Oscars; the blend of politics and sexual suggestion scandalized audiences. Today Kubrick’s controversial classic, the first film to openly defy Hollywood’s blacklist, remains a landmark of cinematic artistry and history.

Stalker sets a form of absolute linear simplicity. The wettest, grimmest trek ever seen on film leads to nihilistic impasse - huddled in dirt, the discovery of faith seems impossible; and without faith, life outside the Zone, impossible. But hang on in to the ending, where a plain declaration of love and a vision of pure magic at least point the way to redemption. As always, Tarkovsky conjures images like you've never seen before; and as a journey to the heart of darkness, it's a good deal more persuasive than Coppola's.

 

 

  

  

  

 

Sold by her impoverished mother to Zampano (Anthony Quinn), a brutish fairground wrestler, waif-like Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) lives a life of drudgery as his assistant. After taking to the road with a travelling circus, a budding relationship with Il Matto/The Fool, a gentle-natured, tightrope walking clown, offers a potential refuge from her master’s clutches. Trapped by her own servile nature, Gelsomina waivers, and Zampano’s volcanic temper erupts with tragic consequences.

Conceived by Murnau and written by Carl Mayer while they were both still in Germany, Sunrise takes a simple situation — the marriage of a peasant couple (George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor) from a country hamlet, invaded by a seductress from the city (Margaret Livingston) — and elevates it to the realm of fable, stripped of melodrama yet brimming with poetic impulses.

Argento's masterpiece of horror, with its assault of garish colors, booming soundtrack and horrifically dreamlike set pieces, is the cinematic equivalent of an exceptionally scary fun house. It tells the story of Susan (Harper) a young, impressionable American who travels abroad in order to study at a prestigious European ballet academy. Suspiria is a must-see for fans of the horror genre.

Taxi Driver is the definitive cinematic portrait of loneliness and alienation manifested as violence. It is as if director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader had tapped into precisely the same source of psychological inspiration ("I just knew I had to make this film," Scorsese would later say), combined with a perfectly timed post-Watergate expression of personal, political, and societal anxiety.

Legendary director Nicholas Ray began his career with this lyrical film noir, the first in a series of existential genre films overflowing with sympathy for America’s outcasts and underdogs. They Live By Night, using revolutionary camera techniques and naturalistic performances to craft a profoundly romantic crime drama, paved the way for decades of lovers-on-the-run thrillers to come.

The scene is a distant Arctic research station, where a UFO has crashed. The investigating scientists discover that the circular craft has melted its way into the ice, which has frozen up again. While attempting to recover the ship, Captain Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) accidentally explodes the vessel, but the pilot -- at least, what seems to be the pilot -- remains frozen in a block of ice. A superior blend of science fiction, horror, naturalistic dialogue, and flesh-and-blood characterizations, The Thing From Another World is a model of its kind.

  

 

 

    

 

A research team based out in the snowy wilds of Antarctica find themselves besieged by a terrifying, shape-shifting creature which has found its way into their base. When it becomes clear that the creature can take the form of any organism it so chooses, the tension within the team reaches breaking point any one of them could be... The Thing. Critically panned at the time of its release, John Carpenter's The Thing has rightly gone on to become one of the most celebrated sci-fi horror efforts ever made..

To Live explores territory that is rapidly becoming familiar to those who view the works of China's so-called "Fifth Generation" film makers. The events of the middle decades of the twentieth century, including the Communist Civil War, the "Great Leap Forward", and the Cultural Revolution, represent fertile ground for grand stories of mingled tragedy and triumph. However, this marvelously-textured movie, which is by turns funny and touching,, takes a different approach.

Tokyo Story reprises one of the director Ozu's favorite themes—that of generational conflict—in a way that is quintessentially Japanese and yet so universal in its appeal that it continues to resonate as one of cinema’s greatest masterpieces.

 Too Late for Tears has all the elements of my favorite type of film noir: a vicious woman--so crafty and so evil she fools, manipulates and destroys the men in her life, a once-in a lifetime opportunity to get rich (so what if it involves a few corpses), the double cross when you least expect it, and a fast trip all the way down that slippery moral slope to film noir purgatory.

With Vampyr, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer's brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, profoundly unsettling imagery (The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath) was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result—concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers in a village outside Paris—is nearly unclassifiable, a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs, ominous scythes, and foreboding echoes, Vampyr is one of cinema's great nightmares.

