Criterion Collection (Firm)

Documents the obscure country blues musician and idiosyncratic visual artist, Howard 'Louie Bluie' Armstrong, member of the last known black string band in America. Director Terry Zwigoff honors him with an unsentimental but endlessly affectionate tribute. Full of infectious music and comedy, this is a humane evocation of the kind of pop-cultural marginalia that Zwigoff would continue to make in the coming years.

A remote manor; hushed, candlelit atmosphere; and shivery, supernatural menace. With his first English-language feature, Chilean Spanish writer-director-composer Alejandro Amenb̀ar resurrected the classic gothic chiller to create a ghost story of uncommon emotional resonance. Nicole Kidman stars as a World War II-era mother whose imperiousness masks a terrifying pain, as she keeps her light-sensitive children enshrouded in darkness on her country...

The story of a clever, quick, nimble, and exceptionally well-dressed wild animal. A compulsive chicken thief turned newspaper reporter, Mr. Fox settles down with his family at a new foxhole in a beautiful tree directly adjacent to three enormous poultry farms owned by three ferociously vicious farmers: Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. Mr. Fox simply cannot resist. Based on the beloved, best selling book by Roald Dahl.

A mysterious kidnapping of a corrupt banker by a shadowy crime fighter (American magician Channing Pollock) spins out into a thrillingly complex web of deceptions. Combining stylish sixties modernisms with silent-cinema touches and even a few unexpected sci-fi accents.

What seems at first to be a straightforward tale of two people getting to know each other over the course of an afternoon gradually reveals itself as something richer, stranger, and trickier: a mind-bending reflection on authenticity, in art as well as in relationships. Both cerebrally and emotionally engaging, reminds us that love itself is an enigma.

Presents a wide range of natural phenomena in a context of scientific exploration and surrealism. Focusing on the work of French filmmaker Jean Painlevé, this collection features twenty-three Painlevé nature films; a 2005 performance of the ninety-minute score, The sounds of science, written in 2001 by members of the rock group Yo La Tengo to accompany eight of Painlevé's films; an interview with Yo La Tengo; and the eight-part 1988 French television...

In Ozu's splendid first color film, a stubborn businessman, who disapproves of his daughter's fiance, must learn to embrace modern romance.

Legendary director Jerzy Skolimowski created one of his freest and most visually inventive films yet with this story of a gray donkey named EO. After being removed from an itinerant circus, EO begins a trek across the countryside, experiencing cruelty and kindness from a cast of characters including an Italian countess and a Polish soccer team.

The great Agnes Varda's film career began with this graceful, penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple and a documentary-like look at the daily struggles of the locals, Varda's discursive, gorgeously filmed debut was radical enough to later be considered one of the progenitors of the coming French...

Roman Polanski imbues his unflinchingly violent adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy of ruthless ambition and murder in medieval Scotland with grit and dramatic intensity. Jon Finch and Francesca Annis star as a decorated warrior rising in the ranks and his driven wife, scheming together to take the throne by any means.