Directed by Terry Gilliam • 1991 • United States
Starring Jeff Bridges, Mercedes Ruehl, Robin Williams

A fairy tale grounded in poignant reality, Terry Gilliam’s magnificent, Manhattan-set THE FISHER KING features Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams in two of their most brilliant roles. Bridges play...

Criterion Collection Edition #597

Lena Dunham got her start making YouTube videos, but she emerged as a major talent thanks to the breakthrough success of this exceptionally sharp comedy, which garnered the twenty-four-year-old writer-director-actor comparisons to the likes of Woody Allen. Dunha...

Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi • 2021 • Japan
Starring Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura, Reika Kirishima

Only Ryusuke Hamaguchi, with his extraordinary sensitivity to the mysterious resonances of human interactions, could sweep up international awards (including the Oscar for Best International Fe...

Criterion Collection Edition #958

Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu shot to international prominence with this rigorously realistic Palme d’Or–winning second feature. In 1987, during the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, college roommates Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Găbița (Laura Vasiliu) ...

Directed by Matteo Garrone • 2008 • Italy
Starring Toni Servillo, Salvatore Abruzzese, Gianfelice Imparato

Matteo Garrone’s GOMORRAH is a stark, shocking vision of contemporary gangsterdom, and one of cinema’s most authentic depictions of organized crime. In this tour de force adaptation of unde...

Directed by Douglas Sirk • 1955 • United States
Starring Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead

This heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s American mores by Douglas Sirk follows the blossoming love between a well-off widow (Jane Wyman) and her handsome and earthy younger gardener (Rock...

Directed by Martin Scorsese • 1993 • United States
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder

No filmmaker captures the grandeur and energy of New York like Martin Scorsese. With this sumptuous romance, he meticulously adapted the work of another great New York artist, Edith Whar...

Directed by Gus Van Sant • 1989 • United States
Starring Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch, James Remar

Gus Van Sant’s dreamy, drifty, deadpan second feature—an addiction drama based on James Fogle’s autobiographical novel—captures the zonked-out textures and almost surreal absurdity of a life lived fix ...

Directed by Héctor Babenco • 1985 • United States, Brazil
Starring William Hurt, Raúl Juliá, Sônia Braga

Héctor Babenco’s follow-up to his electrifying international breakthrough PIXOTE is another powerful, boldly realized portrait of life on the margins of Brazilian society. Based on the novel ...

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...

Directed by Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky • 2000 • Hungary
Starring Lars Rudolph, Peter Fitz, Hanna Schygulla

This mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. Adapted from a novel by László Krasznahorkai, WERCKMEISTER HARMONIE...

Directed by Ang Lee • 1997 • United States
Starring Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver

Suburban Connecticut, 1973. While Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” speech drones from the TV, the Hood and Carver families try to navigate a Thanksgiving break simmering with unspoken resentment, sexu...

Directed by Vittorio De Sica • 1946 • Italy
Starring Franco Interlenghi, Rinaldo Smordoni, Aniello Mele

An international breakthrough for neorealism, Vittorio De Sica’s Academy Award–winning film is an indelible fable of innocence lost amid the hardscrabble reality of 1940s Italy. On the streets...

Directed by Nicolas Roeg • 1985 • United Kingdom
Starring Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, Tony Curtis

Four unnamed people who look and sound a lot like Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and Joseph McCarthy converge in one New York City hotel room in this compelling, visually inventive ...

Directed by Liliana Cavani • 1974 • Italy
Starring Charlotte Rampling, Dirk Bogarde

In this unsettling drama from Italian filmmaker Liliana Cavani, a concentration camp survivor (Charlotte Rampling) discovers her former torturer and lover (Dirk Bogarde) working as a porter at a hotel in postwar ...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • France • 1960
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger

There was before BREATHLESS, and there was after BREATHLESS. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspi...

Directed by Zeinabu irene Davis • 1999 • United States
Starring John Earl Jelks, Michelle A. Banks, Nirvana Cobb

A poignant portrait of Deaf African Americans and the complexities of love at both ends of the twentieth century, Zeinabu irene Davis’s film is a groundbreaking story of inclusion and...

Directed by Alejandro Amenábar • 2001 • Spain, United States, France
Starring Nicole Kidman, Christopher Eccleston, Fionnula Flanagan

A remote manor; hushed, candlelit atmosphere; and shivery, supernatural menace. With his first English-language feature, Chilean Spanish writer-director-composer ...

Directed by John Woo • 1992 • Hong Kong
Starring Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Teresa Mo

Violence as poetry, rendered by a master—brilliant and passionate, John Woo’s HARD BOILED tells the story of jaded detective “Tequila” Yuen (played with controlled fury by Chow Yun-fat). Woo’s dizzying ...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1961 • France
Starring Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy

With A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, compulsively innovative director Jean-Luc Godard presents “a neorealist musical—that is, a contradiction in terms.” Featuring French superstars Anna Karina, Jean-Paul...

Directed by John Woo • 1989 • Hong Kong
Starring Chow Yun-fat, Danny Lee, Sally Yeh

Hong Kong’s preeminent director, John Woo, transforms genres from both the East and the West to create this explosive and masterful action film. Featuring Hong Kong’s greatest star, Chow Yun-fat, as a killer with...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1965 • France
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Graziella Galvani

Dissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeois world behind. Yet ...

Directed by Guy Maddin • 2007 • Canada

The geographical dead center of North America and the beloved birthplace of Guy Maddin, Winnipeg is the frosty and mysterious star of Maddin’s “docu-fantasia.” A work of memory and imagination, the film burrows into what the director calls “the heart of the...

Directed by David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Ellen Hovde, and Muffie Meyer • 1975 • United States

Meet Big and Little Edie Beale: mother and daughter, high-society dropouts, and reclusive relatives of Jackie Onassis. The two manage to thrive together amid the decay and disorder of their East Hampt...