Vertigo: Taken from the Masterpiece Collection. Although it wasn't a box-office success when originally released in 1958, Vertigo has since taken its deserved place as Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal achievement. A tale that mocks our own perceptions of superficiality and inconclusive aspects of love... and why we cannot recreate it.

 

 

 

   

The communication bridges in the film harkens back to Roeg’s subtle theme of the “hustle and bustle” of civilization versus idyllic pastoral innocence. The ending encapsulates the story as a mysterious and defining moment in one young girl's life. Her appreciation of that time is purposely indecipherable.

Musicals pine to reach the zenith created by Leonard Bernstein’s iconic score whilst finger clicking to the classic ‘Romeo and Juliet’ sub narrative behind a backdrop of what makes New York City the moody Big Apple. It covers all topics from sex, race, freedom, love, survival, honor and family.

There's no place like home, and there will never be another movie like this one. MGM’s fantasy musical about the adventures of Dorothy (Judy Garland) in Oz deserves its enduring classic status. Just follow the Yellow Brick Road…

Leaving aside all the teasing questions of allegorical meaning, Teshigahara's film is a tour de force of visual style, and a knockout as an unusually cruel thriller. It builds on its blatantly contrived premise (taken from Kobo Abé's novel) with absolute fidelity and conviction. Join the wild chase around San Francisco as a man goes into hiding after witnessing a gangland execution. Police bird-dog his wife Eleanor (Ann Sheridan), certain she'll lead them to her husband, whose testimony against the killer could bring down a crime kingpin. But Eleanor and her hubbie are Splitsville she never wants to see him again. When roguish newspaperman Danny Leggett (Dennis O Keefe) charms Eleanor into helping him track down the hidden husband there are unexpected, stunning, and poignant results. .

CHANGE LOG:

 

19 CHANGES - APRIL 2022

 

Paramount's The Ten Commandments 4K UHD added!

Dario Argento's Bird With the Crystal Plumaged Blu-ray replaced by 4K UHD!

A Brighter Summer Day Blu-ray removed

Citizen Kane Blu-ray replaced by Criterion 4K UHD

Days of Heaven Blu-ray removed

Dario Argento's Deep Red 4K UHD added!

Don't Look Now 4K UHD removed

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly 4K UHD added!

In The Mood For Love 2012 Criterion Blu-ray replaced by 2021 Criterion Blu-ray

Johnny Guitar Blu-ray replaced by Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

Tarkovsky's Mirror Blu-ray replaced by Criterion Blu-ray

Mouchette Blu-ray replaced by Criterion Blu-ray

Mulholland Drive Blu-ray replaced by Criterion 4K UHD

The Red Shoes Blu-ray replaced by Criterion 4K UHD

Taxi Driver Blu-ray replaced by 4K UHD

John Carpenter's The Thing 4K UHD added!

Zhang Yimou's To Live Blu-ray added!

VIY Blu-ray removed

 

Projected:

Double Indemnity Blu-ray replaced by Criterion 4K UHD

Singin' in the Rain Blu-ray replaced by Warner 4K UHD

Shadow of a Doubt 4K UHD to be added!

 

12 CHANGES - NOVEMBER 2020

 

Criterion's Walkabout Blu-ray replaced by Second Sight's UK Blu-ray

Criterion's Bigger Than Life Blu-ray replaced by Universal's 4K UHD of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds

Universal Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo Blu-ray replaced by Universal's 4K UHD

Universal Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window Blu-ray replaced by Universal's 4K UHD

Criterion's DVD of Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria replaced by their Blu-ray

Criterion's The Thin Red Line Blu-ray replaced by Federico Fellini's La Strada Criterion Blu-ray

Turbine (The Legacy Collection) Blu-ray of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho replaced by Universal's 4K UHD

Universal Steven Spielberg's Jaws Blu-ray replaced by Universal's 4K UHD

F.W. Murnau's City Girl Masters of Cinema Blu-ray replaced by Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter on 4K UHD

Sony David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia Blu-ray replaced by Columbia Classics' 4K UHD

Masters of Cinema Der Golem Blu-ray replaced by Criterion's Blu-ray of Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe

Warner Archive John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon Blu-ray replaced by Universal's 4K UHD of Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus

 

14 CHANGES - March 2020

 

