Each month, Paste brings you a look at the best new selections from the Criterion Collection. Much beloved by casual fans and cinephiles alike, Criterion has presented special editions of important classic and contemporary films for over three decades. You can explore the complete collection here.
In the meantime, because chances are you may be looking for something, anything, to discover, find all of our Criterion picks here, and if you’d rather dig into things on the streaming side (because who’s got the money to invest in all these beautiful physical editions?) we’ve got our list of the best films on the Criterion Channel. But you’re here for what’s new, and we’ve got you covered.
Here are all the new releases from Criterion, April 2023:
The Seventh SealYear: 1957
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Stars: Max von Sydow, Inga Landgré, Gunnar Björnstrand
Runtime: 96 minutes
Like any cultural touchstone, any ubiquitous landmark of the arts more mitotically absorbed than actually experienced, The Seventh Seal is bound to be misremembered. We know well the chess game with Death (Bengt Ekerot), as well as Death’s get-up—a sort of gothic mix between Musketeer and monk—etched into the firmament of our pop obsessions (for most my age, it was in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey that the bone-white face and cape were first encountered), even if we’ve never actually seen the film. We know well the name of director Ingmar Bergman or that of star Max von Sydow (recently in Force Awakens), even if we aren’t familiar with their work, so ingrained into any working conception of “international cinema” are they, much of which is due to The Seventh Seal. We know well the dour chiaroscuro of Swedish cinema, the arch-symbolic pretension of art house stuff that squeezes all mirth from every orifice of the viewer. But do we forget how little of this movie is the chess game—how dimwitted Death can be? How funny The Seventh Seal actually is? “Is it so cruelly inconceivable to grasp God with the senses?” asks knight Antonius Block (von Sydow). “What is going to happen to those of us who want to believe but aren’t able to?” With The Seventh Seal, a simple story about a jaded knight returning from the Crusades to find that the world he fought for has seemingly been abandoned by God, Bergman sought clarity in the problem of faith—he wanted to map the vast spiritual terrain between experiencing and knowing, between feeling and believing. The reason why today the film still resonates, why we know the movie without having to experience it, is because of that clarity in Bergman’s vision: The Seventh Seal is all symbol, metaphor, allusion—but what it’s symbolic of, a metaphor for or alluding to isn’t too hard for any of us to figure. When the knight asks a question, God answers with silence—and there’s little humans understand better than how that feels. —Dom Sinacola
The Fisher KingYear: 1991
Director: Terry Gilliam
Stars: Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, Mercedes Ruehl, Amanda Plummer, Michael Jeter
Rating: R
Runtime: 137 minutes
Terry Gilliam may be best known for his completely inimitable style. Tune in to a Gilliam flick even halfway through and you’ll recognize his signature repertoire of angles—low, high, and Dutch—as well as his love of rectilinear lenses and his meticulously stylized mise en scène. With The Fisher King, though, his distinct aesthetic was transplanted from realms imagined to the far more familiar backdrop of Manhattan, where shock jock Jack Lucas falls from grace after an on-air rant leads an impressionable listener to commit mass murder. Jack is given a chance at redemption when he meets Parry, a delusional vagrant questing for the Holy Grail whose wife died in that aforementioned shooting spree; they bond, and Jack sets out to help Parry score a date with his distant crush, Lydia. The Fisher King wrestles with Brazil for the title of “best Gilliam film,” but it’s almost undoubtedly the most refined entry in his body of work, a contemporary epic that truly lives up to the meaning of the word. Come for Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams, stay for the Gilliam commentary track. —Andrew Crump
Small Axe: Alex WheatleYear: 2020
Director: Steve McQueen
Stars: Sheyi Cole, Robbie Gee, Johann Myers
Rating: NR
Runtime: 65 minutes
