Criterion Collection (Firm)
Series
Language
日本語
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Asian American & Pacific Islander Month
Asian American and Pacific Islander Month
MPL Criterion Collection
Asian American and Pacific Islander Month
MPL Criterion Collection
Description
This epic masterpiece is about a group of 16th century samurai who are hired to defend a small Japanese village that finds itself annually raided by an army of bandits who steal the meager crops harvested by the peasants. Tired of relinquishing their food supply but woefully inept in combat skills, the villagers decide to hire a band of samurai to protect them. In addition to the primary conflict between the villagers and the bandits, much of the...
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
In the hands of the renowned experimental theater director Peter Brook, William Golding's legendary novel on the primitivism lurking beneath civilization becomes a film as raw and ragged as the lost boys at its center. Taking an innovative documentary-like approach, Brook shot Lord of The Flies with an off-the-cuff naturalism, seeming to record a spontaneous eruption of its characters' IDs. The result is a rattling masterpiece, as provocative as its...
4) Rashōmon
Series
Language
日本語
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Formats
Description
A riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice, widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife. This eloquent masterwork and international sensation revolutionized film language and introduced Japanese cinema, and a commanding new star.
Series
Language
Français
Description
Dramatized adaptation of the classic fairy tale. Tells the fable of the kindly beast and the self-sacrificing beauty whose love releases the prince in him. Contains such visual displays as tears that become real diamonds and walls that grow arms to light Beauty's path through the castle of the Beast.
11) Hopscotch
Series
Language
English
Description
One of the CIA's top international operatives is suddenly relegated to a desk job in an agency power play. Unwilling to go quietly, and with the aid of a chic Viennese widow, he puts himself back in the game by writing a memoir exposing the innermost secrets of every major intelligence agency in the world. The CIA now wants him dead, but he refuses to cooperate--because he's having too much fun!
Series
Language
Swedish
Description
In medieval Sweden a knight returns from war only to find a ravaged homeland. He meets up with a group of traveling players and eventually confronts the embodiment of death with whom he engages in a game of chess for his life. The knight and Death play as the cultural turmoil envelopes the people around them as they try, in different ways, to deal with the upheaval the plague has caused.
13) Ikiru
Series
Language
日本語
Formats
Description
Discovering that he is in the terminal stages of cancer, a clerk spends his last months in search of the meaning to life. After his pursuit of pleasure has failed, he finds self-realization in bringing about the building of a children's playground in the slums and dies quietly fulfilled.
15) Sans toit ni loi
Series
Language
Français
Description
An aimless drifter wandering through the wintry French countryside encounters violence, hunger, fear and cold, yet touches the lives of the people she meets with her own ideas of freedom.
Series
Language
Français
Description
A chambermaid with Paris flair gets a job at a country estate. The family she works for and the other staff members are a strange sort and she must learn the ways of country living and neighbor revialry. After a child is murdered near the estate, she begins to have her suspicions as to whom may be responsible.
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
A nice, tweedy old English woman disappears from her compartment on a European train. A young woman who wonders why becomes frantic when everyone tells her there never was such a person. A young man comes to her aid and they solve a criss-cross puzzle of espoinage, counter-espionage and attempted assassination.
19) Shock corridor
Series
Language
English
Description
A journalist fakes mental illness to get himself committed to a mental hospital for a story. Soon, he starts to lose his mind.
Series
Language
日本語
Description
Tokyo Story follows an aging couple, Tomi and Sukichi, on their journey from their rural village to visit their two married children in bustling, post-war Tokyo. Their reception is disappointing: too busy to entertain them, their children send them off to a health spa. After Tomi falls ill she and Sukichi return home, while the children, grief-stricken, hasten to be with her.