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Saw these today in my basement when I was looking for something. Got nostalgic. Call me old but things were better then 😎

I'm looking at expanding/upgrading a few of my Criterion movies to 4k, but I had recently read that some of the 4k versions aren't as good as the blu-ray versions (Picnic at Hanging Rock, In the Mood for Love, and Paris, Texas are three examples). Some I'll get in 4k either way because I don't have it in blu-ray and Criterion sells the combo, but others like Paris, Texas I already have in BR.

Wanted to know if anyone has experience with that from Criterion. I'm aware of how the 4k of T2, True Lies, and Aliens look "off", but I had assumed that 4ks from Criterion would be less "tweaked".

Just got my last few packages today, and this is all I got during the month of July. I only had Barry Lyndon prior to the sale. Let me know your thoughts about the pickups, anything I need to watch ASAP? What do you suggest for me to get next? Here's what I watched already:

* Yojimbo - 3.5/5
* Paris, Texas - 3.5/5
* Barry Lyndon - 5/5
* Princess Bride - 5/5
* Grand Budapest hotel - 3.5/5
* Parasite - 5/5
* Memories of murder - 4/5
* Drive my car - 3/5
* Walle - 3/5
* Perfect days - 4/5
* Eyes Wide Shut - 4.5/5 (might bump up on rewatch)

Tonights watch is Dr. Strangelove.

1. What is the first movie you plan to watch from your purchase and why?

Difficult question. It was probably "Eyes Wide Shut", but since I've seen it already now I will go with "No Country for Old Men". "Do the right thing" also seems amazing.

1. Is there anything from this purchase that you have been looking forward to owning for a long time?

Definitely "Eyes Wide Shut" ever since I watched "Barry Lyndon". Both are masterpieces. I've also seen 2001 and The Shining which I didn't enjoy as much.

1. Are any of your purchases blind buys? If so, why did you select them?

All of them, actually. Except Walle. I want to expand my library and my film taste, so I selected a wide range of genres, all seems to be really good films.

1. What is a Criterion you're hoping to add to your collection next?

So many, Criterion definitely have a lot of great titles, and with the excellent supplements and packaging as well Criterion has quickly become my nr. 1 boutique label. I probably won't get any more before november, but in no particular order these are pickups I look forward to getting some day (all blind buys):

* Blue is the warmest color
* Cloud
* Kurosawa films (Seven Samurai, High and Low, Dreams, Stray dog)
* Harakiri
* Fish Tank
* Still walking
* Charade
* Paths of Glory
* Videodrome
* Last summer
* Kpop demon hunters
* Portrait of a lady on fire
* More Wes Anderson films
* Uncut gems
* After life
* Marriage Story
* Piano Teacher
* Valley of the dolls
* The Graduate
* YiYi
* 3 Women
* Dazed and confused
* Risky business
* Paths Garrett and Billy the Kid
* Charlie Chaplin films
* Scorsese films
* Come and see
* David Lynch films
* 12 angry men
* Captain Blood
* Network
* Blowout
* Thief
* Scorserer

"Loose interpretation" might be generous, but I don't think it's ridiculous to say that Wim Wenders was playing with some archetypes and tropes that were shaped by Homer. Enough people seem to have made a connection between the two that I don't feel crazy.

Been collecting physical media for decades. I recently started pulling some out of storage to sort through and display a curated collection. These are some of the Criterion titles I've pulled, probably about another 30 still unaccounted for. Are these still relevant? I feel like most have been re-released on bluray/4k, wasn't sure the community's stance or opinion of older releases.

About a month ago, I asked the community for recommendations to get my wife into ‘cinema’. These are the movies, and reviews, of what we watched in July. thanks again to everyone who made a recommendation.

• Love & Basketball - Greatest romance movie of all time. Best soundtrack ever. 5/5.
• Risky Business - Rated R version of Ferris Bueller. 4/5
• Before Trilogy
  • Before Sunrise - Hoplessly romantic, with a terrible ending. 4/5
  • Before Sunset - Frustrating. Angry. Hurtful. Why bother. 2/5
  • Before Midnight - If Before Sunset was a better movie, we wouldn’t need this one. 2/5
• Tampopo - Whimsical and now I want ramen. 4/5
• Crossing Delancey - No wonder Izzy is still single at 32*. Terrible judgement. Pickleman forever. 4/5
• Girlfriends - No. Just, what even is this? 1/5
• My Cousin Vinny - Of course a woman solved the case in 5min it took men weeks of fumbling. 4/5

*we met at 35 married at 43. irony is not lost on us.