Criterion's The 400 Blows Blu-ray replaced by Masters of Cinema's Blu-ray of Der Golem

Lionsgate's Apocalypse Now Blu-ray replaced by Lionsgate / Studio Canal 40th Anniversary 4K UHD

Criterion's The Double Life of Veronique Blu-ray replaced by Criterion's Blu-ray of Haxan

BFI's Edge of the World Blu-ray replaced by Studio Canal's Don't Look Now 4K UHD

Kino's The General Blu-ray replaced by Sony's 4K UHD of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula (Bram Stoker's Dracula)

Olive's High Noon Blu-ray replaced by Masters of Cinema's Blu-ray

Paramount's It's a Wonderful Life Blu-ray replaced by their 4K UHD

Criterion's Last Year at Marienbad Blu-ray replaced by Kino's Blu-ray

Universal's Psycho Blu-ray replaced by Turbine's (The Legacy Collection) Blu-ray

Masters of Cinema's Rocco and His Brothers Blu-ray replaced by Wicked-Vision's Blu-ray of The Most Dangerous Game

Studio Canal's La Strada Blu-ray replaced by Warner's 4K UHD of The Shining

Synapse Film's Suspiria Blu-ray replaced by their 4K UHD

Masters of Cinema's Nightmare Alley DVD replaced by Severin's Blu-ray of VIY

Warner's The Wizard of Oz Blu-ray replaced by their 4K UHD

 

2 CHANGES - March 2019

Criterion's I Fidanzati DVD replaced by Universal's Schindler's List 4K UHD

MGM's Raging Bull Blu-ray replaced by Criterion's Detour Blu-ray

 

17 CHANGES - December 2018

Warner's 2001: A Space Odyssey Blu-ray replaced by Warner's 2001: A Space Odyssey 4K UHD

Criterion's Ikiru Blu-ray replaced by Olive Signature's Invasion of the Body Snatchers Blu-ray

Disney's Toy Story Blu-ray replaced by Warner Archive's The Thing From Another World Blu-ray

Artificial Eye's Andrei Rublev Blu-ray replaced by Criterion's Andrei Rublev Blu-ray

Kino's Les Vampires Blu-ray replaced by Criterion's The Princess Bride Blu-ray

Criterion's Pather Panchali Blu-ray replaced by Criterion's A Matter of Life and Death Blu-ray

Criterion's A Canterbury Tale DVD replaced by Criterion's Night of the Living Dead Blu-ray

Criterion's Paris Texas Blu-ray replaced by Indicator's The Passenger Blu-ray

Optimum's Le Cercle Rouge Blu-ray replaced by Synapse's Suspiria Blu-ray

20th Century Fox's The Day the Earth Stood Still Blu-ray replaced by Universal's The Big Lebowski 4K UHD

Studio Canal's The Tales of Hoffmann Blu-ray replaced by Paramount's Saving Private Ryan 4K UHD

Criterion's Chungking Express Blu-ray replaced by Criterion's Blow-Up Blu-ray

Criterion's I Know Where I'm Going DVD replaced by Criterion's The Magnificent Ambersons Blu-ray

Masters of Cinema's Ugetsu Monogatori Blu-ray replaced by BFI's The Wages of Fear Blu-ray

Masters of Cinema's The Passion of Joan of Arc Blu-ray replaced by Criterion's The Passion of Joan of Arc Blu-ray

Warner's Blade Runner Blu-ray replaced by Warner's Blade Runner 4K UHD

Criterion's Diary of a Country Priest DVD replaced by Indicator's Night of the Demon Blu-ray

 

1 CHANGES - August 2017

Hitchcock's Rebecca MGM Blu-ray replaced by Criterion (4K restored) Blu-ray

 

5 CHANGES - July 2017

Au Hasard, Balthazar DVD removed - The Bird With The Crystal Plumage Blu-ray added

Tarkovsky's Stalker DVD (AE) replaced by Criterion Blu-ray

Taxi Driver Blu-ray replaced by '4K Restored' Blu-ray

Criterion DVD of La Strada replaced by Studio Canal Blu-ray

The Scent of Green Papaya Blu-ray removed - Criterion's They Live By Night Blu-ray added

 

