Features

  A House of Dynamite marks the first film from director Kathryn Bigelow since 2017’s Detroit. Bigelow’s return has her looking at the current political landscape as a mysterious missile heads towards the United States. The result is a tense and interesting film, though not one of Bigelow’s best. Working from a script by Noah Oppenheim, A House of Dynamite picks up on a seemingly normal day in Washington, D.C. White House staffers come into…

Vittorio De Sica’s 1946 film Shoeshine has been added to the Criterion Collection. An international breakthrough for neorealism, Vittorio De Sica’s Academy Award–winning film is an indelible fable of innocence lost amid the hardscrabble reality of 1940s Italy. On the streets of Rome, two boys—best friends Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni) and Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi)—set out to raise the money to buy a horse by shining shoes. When they are inadvertently caught up in a robbery and…

Mike Nichols’ 1971 drama Carnal Knowledge has been added to the Criterion Collection. Amid the sexual revolution and social upheaval of the early 1970s, acclaimed director Mike Nichols delivered a zeitgeist-defining examination of American mores. Sharply written by Jules Feiffer, this acerbic drama flashes through more than twenty years in the lives of two college buddies (Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel) whose casual chauvinism is all fun and games—until it’s not. As the women who suffer and…

Charlotte Zwerin’s 1988 documentary Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser has been added to the Criterion Collection. The closest a film camera ever got to enigmatic jazz visionary Thelonious Monk, this intimate portrait sheds light on the corners of a brilliant and complex life. Superbly crafted by Direct Cinema pioneer Charlotte Zwerin from a trove of precious 1960s archival footage, Thelonious Monk Straight, No Chaser captures the pianist, composer, and bebop innovator in rare, unguarded moments on- and offstage, revealing an…

Sidney Lumet’s 1978 musical The Wiz has been added to the Criterion Collection. L. Frank Baum’s timeless story, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, gets a funky reimagining in this lavish adaptation of a landmark Broadway show based on the book. Diana Ross brings her showstopping star power to the role of Dorothy, here a Harlem schoolteacher who is magically transported to a surreal fantasyland that resembles New York City, complete with man-eating trash cans and a disco…

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…

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….

Billy Wilder’s classic comedy Some Like It Hot recently got a 4K upgrade from the Criterion Collection. One of the most beloved films of all time, this sizzling masterpiece by Billy Wilder set a new standard for Hollywood comedy. After witnessing a mob hit, Chicago musicians Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, in landmark performances) skip town by donning drag and joining an all-female band en route to Miami. The charm of the…

Arthur Penn’s 1975 neonoir Night Moves was recently added to the Criterion Collection. Arthur Penn’s haunting neonoir reimagines the hard-boiled detective film for the disillusioned, paranoid 1970s. In one of his greatest performances, Gene Hackman oozes world-weary cynicism as a private investigator whose search for an actress’s missing daughter (Melanie Griffith) leads him from the Hollywood Hills to the Florida Keys, where he is pulled into a sordid family drama and a sinister conspiracy he…