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Criterion Collection


Maria sat on a fence

Andrei Tarkovsky is without doubt the greatest Russian filmmaker of all time. He’s certainly the first name that comes to mind when discussing the movies of the Motherland. Despite making less than ten films in a career which spanned three decades, he left an indelible mark on the history of world cinema. Whilst the likes …

Harry Powell's tough love

Charles Laughton was arguably the greatest actor of his generation. He was definitely one of the most recognisable. A huge screen and stage presence, he won the Academy Award for his performance in Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII. He was also magnificent in the likes of Mutiny on the Bounty, The Big …

Mr Prentice and the unhappy couple

Between 1927 and 1943, the year when she retired from feature filmmaking, Dorothy Arzner was the only female film director working in Hollywood. While the situation isn’t exactly perfect now, it was a whole lot worse as we entered the epoch of ‘talkies’. She made twenty films over that period and launched the careers of …

A busy scene with a popular host

Hou Hsiao-Hsien is arguably the greatest Taiwanese filmmaker of all time. He’s definitely the director who has had the most influence on a global scale, especially during the 1980s and 1990s, striving to tell tales of his homeland. This focus won him the Golden Lion at Venice for City of Sadness. He’s made many remarkable …

Madelaine

By the midway point of the 1960s Jean-Luc Godard was arguably at the peak of his powers. After the success of À bout de souffle, Bande à part, Alphaville and Pierrot le Fou he was one of the most sought-after directors in Europe. Whilst his work had always been political, The Vietnam War and the …

Stacy and Linda at work

Nowadays, the teen coming-of-age comedy is almost part of the cinematic furniture. However, this has not always been the case. They exploded in popularity around the turn of the century with the likes of American Pie, Superbad, Clueless and Mean Girls becoming firm favourites for several generations of cinemagoers. Back at the beginning of the …

Charulata

Indian cinema is often dismissed, on the world stage, as nothing more than simply Bollywood. This does a huge disservice to a diverse and rich film industry which caters for millions of people, spanning serval languages across the country, and beyond. The great Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray is considered by most to be the nation’s …

Daniel and Julie at dinner

As humans, we spend a disproportionate amount of time contemplating our own mortality. Sometimes at the expense of actually ‘living’. This inquisitiveness often centres on what happens after we depart this mortal coil. Is that it or is there something else? Life after death. Reincarnation. Heaven and Hell. Indeed, the concept of an eternal life …

David and Linda in their motor home

Most of us spend much of our lives working, often in grey office blocks in some soulless and essentially pointless white-collar profession. Doing much the same thing, day in, day out. Never really making enough money to do much more than take a holiday every year. Maybe buy a house, start a family. Some people …

Tatsuya Nakadai was one of the best known and most celebrated Japanese actors of his era. He’s probably best known for his partnership with director Masaki Kobayashi, for whom he starred in The Human Condition trilogy, Samurai Rebellion, Kwaidan and many others. However, he also worked with most of the generation’s greatest filmmakers from the …