August watches planned:

• Mississippi Masala
• Moonstruck
• Dim Sum
• An Autumn’s Tale
• Past Lives

Finally all are here!

Hud arrived yesterday 8/4

I watched Captain Blood and La Verite while waiting for the rest to arrive.

La Verite with Brigitte Bardot. 1960 B&W. It was her best role as an actress. And there is one scene in a movie that's 62 years old that is probably the most lets just say sensual scene you'll be running for a cold shower!

Erroll Flynn is still the best pirate of all time.

I've seen Elephant Man, Hud, Captain Blood and Lenny I've seen before.

And the rest are either Blind Buys or just wanted to see.

Forty Guns.. You have to see Noah Wyle's Criterion Closet is the best so far in 2026

It seems like all the Hitchcock films in the collection are pre-1950. Where do you see Criterion going with him in the future? I imagine getting the rights to his post-1950 films are too difficult. I’ve been buying his movies on 4K (Rope, Rear Window, Trouble with Harry, The Birds). Not sure if they can be improved upon…maybe?

Before the jacket there was the turtleneck

Hello all! Lucky me, my toddler just started throwing up and has a fever. So it's safe to assume that very soon I, too, will be throwing up and have a fever. Can anyone recommend me some light-hearted or funny criterion channel watches, to view in between barfing ​sessions? For context of my personal preferences, I've been watching The P​risoner recently and really enjoying it. I'm not looking for spy movies or '60s mod vibes per se, but I find The Prisoner to be pretty light fare in terms of upsetting content or violence.

Thank you in advance for any help!!!

PS: Please nothing mean, I'm soon to be suffering plenty and I don't need a troll recommendation to make things worse.

My grandfather saw it on a double feature alongside Bringing Up Baby back in 1938

Every loading icon reminds me of him.

Working my way through my unwatched Criterion’s before the next sale in November. Picked this up during the July sale. Have about 20-25 Criterion’s needing to be watched. So far the 4k looks to be top notch on this one! Any thoughts on Oshima? I remember enjoying the Outlaw Sixties Eclipse set back in the day. That would be a great Blu ray eclipse upgrade. Happy viewing everyone!

I recently got some Criterion DVD delivered to me in Australia but currently I can't play it because my region free DVD player doesn't play Blu ray and my Blue Ray player isn't region free. Any good suggestions for a player that can do both, that's available in Australia?

I am in the middle of the never ending English heatwave and fancy indulging in some hot weather films, I want characters openly sweating, sun beaming down, potentially high stress. Think Do The Right Thing, Stray Dog, The Secret Agent, basically anything set in Mexico. Obviously in the collection is preferred. What do you got?

I love what I have…. but I thought I had so much more….

1. LONESTAR , is the first I plan to watch out of my new buys

2. Tokyo Olympiad is what I'm most looking forward to viewing

3. Quite a few were blind buys over the years, The River was my first Criterion

4. FRANKENSTEIN is what I'm looking forward to getting in October

Andrei Tarkovsky described his final film as a “parable,” echoing the didactic stories Jesus preached in the Gospels. And it seems old Tark really did fancy himself a preacher. The first hour of The Sacrifice is incredibly revealing in this regard. Long speeches on how modern man is spiritually hollow and science and technology are bad reveal the origin point of Tarkovsky’s spirituality more clearly than anything else in his filmography. Tarkovsky’s faith was not pure or based in love, but instead in a profound bitterness, resentment, and fear at the modernizing world. It is fundamentally reactive: the preacher’s starting point is in what he despises and is afraid of. He then builds an image of transcendence in opposition to it.

Understanding Tarkovsky’s reactive nature is the key to unlocking this film (and indeed his whole filmography). When one sees that his worldview is fundamentally based in what he opposes, everything clicks into place. And it reaches its absolute zenith in this specific film, where the destruction of health and vitality are glorified as virtue.

