The Criterion Collection

Brazil is a Terry Gilliam dystopic black comedy film that reflects the melancholy, dreamlike quality of a famous Brazilian song that’s been translated into English. The film parodies the mostly dysfunctional bureaucratic world we live in and takes us to a post-apocalyptic world in the future yet with our present day attitudes in mind.

A crafty ronin comes to a town divided by two criminal gangs and decides to play them against each other to free the town.

A crafty samurai helps a young man and his fellow clansmen save his uncle, who has been framed and imprisoned by a corrupt superintendent.

A testament to NASA's Apollo program of the 1960s and '70s. Composed of actual NASA footage of the missions and astronaut interviews, the documentary offers the viewpoint of the individuals who braved the remarkable journey to the moon and back.

Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a talented young Czech doctor who likes women. Lots of women. We follow his struggles and those of his fragile wife, Tereza (Juliette Binoche), as they sort out their personal lives during the dramatic Prague Spring of 1968.

The 39 Steps is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpieces. A romantic thriller that revolves around a Canadian tourist visiting London who gets caught in the middle of a murder plot that has police and the secret service after him. A classic Hitchcock of romance mixed with adventure and picturesque scenes.

After Regina Lampert falls for the dashing Peter Joshua on a skiing holiday in the French Alps, she discovers upon her return to Paris that her husband has been murdered. Soon, she and Peter are giving chase to three of her late husband's World War II cronies, Tex, Scobie and Gideon, who are after a quarter of a million dollars the quartet stole...

A young man murders women, using a movie camera to film their dying expressions of terror.

Thirteen years after WWII a concentration camp survivor (Rampling) and her tormentor (Bogarde), currently the night porter at a Vienna hotel, meet again and fall back into their sado-masochistic relationship.

After a seven-year absence, Charlotte Andergast travels to Sweden to reunite with her daughter Eva. The pair have a troubled relationship: Charlotte sacrificed the responsibilities of motherhood for a career as a classical pianist. Over an emotional night, the pair reopen the wounds of the past. Charlotte gets another shock when she finds out th...

A brilliant parody from the British comedy group Monty Python about the history of Jesus. A Terry Jones directed film from 1979 that has since gained cult status.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is the masterpiece from Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer that depicts the story of French martyr Joan from Orleans seven years after her canonization from the catholic church.

After a traumatic accident, a woman becomes drawn to a mysterious abandoned carnival.

An American pulp writer arrives in post-WWII Vienna only to find that the friend who waited for him is killed under mysterious circumstances. The ensuing mystery entangles him in his friend's involvement in the black market, with the multinational police, and with his Czech girlfriend.

Max Fischer, a precocious and eccentric 15 year-old, who is both Rushmore's most extracurricular and least scholarly student; Herman Blume, a disillusioned industrialist who comes to admire Max; and Rosemary Cross, a widowed first grade teacher who becomes the object of both Max's and Herman's affection.

Told in four episodes, an unnamed artist is transported through a mirror into another dimension, where he travels through various bizarre scenarios.

A famous poet in postwar Paris, scorned by the Left Bank youth, is in love with both his wife Eurydice and a mysterious princess. Seeking inspiration, the poet becomes obsessed and follows the princess from the world of the living to the land of the dead.

Outside time and reality, the experiences of a poet. The judgement of the young poet by Heurtebise and the Princess, the Gypsies, the palace of Pallas Athena, the spear of the Goddess which pierces the poet's heart, the temptation of the Sphinx, the flight of Oedipus and the final Assumption.

Jesus, a humble Judean carpenter beginning to see that he is the son of God, is drawn into revolutionary action against the Roman occupiers by Judas -- despite his protestations that love, not violence, is the path to salvation. The burden of being the savior of mankind torments Jesus throughout his life, leading him to doubt.

The Queen of the Night enlists a handsome prince named Tamino to rescue her beautiful kidnapped daughter, Princess Pamina, in this screen adaptation of the beloved Mozart opera. Aided by the lovelorn bird hunter Papageno and a magical flute that holds the power to change the hearts of men, young Tamino embarks on a quest for true love, leading t...

Debt-ridden painter Michel is overcome with joy at discovering that he has just won 1 million florins in the Dutch lottery, but almost immediately, he discovers that his softhearted girlfriend, Béatrice, has given away his jacket containing the winning ticket to an elderly petty thief. Soon Michel, Beatrice and Michel's artistic rival, Prosper, ...

Agnès Vardas’ first feature film is an hour an a half from the life of singer Cléo in which she walks through Paris while waiting the results of a cancer test. The film showed the Nouvelle Vague the first woman to become famous from the film school.

The story of a young woman, a vagabond, who wanders through French wine country one winter.

Holden and Banky are comic book artists. Everything is going good for them until they meet Alyssa, also a comic book artist. Holden falls for her, but his hopes are crushed when he finds out she's a lesbian.

