The latest entertainment news and reviews in 4K UHD, Blu-ray, movies and more…
Fed up with his experiences as a black actor in Hollywood, comedian and performer Robert Townsend delivered his feature directorial debut built around those challenges. The result was 1987’s Hollywood Shuffle, a satirical and semi-autobiographical comedy reflecting what it meant to be a black actor that wasn’t Eddie Murphy or Denzel Washington at that time. […]
Coming in May: Thelma & Louise, the feminist landmark that rewrote the rules of the road movie, directed by Ridley Scott; Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets, a chillingly prescient exploration of American violence; and Petite Maman, a time-bending fable evoking the wonder of childhood, directed by Céline Sciamma. Plus: Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders’ stunning valentine to the city of Berlin, and Branded to Kill, Seijun Suzuki’s brutal, hilarious story of a yakuza assassin—now on 4K […]
Coming in April: Small Axe, Steve McQueen’s monumental, five-film counterhistory of London’s West Indian community, and Triangle of Sadness, a rowdy, Palme d’Or-winning satire of wealth, beauty, and privilege from Ruben Östlund. Plus: existential adventures abound in Terry Gilliam’s Manhattan-set fairy tale, The Fisher King, and Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, a stunning allegory of our search for meaning—now […]
I’ve joked in the past about trying to shrink this super-sized top ten post down. This year, I think I actually did it! Okay…so it’s maybe only a few titles shorter than usual, but that’s not nothing. Once again, I’ve had the privilege of taking in Blu-ray and 4K UHD releases all year, along with […]
2022 is coming to a close as possibly the strongest year for 4K we’ve seen or may yet to see. Many gigantic staples of cinema made their jump this year as well as some regular offenders in the collectibles department. Blu-ray was solid, but this was the first year I noticed a shift and found […]
Coming in March: Inland Empire, a nightmarish odyssey into the deepest realms of the unconscious mind by David Lynch; Last Hurrah for Chivalry, a wuxia whirlwind from John Woo, a master of the heroic tragedy; and Chilly Scenes of Winter, a singular anti–romantic comedy from trailblazing director Joan Micklin Silver. Plus: Mildred Pierce, a bitter, noirish cocktail of […]
The 70s remains a robust period for cinema. Black cinema during this time has received various forms of appreciation over the years, particularly regarding the explosion of Blaxploitation films. Cooley High is in a different class. Call it “Black American graffiti” if you’d like, and it’s not inaccurate. Whatever the case, this is a funny […]
Director Spike Lee has an impressive body of work, considering the number of excellent films delivered over the past five decades. With that in mind, the prolific director has at least two defining films that came pretty early in his career. There’s the landmark comedy-drama Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, the epic biographical […]
A Criterion first, coming this November! The Criterion Collection is proud to announce their first collaboration with Disney and Pixar: WALL•E (2008), directed by Andrew Stanton, entering the Criterion Collection on 4K UHD this November! A high-water mark of digital animation, Stanton’s prescient vision of a rapidly oncoming dystopian future, packaged within a dazzling pop-science-fiction […]
Coming in November: Věra Chytilová’s defiant Czechoslovak New Wave provocation Daisies; Jane Campion’s psychologically piercing revisionist western The Power of the Dog; Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak’s gripping saga of two rival moles in Hong Kong’s criminal underworld, The Infernal Affairs Trilogy; and Spike Lee’s visionary monument to an iconic civil rights leader, Malcolm X. Plus: an upgrade […]
With the recent passing of acting legend (as well as director and diplomat) Sidney Poitier, it’s entirely fitting to see the Criterion Collection release Buck and the Preacher. Also directed by Poitier (his first directorial effort), here’s a film that plays as an entertaining buddy western and a societal commentary focused on black life in […]
This October: Kasi Lemmons’s Eve’s Bayou, a southern-gothic tale suffused with Creole folklore; Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, a grisly murder mystery that redefined Japanese horror; and Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona, a political ghost story rooted in Guatemala’s bloody past. David Lynch’s twisting neonoir Lost Highway unfolds in the Hollywood Hills, while Frank Capra’s screwball classic Arsenic and Old Lace mixes the madcap […]
Seeing the announcement of Devil in a Blue Dress as an upcoming 4K release from the Criterion Collection was a great joy. An underperformer at the time of its release, only to find more appreciation as the years have gone why, this period thriller starring Denzel Washington brings together two major ideas – a neo-noir […]
Coming this fall: Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal, capturing one man’s odyssey through sound and silence; Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou’s Take Out, about a day in the life of an undocumented delivery worker in New York City; and Atom Egoyan’s Exotica, a defining independent film of the 1990s, set in a Toronto strip club. Plus: Henri-Georges Clouzot’s fable of suspicion in a Nazi-occupied French […]
In an entirely fitting movie for the Criterion Collection, 1971’s Shaft has been selected to join the ranks and has received the deluxe treatment with a 3-disc 4K UHD set (2 Blu-ray discs). A notable film from the Blaxploitation era, it may not be the first or perhaps even the best, but Shaft is the […]
This August, we invite you on a euphoric, hallucinatory Ethiopian odyssey with Jessica Beshir’s Faya dayi and a poetic-realist sojourn in 1930s Paris with Marcel Carné’s Hôtel du Nord. The creative trio behind Uncut Gems dig into their disorienting debut features, Josh and Benny Safdie’s Daddy Longlegs and Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland, and Sidney Poitier directs Sidney Poitier in a touchstone Black western, Buck and […]
This year’s Oscar winner for Best International Feature Film, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, will make its home-video debut in July alongside David Lean’s radiant Technicolor gem about romantic longing, Summertime, and a stacked 4K UHD slate: Carl Franklin’s stylish noir set in segregated 1940s Los Angeles, Devil in a Blue Dress; Bong Joon Ho’s modern fairy tale […]
This June: Criterion presents Ekwa Msangi’s stunning feature debut, Farewell Amor; Joachim Trier’s ultra-charismatic Oscar contender, The Worst Person in the World; Hong Kong master Stanley Kwan’s swooningly romantic ghost story, Rouge; and Shaft, the blaxploitation action-hero epic from Gordon Parks, now on 4K UHD. Plus: the filthiest, trashiest film on the Nation Film Registry, Pink Flamingos by John Waters, meets the lushest, most operatic […]
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