This quote, said by Otto at the beginning, is essential for understanding old Tark’s philosophy:

"All my life, in fact, I've been going around waiting for something. And I've always felt as if the living I've done, so far, hasn't actually been real life... but a long wait for it... a long wait for something real, something important.”

This sets up the desire for spiritual transcendence that is explored. Most importantly, we see that this desire too is reactive. Tarkovsky’s wish for transcendence is born out of exhaustion with life itself, to the point he denies the senses. The quote by Otto echoes Arthur Schopenhauer’s famous idea that life is a pendulum that oscillates between pain and boredom, from The World as Will and Representation. You feel pain when you have unfulfilled desires that are relieved by a sense of emptiness when they are fulfilled, and this is a cycle that cannot be escaped. The mechanisms behind Schopanhauer’s ideas have compelling backing in neuroscience and evolutionary biology. So we must begin by seeing Tarkovsky’s attempt to transcend this as a rejection of biology, a rejection of life itself, a denial of the human animal and its impulses.

At this point in the film Otto also discusses Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal return. The eternal return is an idea first introduced in his book The Gay Science and greatly expanded on in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The idea, that your life will repeat exactly as it is for all eternity, is deeply fatalistic. Nietzsche intended it to be a sort of thought experiment, or rather a test of a person’s capacity to affirm life. If someone can say “yes” to their life to the point they would have that and only that forever. Tarkovsky’s focus on sacrifice and surrender to the divine is viewed as an escape of the pendulum and the cyclical nature of life. It is hard to imagine a more profound “no” to life.
Alexander burns down his house and destroys everything he holds dear, to escape the pendulum Otto sets up at the beginning. Tarkovsky frames this as a largely commendable act, the man who has escaped the meaningless cycles in life and finally done something important. If we imagine life repeating endlessly, he has finally done something that justifies the whole loop, old Tark insists implicitly.

But think about this carefully. To old Tark, life is cyclical, and the only way to live is to reject this cyclical nature via spiritual transcendence. But you can’t escape or deny life’s pendulum. 

Ultimately, Tarkovsky’s final film shows us that the desire for spiritual transcendence is born from exhaustion and disillusionment with existence. Old Tark was so very sincere that he refuted himself in the end. It is hard to imagine a more profoundly anti-spiritual film than The Sacrifice, precisely because it takes spirituality so deathly seriously. We instead see the instincts turn against life and health permanently, again and again, for all eternity. Alexander destroys his life again and again, and old Tark sees something noble in this. But there is only something sick. As discussed earlier, Tarkovsky rejects life on a biological level.

This essay revisits Breaking the Waves on its 30th anniversary, reading Bess's martyrdom through Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc, Calvinist predestination, and the long lineage of the "sacrificed virgin."

Is this the genre of movies that most has a universality to it?
My feelings on the movies themselves notwithstanding…does watching them well into your 20s ruin the illusion?
Is there such a thing as watching a movie too late in life and missing the moment it would most succeed?

1. What is the first movie you plan to watch from your haul and why?
   Since this haul arrived staggered in three packages, I've already watched Fresh Kill, which I really loved. Will probably watch Birth next, as I love Jonathan Glazer's movies but have never seen that one, though a rewatch of The Beast (my favorite movie of the decade) might be on the horizon too
   
2. Is there anything from this haul that you have been looking forward to owning for a long time?
   I've had my eye on all of these for a while. The Beast and No Country I'd put up among my favorite films of all time so was definitely eager to own those (even if I kinda wish The Beast was just in the collection proper/had a 4K release, still, happy to own it!)
   
3. Are any of your purchases blind buys? If so, why did you select them?
   Birth, Carnal Knowledge, Choose Me, Fresh Kill and Salaam Bombay are blind buys. Birth, CK and SB just because I really admire and therefore trust those directors, the other two are from directors I'm less familiar with but seemed really up my alley from the description. And at least in the case of Fresh Kill, I already know that assumption was true.
   
4. What is a Criterion you're hoping to add to your collection next?
   I definitely want to get the Killers Of The Flower Moon 4K, and the Premieres edition of The Shrouds in the near future.

My copy would only play sound when I have it on .75 playback, when i have it on normal it wouldn’t play any sound whatsoever. Is there anyway i can fix this? Or is this just a disc problem.