6 CHANGES - October 2016

Warner (Poland)  DVD of Dekalog replaced by Arrow Blu-ray

Le Mepris Blu-ray and The Spirit of the Beehive DVD Removed

High Noon and Johnny Guitar - Olive Signature Blu-rays added

Tarkovsky's Sacrifice (Kino) Blu-ray Removed and Warner's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon Blu-ray added

Dream of Light DVD and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie Blu-ray removed

Flicker Alley / Arrow Blu-rays of Woman on the Run and Too Late For Tears added

 

3 CHANGES - July 2016

Criterion DVD of Woman in the Dunes replaced by Criterion Blu-ray

Criterion DVD of Andrei Rublev replaced by Artificial Eye Blu-ray

Artificial Eye DVD of Mirror (Zerkalo) replaced by Artificial Eye Blu-ray

 

13 CHANGES - March 2016

Removed Criterion Blu-rays of By Brakhage, Children of Paradise, Criterion DVDs of Winter Light, Le Samouraï and A Woman Ascends the Stairs, Artificial Eye's DVD of Sátántangó

with

Criterion Blu-rays of A Brighter Summer Day, Pather Panchali and The Graduate, Studio Canal Blu-ray of The Tales of Hoffmann, Masters of Cinema's Blu-ray of Rocco and His Brothers and Arrow's Blu-ray of Deep Red

Replaced:

Criterion DVD of L'Avventura replaced with Criterion Blu-ray

Arrow Bicycle Thieves Blu-ray replaced with the Criterion Blu-ray

Criterion DVD of L'Eclisse replaced with Criterion Blu-ray

Criterion DVD of Ikiru replaced with Criterion Blu-ray

Studio Canal Blu-ray of Mulholland Drive replaced with Criterion Blu-ray

Criterion DVD of Ordet replaced with BFI Carl Theodor Dreyer Collection Blu-ray

Criterion DVD of Pickpocket replaced with Criterion Blu-ray

 

1 CHANGE - April 2014

Criterion Mouchette DVD replaced with the Artificial Eye Blu-ray

 

1 CHANGE - December 2013

Tokyo Story Blu-rays replaced with the Criterion Blu-ray 

 

1 CHANGE - November 2013

City Lights Kinowelt Blu-ray replaced with the Criterion Blu-ray

 

1 CHANGE - October 2013

The Best Years of Our Lives DVD replaced with the Warner Blu-ray

 

1 CHANGE - March 2013

Gaumont A Man Escaped Blu-ray replaced with the Criterion Blu-ray

 

2 CHANGES - December 2012

Criterion Passion of Joan of Arc DVD replaced with the Masters of Cinema Blu-ray  / Brazil DVD replaced with the Criterion Brazil Blu-ray

 

2 CHANGES - November 2012

Rear Window and Vertigo DVDs replaced with the Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection Blu-ray,

 

4 CHANGES - September 2012

TFI In the Mood For Love DVD replaced with Criterion Blu-ray, Columbia LE DVD of Lawrence of Arabia replaced by Sony Blu-ray,  Studio Canal Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Blu-ray) replaces Criterion DVD, Criterion Children of Paradise (Blu-ray) replaces Criterion DVD.

 

5 CHANGES - August 2012

Rosetta (Blu-ray), Double Indemnity (Blu-ray) and Singing in the Rain (Blu-ray) replace the same film DVD versions.  Millennium Mambo and Summer at Grandpa's DVDs were replaced by Jaws (Blu-ray) and Les Vampires (Blu-ray).

 

3 CHANGES - May 2012

REPLACED: Casablanca (Blu-ray) with 70th Anniversary (bare package Blu-ray) / Replaced BFI (Blu-ray) Late Spring with Criterion (Blu-ray), and replaced Criterion DVD of Ugetsu Monogatari (Blu-ray) with Masters of Cinema (Blu-ray).

 

1 CHANGE - February 2012

REPLACED: Rebecca (MGM Blu-ray)

 

1 CHANGE - January 2012

REPLACED: Fanny and Alexander  (Criterion Blu-ray)

 

4 CHANGES - October 11'

ADDED: Ben Hur  (Warner Blu-ray), West Side Story (20th Century Fox Blu-ray), Kieslowski's Blue (Criterion Blu-ray) and replaced Metropolis OOP Steelbook with Standard (Masters of Cinema Blu-ray)

 

5 CHANGES - September 11'

Citizen Kane (Warner Blu-ray), The Sacrifice (Kino Blu-ray), M (Universum Blu-ray), Sunrise (Masters of Cinema - Dual Format Blu-ray) and City Girl (Masters of Cinema - Dual Format Blu-ray)  - all replacing older SD, inferior BD or new Dual-Format editions.

