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, December 2023:
Days of Heaven
Year: 1978
Director: Terrence Malick
Stars: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz
Genre: Romance
Terrence Malick recreated the biblical story of Abraham and Sarah as an American myth as large as the southwest it’s supposed to take place in. One of the most immediately noticeable aspects of the film is its stunning cinematography. Following the tradition of the French New Wave and other independent American pictures from the ‘70s, director of photography Nestor Almendros rejected artificial lighting as much as he felt he could and the result is a picture that feels like nothing else from the period. With Badlands Malick found out how to make a film, but it was with Days of Heaven that he found his mature style, and since then he’s used the same elliptical, minimalist storytelling and improvised scenes in everything he’s done.—Sean Gandert
Blast of Silence
Year: 1978
Director: Allen Baron
Stars: Allen Baron, Molly McCarthy, Larry Tucker, Peter H. Clune
Genre: Drama, Crime
Narrated by the bumpy-road voice of Lionel Stander, Blast of Silence is a Christmas kick in the teeth. A grim, processional, assassin-centered noir that marches headlong towards death, Allen Baron’s quick-and-dirty thriller nearly has the talky radio cadence of A Christmas Story, if the holiday classic was on trial for murder. Baron — who co-wrote, directed and starred — has complete control of his 70-minute blitz, walking ever forward as his character eyes his latest target. Even when the film pauses for an uncomfortable amount of bongo music, tension mounts as if it was being played on a human skull. It takes a lot of work to make a fight look this sloppy, to make a party this awkward, to make a date this off-putting. Phenomenally lonely compositions stand out even in this stylish piece of work, isolating human figures in urban waste, birds above water, and light at the end of a tunnel. The repeated signs of “danger signals” warn us away from the standard plot progression, dire and inevitable. As bold as it is brash, Blast of Silence is a brick through the window of an already busted genre.—Jacob Oller
The Red Balloon
Year: 1956
Director: Albert Lamorisse
Stars: Pascal Lamorisse
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Pascal Lamorisse holds in his hand the reddest thing to have ever been captured on film. The balloon of his father Albert’s Oscar-winning film is a brilliant crimson supernova in a grayed-out Paris. Bouncing around in the breeze, reflecting off of wet cobblestones, the balloon is everything a childhood can be. And that’s before it starts following him around, an imaginary friend and art piece all at once. Mostly silent, its silliness bolstered by a buoyant score, The Red Balloon has the magic, elegance and universality of a live-action cartoon. Bullies, young love, the structures of day-to-day life — it’s all captured during a half-hour day trip with a bright ruby prize. The elder Lamorisse shoots the film with a bevy of visual tricks, and in medium shots that give both the child and, funnily, the balloon more agency than you’d expect. City kids are rowdy little adults, but they’re also imaginative, limber little monkeys. Cruelty and innocence translate easily with these urban ragamuffins as your language, ending in a simple and stunning finale for all ages.—Jacob Oller
Bim, The Little Donkey
Year: 1951
Director: Albert Lamorisse
Stars: Jacques Prévert, Udo Langhoff
Genre: Drama
Never work with children or animals, they say. Albert Lamorisse chucked the rules out the window in his first short narrative, Bim, The Little Donkey. A tale of a nice poor boy and a rich little jerk, who learn to come together to rescue the impoverished lad’s pet donkey from adult bandits, Bim is classical children’s filmmaking done the hard way. Kids are jumping out of boats and climbing walls, animals are being painted and dragged around. The effect is like a picture book come to life. That transition can be both magical and off-putting — some things, like the treatment of baby donkeys, you don’t have to think about when they’re just words on a page. But the rollicking affair starts Lamorisse’s lifelong relationship with his obsessions: Children, animals, fable-like morality and filmmaking quiet enough to let the images speak volumes.—Jacob Oller
White Mane
Year: 1953
Director: Albert Lamorisse
Stars: Alain Emery
Genre: Action, Fantasy
An ostensibly eco-friendly fable from Albert Lamorisse, White Mane alternates between naturalistic scenes of horse-wrangling and ethereal, nearly heavenly images of natural co-existence. A quiet adventure through the marsh, White Mane speaks to natural beauty and the lost, clear-eyed ethics of youth. As a beautiful stallion evades the cowboys trying to break it, a young boy watches the chases, races, and honestly shocking acts of horse-on-horse violence in awe. Those horses really bite the hell out of each other. Lamorisse’s action-centric framing, impressive animal photography, and startling stunts keep things exciting while the simple tale unfolds. Kindness wins out the day, cruelty fails. Though, the animals at hand get so clearly brutalized during production that it’s hard to completely buy this kiddie story completely. Also: The horse and the kid have the same hair! Adorable.—Jacob Oller
Stowaway in the Sky
Year: 1960
Director: Albert Lamorisse
Stars: Pascal Lamorisse
Genre: Drama
