Warner Bros
1) Mean streets
Series
Criterion collection volume 1198
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
"Set in the insular Little Italy neighborhood of Scorsese's youth, Mean Streets follows guilt-ridden small-time ringleader Charlie as he deals with the debts owed by his dangerously volatile best pal, Johnny Boy, and pressure from his headstrong girlfriend, Teresa..." --Container.
2) Badlands
Series
Criterion collection volume 651
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Based on the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of 1958, in which a fifteen-year-old girl and her twenty-five-year-old boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands.
3) Klute
Series
Criterion collection volume 987
Language
English
Description
"Bree Daniels [is] a call girl and aspiring actor who becomes the focal point of a missing-person investigation when detective John Klute turns up at her door [...] Klute is a character study thick with dread, capturing the mood of early-1970s New York and the predicament of a woman trying to find her own way on the fringes of society." --
4) The in-laws
Series
Criterion collection volume 823
Language
English
Formats
Description
Dentist Sheldon Kornpett is a respectable man. He has a daughter who is about to marry the son of a very suspicious character, Vince Ricardo. Nonetheless, Vince calls on Sheldon and convinces him to go with him on a series of adventures, claiming all the while that he is a CIA agent, and that what he is doing is in national interest. Sheldon follows Vince to a South American country ruled by a very odd man, General Garcia, who talks to his hand. It...
5) Barry Lyndon
Series
Language
English
Description
"Stanley Kubrick bent the conventions of the historical drama to his own will in this dazzling version of a pitiless aristocracy, adapted from a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray. In picaresque detail, Barry Lyndon chronicles the adventures of an incorrigible trickster (Ryan O'Neal) whose opportunism takes him from an Irish farm to the battlefields of the Seven Years' War and the parlors of high society. For the most sumptuously crafted film of...
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Larry Rhodes is a hobo with a powerful personality and a mean streak as wide as the Mississippi River. He is 'discovered' by Marcia Jeffries, who christens him "Lonesome" Rhodes, and makes him the star of her morning radio show, "A Face in the Crowd." Listeners are enthralled by his down-home, folksy charm, and after developing a large following, Rhodes begins a journey to national fame and TV stardom. A powerful business tycoon realizes that he can...
Series
Criterion collection volume 1208
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Ripped from the headlines of the turbulent era between the Great War and the Great Depression, this dynamic, nostalgia-tinged crime drama balances tommy-gun action with epic historical sweep. Legends James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart star as army buddies whose fortunes rise and fall as their fates intersect, first in a foxhole on the front lines of World War I, then in Manhattan's Prohibition-era underworld. Directed by Hollywood master Raoul Walsh...
Series
Criterion collection volume 827
Language
English
Formats
Description
Charismatic but dumb John McCabe arrives in a turn-of-the-century Pacific Northwest town to set up a whorehouse/tavern. Shrewd Mrs. Miller, a professional madam, arrives soon after construction begins. She offers to help McCabe run his business and the whorehouse thrives. McCabe and Mrs. Miller draw closer, despite their conflicting intelligences and philosophies. Soon, however, the mining deposits in the town attract the attention of a major corporation,...
Series
Language
English
Description
"Based on Parks's own semi-autobiographical novel, [the film] follows the journey of Newt Winger, a teenage descendant of Exodusters growing up in rural Kansas in the 1920s, as he experiences the bittersweet flowering of first love, finds his relationship with a close friend tested, and navigates the injustices embedded within a racist legal and educational system. Exquisitely capturing the bucolic splendor of its heartland setting, this landmark...
10) Mildred Pierce
Series
Criterion collection volume 860
Language
English
Description
"Melodrama casts noirish shadows in this portrait of maternal sacrifice from Hollywood master Michael Curtiz. Its iconic performance by Joan Crawford as Mildred, a single mother hell-bent on freeing her children from the stigma of economic hardship, solidified Crawford's career comeback and gave the actor her only Oscar. But as Mildred pulls herself up by the bootstraps, first as an unflappable waitress and eventually as the well-heeled owner of a...
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Harry Morgan is an honest charter-boat captain who is facing hard times, takes on dangerous cargo to save his boat, support his family, and preserve his dignity. Left in the lurch by a freeloading passenger, Harry starts to entertain the criminal propositions of a sleazy lawyer, as well as the playful come-ons of a cheeky blonde, making a series of compromises that stretch his morality, and his marriage, farther than he₂ll admit.
12) High Sierra
Series
Criterion collection volume 1099
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Roy Earle, a career criminal plagued by his checkered past, longs for a simpler life, but after getting sprung on parole, he falls in with a band of thieves for one last heist in the Sierra Nevada. Marie, a fellow outcast also desperate to escape her past, [they] hurtle inexorably toward an unforgettable cliffside climax and a rendezvous with destiny"--Container.
13) Lost in America
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Stalled in his company's pecking order, ad man David Howard failed to land the Senior VP slot he wanted. He quits, convinces wife Linda to do the same, sells their house and stocks and buys a Winnebago to roam the USA. Though they feel they're Easy Riders, they're actually Born to Be Mild. With their $145,000 nest egg tucked reassuringly within reach, they make their first stop: Las Vegas. Goodbye, nest egg. Greetings, hilarity.
15) Female trouble
Series
Criterion collection volume 929
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Glamour has never been more grotesque than in Female Trouble, which injects the Hollywood melodrama with anarchic decadence. Divine, director John Waters' larger-than-life muse, engulfs the screen with charisma as Dawn Davenport, the living embodiment of the film's lurid mantra, 'Crime is beauty,' who progresses from a teenage nightmare hell-bent on getting cha-cha heels for Christmas to a fame monster whose egomaniacal impuses land her in the electric...
16) Malcolm X
Series
Criterion collection volume 1160
Language
English
Description
The life of Malcolm X, the black activist who became a Muslim and was a leader in the Nation of Islam until his assassination.
17) True stories
Series
Criterion collection volume 951
Language
English
Description
"Music icon David Byrne was inspired by tabloid headlines to make his sole foray into feature-film directing, an ode to the extraordinariness of ordinary American life and a distillation ot what was in his own idiosyncratic mind. The Talking Heads front man plays a visitor to Virgil, Texas, who introduces us to the citizens of the town during preparations for its Celebration of Specialness. As shot by cinematographer Ed Lachman, Texas becomes a hyperrealistic...
Series
Criterion collection volume 405
Language
Deutsch
Description
"Set in the impoverished back alleys of Victorian London, The threepenny opera follows underworld antihero Mackie Messer (a.k.a. Mack the Knife) as he tries to woo Polly Peachum and elude the authorities. With a palpable evocation of corruption and dread, set to Weill's irresistible score, The threepenny opera remains a benchmark of early sound cinema." -- container.
19) Girlfriends
Series
Criterion collection volume 1055
Language
English
Description
"When her best friend and roommate abruptly moves out to get married, Susan (Melanie Mayron), trying to be an artist while making ends meet as a bar mitzvah photographer on Manhattan's Upper West Side, finds herself adrift in both life and love. A wonder of American independent cinema by Claudia Weill (who, when she was admitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a director in 1981, was one of only four women ever to have received...
20) High Sierra
Series
Language
English
Description
Marking the moment when the gritty gangster sagas of the 1930s began giving way to the romantic fatalism of 1940s film noir, High Sierra also contains the star-making performance of Humphrey Bogart, who, alongside top-billed Ida Lupino, proved his leading-man mettle with his tough yet tender turn as Roy Earle. A career criminal plagued by his checkered past, Earle longs for a simpler life, but after getting sprung on parole, he falls in with a band...