LITTLE CREATURE – The Criterion Collection presents The Night Porter

A difficult film to watch, not because it is pornographic, or even all that graphic, but because we watch the characters become increasingly desperate as they realize they are no longer suited to the world around them.

The Night Porter (1974) – Italy
Directed by Lilliana Cavani
118 min. Colour
Criterion Spine # 59
“History is present,” writes E.L. Doctorow [...]

Revival of the Fittest: The Criterion Collection presents Revanche

Revanche is a tough slow, depressing film, but incredibly well-acted, consistently believable, and an always entertaining, modest, satisfying arty crime story.

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Revanche
Directed by Gotz Spielmann
Austria
2008
122 minutes
Color
1.85:1
German
“If you plan revenge, dig two graves,” the saying goes…
A prostitute trying to escape her desperate existence, her ex-criminal boyfriend looking for some quick cash to pay back his debt, a [...]

ALONE IN THE APARTMENT: The Criterion Collection presents Repulsion

Repulsion (1965) – United Kingdom
Dir. Roman Polanski
105 minutes, B&W
Criterion Spine # 483
Warning: Here be spoilers.
Like flies to the gooping carcass of a skinned rabbit, Repulsion invites a lot of intellectual psychobabbling that usually amounts to the same things being said by different people.  We can all pretty much agree what this film, a creepy, precise [...]

A Dream within a Dream: The Criterion Collection presents Picnic at Hanging Rock

Haunting, despite often being drenched in southern Australian sunlight, and that is in no small part to the understated performances within…

Ddirected by Peter Weir. Australia, 1975, 107 min.
Criterion Collection #29.
Hanging Rock is an actual place, an actual rock as it were, situated in the southwestern part of Australia, in the state of Victoria.  Often described [...]

They Are As We Are: The Criterion Collection presents Short Cuts

The greatest accomplishment of this film is how it seeks to surprise its viewers, not just with what happens but with where we place our loyalty.

The Criteron Collection’s two-disc issue of Robert Altman’s 1993 film Short Cuts comes with a book of short stories – nine stories and a poem, to be exact – by [...]