From the Collection: Killer of Sheep

From the Collection: Killer of Sheep

Charles Burnett’s long-lost directorial debut, Killer of Sheep, has been added to the Criterion Collection. A quiet revelation of American independent filmmaking, Charles Burnett’s lyrical debut feature unfolds as a mosaic of Black life in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), a father worn down by his job in a slaughterhouse, and his wife (Kaycee Moore) seek moments of tenderness in the face of myriad disappointments. Equally attuned to the…

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From the Collection: How to Get Ahead in Advertising

From the Collection: How to Get Ahead in Advertising

Bruce Robinson’s dark comedy How to Get Ahead in Advertising has been added to the Criterion Collection. Writer-director Bruce Robinson and star Richard E. Grant, the cracked comic geniuses behind the cult favorite Withnail and I, reteamed for this diabolically dark satire of runaway capitalism in Margaret Thatcher–era England. Grant gives a virtuosically crazed performance as an ambitious advertising exec whose latest assignment—devising a campaign for a pimple cream—has him on the edge of a nervous breakdown….

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