PARIS, TEXAS (1984) begins a special run at Film Forum in New York starting November 25 courtesy of Janus Films! 💞 💞 💞

A wonderful visit from Jerzy Skolimowski, whose new film EO—winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes and Poland’s official entry for Best International Film at the 95th Academy Awards®—is now playing in NYC courtesy of Janus Films!

With her radically anarchic Czechoslovak New Wave landmark DAISIES (1966), director Věra Chytilová set out, in her own words, “to make a film that is aesthetically pleasing and interesting, yet [which] is an image of destruction,” one in which “the idea of ‘destruction’ is present in everything, in every move of the camera.” In our new edition of OBSERVATIONS ON FILM ART on the Criterion Channel, Professor Kristin Thompson breaks down the complex visual motifs—in particular the use of plant and food imagery—that Chytilová employs to advance this aesthetic of annihilation, ultimately creating a film that threatens to literally self-destruct. 🎞️ Start watching with the link in our bio!

In 1964, master director Henri-Georges Clouzot (born on this day) began work on his most ambitious film yet. INFERNO was to be a sun-scorched elucidation of the dark depths of jealousy starring Romy Schneider. However, despite huge expectations, major studio backing, and an unlimited budget, after three weeks the production collapsed under the weight of arguments, technical complications, and illness. In the compelling documentary HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT’S INFERNO (2009)—now playing on the Criterion Channel—Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea present INFERNO’s incredible expressionistic original rushes, screen tests, and on-location footage, in the process reconstructing Clouzot’s original vision and shedding light on the ill-fated endeavor through interviews, dramatizations of unfilmed scenes, and the director’s own notes. 

The INFERNAL AFFAIRS TRILOGY (2002 - 2003), a critical and commercial triumph that introduced a dazzling level of narrative and thematic complexity to the Hong Kong crime drama, has entered the collection! 🎥 💿 

In this explosively stylish snd gripping saga, superstars Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau Tak-wah play two rival moles who navigate slippery moral choices as they move between the intersecting territories of the police force and its criminal underworld. Set during the uncertainty of the city-state’s handover from Britain to China and steeped in Buddhist philosophy, these ingeniously crafted tales of self-deception and betrayal mirror Hong Kong’s own fractured identity and the psychic schisms of life in a postcolonial purgatory.

Announcing our FEBRUARY 2023 Criterion Collection titles!  A sublime adaptation of Shakespeare’s immortal romantic tragedy, two mesmerizing films by a beloved French literary figure, and a riotously funny satire of Black typecasting in 1980s Hollywood. Explore more!

The Criterion Flash Sale is here! Stock up and binge-watch until spring!

Need help navigating our growing library of over 1,000 films? Check out our sale page and shop from curated categories that we’ll be updating frequently.

Sale ends at noon ET tomorrow, February 26. The clock is ticking!

Our Flash Sale has begun! For the next 24 hours, all in-stock Blu-rays & DVDs are 50% OFF! 

Announcing our DECEMBER 2019 releases!

Announcing our November 2019 titles!

Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975

In 1954, an enormous beast clawed its way out of the sea, destroying everything in its path—and changing movies forever. The arresting original Godzilla soon gave rise to an entire monster-movie genre (kaiju eiga), but the King of the Monsters continued to reign supreme: in fourteen fiercely entertaining sequels over the next two decades, Godzilla defended its throne against a host of other formidable creatures, transforming from a terrifying symbol of nuclear annihilation into a benevolent (if still belligerent) Earth protector. Collected here for the first time are all fifteen Godzilla films of Japan’s Showa era, in a landmark set showcasing the technical wizardry, fantastical storytelling, and indomitable international appeal that established the most iconic giant monster the cinema has ever seen.

A Newly Restored Paris Struts Back into Theaters

As much as we may think of crying as an involuntary reaction that bubbles up from our innermost depths, it is just as easily perceived by others as affectation, assessed as performance. Is the crier’s crying credible, or commensurate to its cause? Is it done with self-forgetting abandon or as a power play to forestall the moral judgments of onlookers? And what are we to think when there aren’t any tears to measure? It’s cruel how often the capacity for crying eludes us, sometimes right at the instant when we want to be persuading others—and ourselves—that we do feel something.

Tears Left to Cry: Jeon Do-yeon in Secret Sunshine

Zombies are a kind of modern-day mythology thanks to him. I don’t want to sound too academic, but there’s a suspension of rationalism in Night of the Living Dead. The zombies are drifting away from any kind of identity or meaning. They’re not monsters that come from outside the social structure, like Godzilla or Frankenstein; they are the remnants of that broken social structure. They come from within; they are us. In addition to being monsters, they are also victims, because they didn’t ask to be reanimated.

It’s complicated and amazing to me, what Romero did. The way we think of zombies now—as slow-moving and undead—is because of him. In our film we echo, in very obvious ways, the commodity fetishism and the dead end of capitalism’s goal of endless consumption that he portrays so beautifully.

Dead Neighbors: Jim Jarmusch on George A. Romero

The most celebrated Japanese filmmaker of all time, Akira Kurosawa produced a staggering body of work that stands as a monument of artistic achievement. Though best known for samurai epics like Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, his intimate, contemporary-set dramas, such as Ikiru and High and Low, are just as searing. The first serious phase of the director’s career came during the postwar era with Drunken Angel and Stray Dog, striking noirs that marked the beginning of his long-running collaboration with explosive leading man Toshiro Mifune. In the early 1950s, Kurosawa achieved worldwide fame with Rashomon, a landmark in nonlinear storytelling that ignited international interest in Japanese cinema. In the years that followed, the auteur carried on a fruitful dialogue with the West, drawing on everything from Shakespeare to Dashiell Hammett and perfecting cinematic techniques that would prove influential to such disparate filmmakers as George Lucas and Sam Peckinpah. Kurosawa closed out his career with a string of late masterworks, including Ran and Dreams, epic ruminations on human nature that make visionary use of color.

Watch our Akira Kurosawa retrospective now on the Criterion Channel!

Bruno Dumont’s first two features, La vie de Jèsus and L’Humanité announced him as a fully formed iconoclast, with an unflinching, utterly singular approach to capturing the spectrum of human behavior. Own our editions of these films now on Blu-ray & DVD!

Announcing our SEPTEMBER 2019 titles!

Now on the Criterion Channel, we’re celebrating three subversive takes on gender and genre from Golden Age Hollywood’s preeminent woman filmmaker. ✨ In the boy’s club of the Hollywood studio system, Dorothy Arzner stood out as a true original: an openly gay woman director whose career spanned from the silent era into the 1940s. Her fascinating films—often imbued with daring queer and feminist subtexts—were career-launching showcases for some of the era’s most iconic performers: Katharine Hepburn as a daredevil aviator in the outré pre-Code romance CHRISTOPHER STRONG, Rosalind Russell as a ruthless social climber in the delirious melodrama CRAIG’S WIFE, and Lucille Ball as a cynical showgirl in the proto-feminist backstage musical DANCE, GIRL, DANCE. These works, introduced by critic B. Ruby Rich, offer a unique perspective on gender roles rarely seen in classic Hollywood cinema.

“Characters and film alike seem to search for masters over which to reign. Everything is at once soft and poisonous, clear and uncertain. Sensual and cold. It is all irresistible.”