Alex Wheatle is a coming of age story based on the early life of the eponymous award-winning YA author and is the penultimate film of McQueen’s Small Axe collection. Set in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, we follow Alex from his childhood in an orphanage of Dickensian cruelty to his Brixton youth, where he connects with his Blackness, to his being nurtured by a paternalistic Rastafarian cellmate in prison. Alex Wheatle is accomplished and devastating, with dynamic cinematography, a phenomenal soundtrack and a heartbreaking central debut performance from Sheyi Cole. In many ways, it feels like a melding of the other four Small Axe films: The systemic racism of Mangrove, the musical escapism of Lover’s Rock, the daddy issues of Red, White & Blue and the childhood cruelty of Education. But in its thematic overlapping, Alex Wheatle undermines its own significance. It doesn’t have the distinct identity of the other films and, while it’s always a pleasure to watch filmmaking at McQueen’s level, it doesn’t leave a lasting impression.—Leila Latif
Small Axe: Red, White & BlueYear: 2020
Director: Steve McQueen
Stars: John Boyega, Steve Toussaint
Rating: NR
Runtime: 80 minutes
What Red, White & Blue has going for it are two extraordinary performances from John Boyega and Steve Toussaint. Boyega is charming as the fiery and conflicted Leroy Logan, a Black scientist who—following on a racist police attack on his father—decides to join the force to reform it from the inside. His father is played with equally compelling ferocity and dignity by Toussaint. There is so much to love in this film, as McQueen leans into his skill at suspense—ratcheting up the tension with incomparable style—and brings out performances that are able to convey so much without saying a word. However, the script doesn’t match the rest of the film, with clunky exposition and uncharacteristic sentimentality weighing down the actors. At its core, Red, White & Blue is not about police reform. In fact almost all of Logan’s fascinating career accomplishments take place long after the film’s credits roll. Rather, Red, White & Blue is focused on a complicated father/son relationship. Viewed through that lens (and likely through the lens of your own specific paternal hang ups) it soars.—Leila Latif
Small Axe: EducationYear: 2020
Director: Steve McQueen
Stars: Kenyah Sandy, Sharlene Whyte, Tamara Lawrance, Naomi Ackie
Rating: NR
Runtime: 80 minutes
Education is McQueen’s most personal and tender work, focused on the education of Black children in the 1970s. McQueen, now broadly recognized as a creative genius, was repeatedly told as a child by his teachers that he would never be capable of doing more than basic manual labor. In Education, he reopens those old wounds through Kingsley, a bright young boy who dreams of being an astronaut. Thanks to institutional racism and undiagnosed dyslexia, Kingsley is sent to a “special school” where he is placed alongside white children with intense and apparent learning disorders and other Black children who have no discernible reason for being there. Of all the films he has made, this one is scrubbed clean of most of McQueen’s stylistic signatures: The whole thing resembles a film actually made in the 1970s rather than a modern film in a ‘70s setting. By making a film rooted in his own memories, McQueen entirely transports us there. The film’s heroines are based on the real-life Black activists who fought for West Indian children’s futures and created the Saturday schools that nurtured McQueen. Education serves both as a beautiful tribute to their achievements across the community and in recognizing the talents of one of Britain’s most gifted artistic visionaries.—Leila Latif
Small Axe: Lovers RockYear: 2020
Director: Steve McQueen
Stars: Micheal Ward, Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn, Kedar Williams-Stirling, Shaniqua Okwok
Rating: NR
Runtime: 70 minutes
In Lovers Rock, McQueen untethers himself from a conventional narrative and leans into style, movement and feeling set over the course of a single house party in Notting Hill—an area of London that (in 1980) was largely populated by the West Indian community, but has since become one of the most expensive neighborhoods on the planet. This film is based generally on the parties the Black community held for themselves, as they were not welcome in London’s bars and nightclubs at the time. At the center of this film are Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn), a middle-class British Christian with Jamaican roots and the dreamy code-switching mechanic Franklyn (Micheal Ward). Released in a time of quarantines and social distances, the film had a rapturous reception, bringing a warmth into our homes and a longing to return to an evening of such possibilities. A single scene where the dance floor sings along to “Silly Games” by Janet Kay is McQueen at his greatest and most joyful, transporting the audience into a giddy hypnotic ecstasy. In many ways Lovers Rock is McQueen’s smallest film, but may end up being his most beloved.—Leila Latif