 

4 NEW ADDITIONS - May 11'

Bicycle Thieves (Arrow Blu-ray), The Double Life of Veronique (Criterion Blu-ray), Taxi Driver (Sony Blu-ray) and The Scent of Green Papaya (Lorber Blu-ray).

 

13 NEW ADDITIONS - NOVEMBER 2010! (see below)

 

ABOUT THE LIST: Firstly - Thank you to all the respondents who continue to give us their opinion to complete our list of 100 DISCs to take to a 'Desert Island'.

 

The current 100 selections were culled from over 700 contributors choices of 10 or less each plus 'voted' additions over the years. An edition must have had at least 6 votes for consideration. Disc attributes such as image/audio transfer and supplements (especially commentaries) rank very highly - in some circumstances almost comparable to film value.  We allowed only individual feature film selections or shorter compilations (ex. By Brakhage and The Decalogue) - not boxsets - although you could choose one film from a boxset even if it was not available individually at this time. Two, three or more disc special editions of one film are still viable.

 

For the curious: We also received multiple (at least 3 votes each) for the following DVDs:
Sony's The Passenger, Paramount's The Conformist, Criterion's Rushmore, Columbia Tri-Star's Punch Drunk Love, Paramount's The Godfather, Universal (CE) The Big Lebowski, Criterion's Brief Encounter, Beuna Vista's Cinema Paradiso, Koch Lorber's La Dolce Vita, FVD's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, Paramount's The Godfather (Part 2), Criterion's Le Grand Illusion, Artificial Eye's L'Argent and MGM's Crimes and Misdemeanors.
We will be adding/deleting in the future and we all note the upcoming release of Godard's Histoire (s) du cinéma which will undoubtedly make the list.

The choices cover many genres and styles (westerns, film noir, silent films, musicals, drama, arthouse etc.), although not proportionately equally. We have shortage of comedies where we seem to spread a bit thin, chronologically speaking, between Chapin's City Light and Toy Story 2. Modern action extravaganza's are also not strongly supported being easily eclipsed by our balloters for more contemplative, narrative films. This is sometimes referred to as 'The DVDBeaver Effect'.

 

When completed this list should represent the most valuable 100 DISCs ever produced. We organized in alphabetical order (usual English title translation). With constant new releases and Blu-ray format upgrades this list will be in a state of flux - additions and deletion expected over time.

NOTE: As usual DVDBeaver does not discriminate against region code, standard or format.

 

REMOVED MARCH 2019

 

 

Ermanno Olmi’s masterful feature is the tender story of two Milanese fiancés. His deep humanism charges this moving depiction of ordinary men and women, and the pitfalls of the human heart.

With breathtaking accuracy, Raging Bull ventures still further into the territory Scorsese has mapped in all his films - men and male values; in this case through the story of 1949 middleweight champion Jake La Motta. This film does more than make you think about masculinity, it makes you see it - in a way that's relevant to all men, not just Bronx boxers.

REMOVED DECEMBER 2018

 

  

 

 

 

In Powell and  Pressburger's stunningly photographed comedy, Wendy Hiller stars as a headstrong young woman stranded by stormy weather. She meets a handsome naval officer who threatens to thwart her carefully laid-out life plans to marry a rich lord.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger create a phantasmagoric marriage of cinema and opera in this one-of-a-kind take on a classic story. In Jacques Offenbach’s fantasy opera The Tales of Hoffmann, a poet dreams of three women—a mechanical performing doll, a bejeweled siren, and the consumptive daughter of a famous composer—all of whom break his heart in different ways. Powell and Pressburger’s feverishly romantic adaptation is a feast of music, dance, and visual effects, and one of the most exhilarating opera films ever produced.

'Klaatu barada nikto'. Edmund H. North's intelligent script and Wise's smooth direction are serious without being solemn, while Bernard Herrmann's effectively alien-sounding score reinforces the atmosphere of strangeness and potential menace. A classic science fiction fable, its ambitious storyline conveying a surprising pacifist message.

