My favorites are Solaris, Passion of Joan of Arc, Notorious, Do the Right Thing and Throne Of Blood. I think there's really too many, I love so many of their releases.

I agree with the Netflix idea - can try everything before you buy - will save you a bunch of money in the long run. That said, Criterion films have always made interesting viewing, even if I didn't "get" or like them.

Some directors to watch: Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Tati, Gilliam, Lean

Some of my favorites: The Seventh Seal, Sid and Nancy, Seven Samurai, Walkabout, Time Bandits, Life of Brian.

Oh, where to start. Almost across the board, the movies are great. Of course, different tastes will cause different favorites.
For me though, I would check out:

Kurosawa - Particularly The Seven Samurai, but any really. My other favorites are The Hidden Fortress and High and Low.

Powell & Pressburger - Again, they are all great, but my favorites are Black Narcissus (Ravishingly beautiful) and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

Carne - Only 1 in the collection so far, but it is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen - Children of Paradise.

Hitchcock - As for Hitch, probably the essentials are the recently out-of-print Notorious and Rebecca.

Bergman - My favorites are The Seventh Seal and particularly, Wild Strawberries.

Samuel Fuller - All 3 are crackerjack melodramas, but my favorite is the loopy Shock Corridor, followed by the noir Pickup on South St.

Fellini - Excellent films all, but particularly the more neorealist pictures La Strada and Nights of Cabiria.

Peckinpah - Straw Dogs is essential. It is brutal, so be warned, but is an amazing film. Definately his best/my favorite right along with The Wild Bunch.

Tati - Breezy, gently slapstick and I find M. Hulot's Holiday wonderful.

I could go on and on, but I will mention only 3 more that caught me by suprise in the past year.

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum is fantastic

Hiroshima mon Amour seemed like it would be pretentious, but I ended up loving it. A true masterpiece.

Maitresse didn't really interest me that much, but I ended up loving it when I rented it.

Oh, I lied, as I would be negligent without compelling you to pick up one of the best releases of last year - Truffaut's The Adventures of Antoine Doinel.

Anyway, some of the other members are probably right about renting them first, because you never know what you might like or what you might not.

Beware, though, of By Brakhage and Jubilee. These are very avant garde and seem more polarizing than many other titles. You may love them though.

Thanks for everyone offering suggestions, recommendations, and for those who are reading this thread. So far, I've picked up 8 1/2, In the Mood for Love, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Band of Outsiders. I'll chime in with my thoughts once I get the chance to view them.

Preorder Slacker.

Preorder Battle of Algiers.

Four Samurai Kurosawa set vs. The Adventures Of Antoine Doinel

Which one would you choose?

Shouldn't even be a choice. A no brainer for the Kurosawa set. If you love film at all, the movies are beyond entertaining. The Doinel set is very acquired taste.

I'd choose the Doinel set first. To each their own.

Another vote for the Kurosawa set. I'd have bought it if I hadn't already bought all the discs individually.

As much as I love The 400 Blows, and the Doinel box set as a concept, I would say that the Akira Kurosawa: Four Samurai Classics gift pack has more re-watch-ability (particularly since the Doinel films declined in quality with each new installment). Besides, The Hidden Fortress is probably my favorite Kurosawa (and Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai are close behind)--there's not a dog in the bunch.

The only reason not to get the Kurosawa pack is the distinct possibility that Criterion will release an improved 2-disc edition of The Seven Samurai within the next year, and that we will eventually see anamorphic re-releases of both Yojimbo and Sanjuro down the line (with extra features).

Note that the Kurosawa pack is not a true "box set" by Criterion's standards: it's just a discounted packaging of the four separate releases in a lightweight disposable sleeve. The Doinel is a beautifully-designed, perfectly integrated 5-disc box set (with an exhaustive booklet, and the discs housed in individual Digipaks).