Brief Encounter is a classic from British director David Lean about two people who fall in love yet face the fact that they are already married and can never be together.

18-year-old orphan Juliette's unbridled appetite for pleasure shakes up all of St Tropez; her sweet but naïve husband Michel endures beatings, insults, and mambo in his futile attempts to tame her wild ways.

The Bank Dick is a comedy from 1940 starring W.C. Fields (who also wrote the story). The film is one of the greatest works from an American comedian.

Two romantic rivals play a game of pool for the hand of their lady love. W.C. Field's debut film.

At a Florida hotel, absconding miscreant J. Effingham Bellweather goes slapstick golfing with the house detective's flirtatious wife and an incompetent caddy.

An unconventional dentist deals with patients in slapstick fashion.

The prodigal son of a Yukon prospector comes home on a night that "ain't fit for man nor beast."

A henpecked but stoic pharmacist tries to maintain his precarious balance while dealing with demanding customers and his dysfunctional family.

An inept barber maintains his good-humored optimism in his small town shop despite having a hen-pecking harridan for a wife and a total lack of sartorial skill.

Fisher, an ex-detective, decides to take one final case when a mysterious serial killer claims the lives of several young girls. Fisher, unable to find the culprit, turns to Osbourne, a writer who was once respected for his contributions to the field of criminology. Fisher begins to use Osbourne's technique, which involves empathizing with seria...

In Italy, Checco Dal Monte manages a troupe of traveling performers with plenty of heart but minimal talent. At a small town engagement, he encounters the starry-eyed, gorgeous Lily Antonelli, and hires her as a dancer on the show. Vivacious Lily quickly sells out crowds and earns the resentment of Checco's mistress, Melina Amour, but the fledgl...

Winner of four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor, Sir Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet continues to be the most compelling version of Shakespeare’s beloved tragedy. Olivier is at his most inspired—both as director and as the melancholy Dane himself—as he breathes new life into the words of one of the world’s greatest dramatists.

The Harder They Come is a 1972 Jamaican crime film starring reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, who plays Ivanhoe Martin, a character based on Rhyging, a real-life Jamaican criminal who achieved fame in the 1940s.

Two boys beg their parents for a television set, nagging them until all patience is lost. The parents order the boys to be quiet and the boys do exactly that--refusing to utter a word. The boys' silence ultimately puts the whole neighborhood into turmoil.

Henry Higgins (Howard) is an upper class phonetics professor who encounters low-class guttersnipe Eliza Doolittle (Hiller) and bets his friend Colonel Pickering (Scott Sunderland) that he can pass her off as a duchess within three months.

When German knights invade Russia, Prince Alexander Nevsky must rally his people to resist the formidable force. After the Teutonic soldiers take over an eastern Russian city, Alexander stages his stand at Novgorod, where a major battle is fought on the ice of frozen Lake Chudskoe. While Alexander leads his outnumbered troops, two of their numbe...

Set during the early part of his reign, Ivan faces betrayal from the aristocracy and even his closest friends as he seeks to unite the Russian people. Sergei Eisenstein's final film, this is the first part of a three-part biopic of Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, which was never completed due to the producer's dissatisfaction with Eisenstein's attempts ...

As Ivan the Terrible attempts to consolidate his power by establishing a personal army, his political rivals, the Russian boyars, plot to assassinate their Tsar.

A classic collection of four Japanese Horror stories. Features "Black Hair", "The Woman in the Snow", "Hoichi the Earless" and "In a Cup of Tea"

A drive-in favorite, this sci-fi classic follows teenagers Steve and his best girl, Jane, as they try to protect their hometown from a gelatinous alien life form that engulfs everything it touches. The first to discover the substance and live to tell about it, Steve and Jane witness the blob destroying an elderly man, then it growing to a terrif...

An American airbase in Canada provokes resentment from the nearby residents after fallout from nuclear experiments at the base are blamed for a recent spate of disappearances. A captain from the airbase is assigned to investigate, and begins to suspect that an elderly British scientist who lives near the base and conducts research in the field o...

based on the novel of the same name by Rumer Godden. It is a psychological drama about the emotional tensions within a convent of nuns in an isolated Himalayan valley

A 33-year-old Englishwoman goes to the Hebrides to marry her older, wealthier fiancé, but when the weather keeps them apart from each other on separate islands, she begins to have second thoughts.

Friends and family want a rich widow (Jane Wyman) to end her romance with a tree surgeon (Rock Hudson) about 15 years her junior.

Mitch Wayne is a geologist working for the Hadleys, an oil-rich Texas family. While the patriarch, Jasper, works hard to establish the family business, his irresponsible son, Kyle, is an alcoholic playboy, and his daughter, Marylee, is the town tramp. Mitch harbors a secret love for Kyle's unsatisfied wife, Lucy -- a fact that leaves him exposed...