After the success of his Fantomas films, French director Louis Feuillade attempted to create the ultimate espionage serial, a ten-episode, seven-hour epic called Les Vampires. Edouard Mathe stars as Philippe Guerande, a crime-fighting journalist who attempts to penetrate the international ring of thieves known as The Vampires. Among the most fascinating of these sophisticated thieves and assassins is Irma Vep (Musidora), a black-clad seductress whose name is an anagram for ''vampre'' and who endures today as an icon of European cinema.

Pixar are not simply making a great animated movies here... these films will last for generations of adults and children. Toy Story and Toy Story 2 deal with, at its most basic root, the universal interaction of children and toys - their imaginative communication and playful reflections and musings as adults.

 

 

 

 

Wenders' collaboration with writer Sam Shepard is a master-stroke, wholly beneficial to both talents; if Wenders' previous film, The State of Things, was on the very limits of possibility, this one, through its final scenes, pushes the frontier three steps forward into new and sublime territory.

Ugetsu offers a commentary on the delusions of lust and power and the folly of war. Renowned cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa helps Mizoguchi seamlessly interweave the supernatural with reality, creating one of the most beautiful films of all time.

Occasionally life offers essential moments that you only reflect on in memory - unaware, at the time, there significance in your personal growth. Chungking Express is filled with these rare occasions, so crucial that they are recognized by us the viewer, if not by the characters acting out their own narrative.

Master thief Corey (Alain Delon) is fresh out of prison. But instead of toeing the line of law-abiding freedom, he finds his steps leading back to the shadowy world of crime, crossing those of a notorious escapee (Gian Maria Volonté) and alcoholic ex-cop (Yves Montand). As the unlikely trio plots a heist against impossible odds, their trail is pursued by a relentless inspector (Bourvil), and fate seals their destinies.

 

 

 

 

Considered Calcutta-born director Satyajit Ray's masterpiece, "Pather Panchali" is the first film of his Apu Trilogy documenting the life and maturation of one young Indian boy. With themes rooted with universal appeal and understanding we see the pain and tragedy, familial spirit and hands on tutelage of one expressively insignificant individual in our world. Photographic realism so acute you can almost smell the rain soaked Bengali grass as the raga's of Ravi Shankar play in perfect balance with cultural coherence. Brilliant, intense, transcendent; cinema made with pure, honest love.

Set amid the tumult of the Second World War, yet with a rhythm as delicate as a lullaby, the film follows three modern-day incarnations of Chaucer’s pilgrims -building to a majestic climax that ranks as one of the filmmaking duo’s finest achievements

 Through his diary entries, the suffering young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from the village and from God. With his fourth film, Robert Bresson began to implement his stylistic philosophy as a filmmaker, stripping away all inessential elements from his compositions, the dialogue and the music, exacting a purity of image and sound.

Considered by some to be Akira Kurosawa’s greatest achievement, Ikiru presents the director at his most compassionate—affirming life through an exploration of a man’s death - a multifaceted look at a life through a prism of perspectives.

REMOVED JULY 2017

   

 

In “The Scent of Green Papaya” Tran floats his camera through windows and over walls. He also brushed vibrant green foliage in some extremely elegant and painstakingly thought-out choreographed scenes. This transparent fluidity served as a constant backdrop to, and effectively put its blessing upon, Tran's clever blend of gentle classical and soothing traditional Vietnamese music reflecting the naturalistic purity of the surrounding scenery.

A profound masterpiece from one of the most revered filmmakers in the history of cinema. Through Bresson’s unconventional approach to composition, sound, and narrative, this seemingly simple story becomes a moving parable of purity and transcendence.
REMOVED AS OF MARCH 2016:

 

   

 

 

 

Stan Brakhage challenges all taboos in his exploration of “birth, sex, death, and the search for God,” with 26 masterworks shorts in By Brakhage - a selection taken from the nearly 400 films he made over the past half century.

 Poetic realism reaches sublime heights in the ineffably witty tale of a woman loved by four able suitors. Deftly entwining theater, literature, music, and design, are resurrected 19th-century Paris. Children of Paradise is 'the bomb'. In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays a contract killer with samurai instincts. A razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture—with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology—maverick director Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece Le Samouraï defines cool. While Sátántangó, due to it being in black and white, Hungarian and running 7 hours, on paper may sound like the ultimate joke about art-house cinema, it is nothing less than a mesmerizing life changing cinematic experience.

Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour--a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko, who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern postwar Ginza district, who entertains businessmen after work. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society.

 With Winter Light, master craftsman Ingmar Bergman explores the search for redemption in a meaningless existence. Beautifully photographed by Sven Nykvist, Winter Light is an unsettling look at the human craving for personal validation in a world seemingly abandoned by God.
REMOVED AS OF AUGUST 2012:

   

 

Looking at the youthful friends around me, I find that their cycle and rhythm of "birth, age, illness and death' are moving several times faster than those of my generation. This is particularly true of young girls: like flowers, they are fading almost immediately upon blooming.

Summer at Grandpa's from the Hou Boxset. The warmest of Hou's films - he, like many other directors, have focused on children and the intricacies of becoming educated in the working ways of the world... and its inhabitants (us). A positive examination of the human condition - there is even a hint of melodrama. For this reason some my dismiss it but I will continue to embrace it as a favorite.
REMOVED AS OF NOVEMBER 2010:

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

Possibly our most bizarre selection - both as a film and DVD (a few seconds are even censored on this edition). Ming-Liang Tsai's Vive L'amour literally translates to "long live love" which could be more of a request than a statement.

 John Cassavetes’ devastating drama details the emotional breakdown of a suburban housewife and her family’s struggle to save her from herself. Mostly the picture is full of movement, some of it dashing in fine romantic costume style, some of it just sprightly it remains one of the most beautiful three stripe Technicolor films ever...

April Story is a simple and wonderful vision of unrequited love that leaves you aching for the continuation, yet content that you have seen enough.

Almost all of this superbly rendered tragedy takes place within the confines of the Master's vast estate, and Zhang Yimou uses a mostly stationary camera to frame the characters within careful compositions of doorways, portals, canopies and courtyards; the severe, rigid style effectively turns the sumptuous residence into a metaphorical prison compound.

 

  

 

 

 

Animator Wanee and screenwriter Junah are in love and live together to give each other comfort. However, one day, the return of Wanee's stepbrother and her first love (Youngminn) recalls the fading memories of her puppy love. The queer coexistence of present and past love leads to an unexpected confusion in their minds...

Filmed on the virtually deserted Setonaikai archipelago in south-east Japan, The Naked Island was made — in the words of its director — "as a 'cinematic poem' to try and capture the life of human beings struggling like ants against the forces of nature". Using one-tenth of the average budget, Shindo took one last impassioned risk to make this film.

Zhang Yimou’s To Live (aka Lifetimes) is an exploratory masterpiece that transcends its political inferences and rests heavily on it’s real meaning; the importance of family. Yimou includes previous themes of survival, perseverance and the resilience of the human spirit also found in many of his other films.

 Sound of the Mountain draws on the concerns of Naruse’s earlier marriage films, including Repast (even the pairing of stars Hara and Uehara is reprised), to offer a profoundly moving account of the complex relationship that develops between an older man and a younger woman.

Nicholas Ray's epic 1959 film about Eskimo life was unfairly victimized on release, censored at the UK cinema, and neglected by both TV and home video for decades. The Savage Innocents continued Ray's fascination with alternative lifestyles — examining the life of Eskimos and their remoteness from "civilized" values. It represents Ray's first and most ambitious attempt to break free from Hollywood and forge his own route.

 

 

 

Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterpiece follows Umberto D., an elderly pensioner, as he struggles to make ends meet during Italy’s postwar economic boom. Umberto’s simple quest to fulfill the most fundamental human needs — food, shelter, companionship — is one of the most heartbreaking stories ever filmed and an essential classic of world cinema.

Louis Feuillade's 1915 silent French masterpiece "Les Vampires" represents part of the 'primordial soup' from which all modern cinema evolved. Don't let the name fool you... there are no 'vampires' as in the 'blood-sucking undead' in this film. Les Vampires are a sinister gang plaguing Paris with their underworld activity including burglaries, decapitation of law enforcement officers, bombings, forgery and other unsavory dealings.

Sensationally modern, the film follows the downward spiral of the fiery, brash, yet innocent showgirl Lulu, whose sexual vivacity has a devastating effect on everyone she comes in contact with. Daring and stylish, Pandora's Box is one of silent cinema's great masterworks and a testament to Brooks' dazzling individuality.
 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

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