Beastie Boys Anthology
Picnic at Hanging Rock (moody, near bloodless, horror)
For All Mankind (if you've ever in your life looked at the stars and just wondered, this is an absolute buy)

Everybody sure has their own personal favorites. I'm hardly seeing any repeats

<b>THE THIRD MAN</b> - one of my personal "top 10 of all time" movies in a stunningly crisp black-and-white transfer. Orson Welles is mesmerizing and that zither music will haunt you for days!

Let me second the recommendation to preorder Battle of Algiers - it looks to be in the running to best release in the entire collection.

I'd also suggest Le Cercle Rouge - perhaps the "coolest" film i've ever seen. In french, but highly accessible crime caper drama. Rififi is also a must.

nonametofame- glad to see you snagged the Straw Dogs in the Treasure Hunt thread!

The Kurosawa set. While I was impressed with the 400 Blows, the rest of the box set was less than stellar.

Continuing my criterion dvd acquisitions with

Contempt & Le Cercle Rouge

For fear of being stoned to death in this forum, I love the CC of Armageddon. Great transfer and a fun movie.


Ok, now back to your regularly scheduled love affair of foreign movies....

It is non-anamorphic which is an issue if you have a widescreen TV.

why does everyone make such a big deal out of cirterions ???

90% of their widescreen format movies are NON-ANAMORPHIC and therefore seriously FLAWED in my view. how can any true film buff prefer a criterion to a proper anamorphic transfer.

while i do conceed the point that the criterions are very richly enhanced with extras. extras cannot outway a proper transfer.

let the opinions fly

T

Can you give a source for the 90 percent figure? I tried searching Criterion's Web site, but they don't seem to have a function for searching for anamorphic vs. non-anamorphic.

I have a hard time believing the 90 percent figure though. Criterion's been releasing anamorphic DVDs for just about as long as all the studios have been, and they've released many widescreen movies in that time. It's just that many of the old non-anamorphic DVDs have not been rereleased as anamorphic. (At least one, "Charade," has been though.)

Of course, the anamorphic thing is a moot point to those people without widescreen TVs (or other TVs with anamorphic mode) anyhow. It's also irrelevant to all the Criterion movies that aren't widescreen, which accounts for a huge chunk of their collection.

There are reasons to criticize Criterion, I just don't know that this is one of them...

You may want to buy a better calculator... it's alot less than 90%.

Here are the widescreen Criterion DVDs which are non-anamorphic:

4 Amarcord
7 Night To Remember, A
8 Killer, The
9 Hard Boiled
10 Walkabout
12 This Is Spinal Tap
13 Silence Of The Lambs, The
17 Salò
18 Naked Kiss
19 Shock Corridor
20 Sid & Nancy
21 Dead Ringers
23 Robocop
24 High And Low
26 Long Good Friday, The
27 Flesh For Frankenstein
28 Blood For Dracula
29 Picnic At Hanging Rock
34 Andrei Rublev
37 Time Bandits
38 Branded To Kill
39 Tokyo Drifter
40 Armageddon
45 Taste Of Cherry
50 And The Ship Sails On
51 Brazil
52 Yojimbo
53 Sanjuro
57 Charade
59 Night Porter, The
60 Autumn Sonata
73 Cleo From 5 To 7
74 Vagabond
83 Harder They Come, The
119 Withnail And I
120 How To Get Ahead In Advertising
128 My Métier

And if you're really a fan of film, you'll take a good film in a non-anamorphic DVD over a bad film in an anamorphic DVD everytime.

Define "distinct possibility"

Lines of evidence:

1. In June, the trustworthy DVD Times posted a 'rumour' that a CC re-release of Seven Samurai was expected "in the coming months." I don't give that rumour much credence though.

2. More importantly, Lee Kline, the Director of Technical Development for the Criterion Collection, said the following in a February Chat at HTF:
3. Since the original DVD was released, Criterion has commissioned Linda Hoagland to translate new subtitles for a number of Kurosawa films, including Seven Samurai.

4. The superior R2 Japanese release from Toho (no English subtitles) indicates that there is room for improvement in the picture quality.

So, if I tally it all up, it still looks like a "distinct possibility" to me ...