Small Axe: MangroveYear: 2020
Director: Steve McQueen
Stars: Letitia Wright, Shaun Parkes, Malachi Kirby, Rochenda Sandall, Alex Jennings, Jack Lowden
Rating: NR
Runtime: 127 minutes
Mangrove is McQueen’s greatest film not only because it is an exceptional piece of filmmaking, but because it shows off virtually every one of McQueen’s strengths. The first half looks at the state-sponsored terrorizing of the Mangrove restaurant, a Notting Hill restaurant opened by Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes) in 1968 that became a hub for the West Indian community and British Black Panthers. After a demonstration protesting the Mangrove’s treatment is swarmed by the racist police force, nine of the participants (including Crichlow himself) are framed for inciting a riot. The second half of the film follows their trial and the toll it takes on them. From start to finish, McQueen fires on all cylinders, shining a light on a largely forgotten piece of history and drawing exceptional performances out of the entire cast (but in particular Parkes and Malachi Kirby). Many of Mangrove’s most beautiful moments, including its climax, hold tight on Parkes’ face and let us experience intense pain, rage, fear, joy and relief through the bottomless wells of his soulful brown eyes. And it is thrilling: The earlier scenes of police, skulking down streets like apex predators, both disturb and terrify. But McQueen is able to accomplish seamless tonal shifts, with those same police officers’ interrogation in a later courtroom scene proving absurd and hilarious. Particular praise must also be given to cinematographer Shabier Kirchner. The use of camera in this film is as unpredictable as it is beautiful, making every moment visceral and riveting. McQueen picks out unusual shots and angles to give every scene the thoughtful composition of a Vermeer. There is a pure poetry to Mangrove, and an implicit footnote: The bravery of these activists will eventually be captured by a Black filmmaker and turned not only into his greatest work (so far), but perhaps the best British film of the decade.—Leila Latif
Triangle of SadnessYear: 2022
Director: Ruben Östlund
Stars: Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Dolly de Leon, Zlatko Buri?, Henrik Dorsin, Vicki Berlin, Woody Harrelson
Rating: R
Runtime: 127 minutes
The title of Ruben Östlund’s film refers to the space between Harris Dickinson’s eyebrows. When his character, fledgling model Carl, appears at an audition, he receives the critique to “relax the triangle of sadness between his eyes.” As the film goes on, however, this little triangle only becomes more dismayed, to the point where the recruiters at Carl’s audition would probably tell him outright he gets Botox rather than simply murmuring the thought to one another where Carl can’t hear them. What begins, seemingly, as a simple critique of the vacuous fashion industry, those who inhabit it and the subtle class differences between them, cascades into an episodic farce in which people ranging from the kind-of-rich like Carl to the super-rich are thrown into an increasingly perilous situation that strips them of their comfortable class privileges. It’s a smug series of uninspired sketches that poke fun at the wealthy in a way that does little to provoke deeper considerations for those most likely to watch it, other than “Yes, I agree with this.” But it’s that kind of “patting one’s back” type satire that allows those in equally powerful positions as the very people being made fun of in the film to hold it up as a paradigm of timely provocation—one only a few rungs higher than last year’ abysmal yet self-satisfied Don’t Look Up. In reality, Triangle of Sadness is neither as smart nor as interesting as it clearly thinks it is. The film manages to stay at least consistently entertaining and interesting to look at (cinematography by Fredrik Wenzel), even if it reaches a certain point where it feels like it will never end. The stand-out attributes of the film are, by far, Dickinson’s performance—dryly funny as he overcompensates for his masculine insecurities—and Dolly de Leon’s sharp turn as Abigail, a lower crewmember aboard the yacht whose brief initial appearance becomes integral to the narrative later on. But the film’s aim to be an intricate, interconnected web of critique on class hierarchies is so bloated and surface-level that it’s difficult to go along with it, even if the series of events it follows are often amusing or even laugh-out-loud. Triangle of Sadness isn’t going for subtlety, but it’s not going for anything particularly novel, either.–Brianna Zigler