Combining his fairy-tale aesthetic with the imagery of The Red Balloon (and the filmmaker’s own son in a starring role), Albert Lamorisse’s Stowaway in the Sky looks down upon herds of wild animals, sailing ships, mountaintops, and urban balconies — all from the magical vantage of a technological marvel. Lamorisse’s first feature barely has a plot aside from “aeronauts float around France,” but there is the slightest amount of science fiction to their work. The balloon can travel in all directions and uses a special machine to continue its flight. The cinematography, widescreen and shot in beautiful “Hélivision” (a technique Lamorisse developed for aerial photography), is staggering in its beauty and innovation. The goings-on of the film…well, they are light and often silly, and remind us of Lamorisse’s fixations. He views the natural world with awe, and appreciates it all the more when he can see it from an angle that so few people have. An existential ending, coupled with Jack Lemmon’s voiceover in the American version (he loved the film and bought the U.S. rights), bring the picture down to earth, but Stowaway in the Sky‘s spirt is better captured by the brave stunts of performer Maurice Baquet — who also drives below the balloon chomping a gigantic sandwich right off his dashboard.—Jacob Oller
Circus Angel
Year: 1965
Director: Albert Lamorisse
Stars: Philippe Avron
Genre: Fantasy
Fascinating practical effects combine with filmmaker Albert Lamorisse’s preoccupation with flight (and a whole lot of French comedy) in Circus Angel, Lamorisse’s final feature. Philippe Avron plays a petty thief who screws up a watch robbery, only to find himself — through a series of shenanigans — strapped into a set of working angel wings as part of a circus act. Naturally, a horny little rascal like him puts these wings (and this new angelic identity) to amoral use, but it all works out in the end. He even gets the girl! Lamorisse is more skilled with child actors than adults; grown-ups come across a little creepy in these simple performances, though children can transcend this into blissful elegance. A circus love triangle runs headlong into various good deeds the angel-conman tries to accomplish, and broad humor runs amok. Clocks are stolen, as are kisses, and nuns are tricked. The tone is all over the place, and the whole film is nearly free from the wonder commonly associated with Lamorisse’s work. But then Avron spreads his wings and tilts his way through some impressive wire work. You’ll believe a man can fly…even if you don’t believe the story he’s in.—Jacob Oller
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Year: 2022
Director: Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson
Stars: Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Ron Perlman, Finn Wolfhard, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett
Genre: Animated, Fantasy
Guillermo del Toro has never shied away from infusing the harsh realities of life and death into the journeys of his young protagonists. His fascination with the intersections of childhood innocence and macabre whimsy are what make him the ideal co-director of Netflix’s newest Pinocchio adaptation, a work that marvelously marries the filmmaker’s flair for dark fantasy with the equally strange fairy tale elements of Carlo Collodi’s 1883 The Adventures of Pinocchio. Like all successful marriages, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio brings out the very best of both parties. The stop-motion musical is an artistic triumph that colors Collodi’s cherished storybook characters with humanity and depth to craft a mature tale about rebellion, mortality and the love between a parent and child. This rendition marks the 22nd film adaptation of the Italian novel, and while it remains true to the grisly nature of Collodi’s original stories, it boldly departs from its dated moral lessons. In The Adventures of Pinocchio (and notable renditions thereafter), Pinnochio’s many escapades are structured as cause-and-effect narratives that serve to caution children against defiant behavior. In Disney’s 1940 animated feature, an evening of fun and relaxation on “Pleasure Island” nearly turns the wooden boy into a salt-mining donkey. In the original serial La Storia di un Burattino, delinquent behavior leads him to a gruesome death. These values of compliance and servility are reversed by del Toro’s fascist setting. In his Pinocchio, disobedience is a virtue—not a crime. These moral examinations are given a sense of urgency in death—a theme that informs so much of the film’s mind and soul. Where previous adaptations are preoccupied with life—with the puppet’s extraordinary consciousness and the hope that he may someday become a “real boy”—del Toro’s Pinocchio is interested in what our mortality can teach us about being human. In the film, death is never too far away from the protagonist or his loved ones. Death touches Carlo, then remains close to Pinocchio throughout his epic journey. The beauty of del Toro’s Pinocchio is that death isn’t treated with the usual dread and cynicism we typically see in the Western world. Here, death is mysterious, ethereal, soaked in gorgeous blue light. Death is not something to be feared, but respected and accepted when the time comes, because the notion that we will someday—maybe unexpectedly—leave this earth is what makes our time here so beautiful. I don’t typically advise listening to crickets, but believe Sebastian J., because the story of Pinocchio has never been told quite like this.–Kathy Michelle Chacón