Criterion Collection (Firm)
41) Heaven can wait
Description
Newly deceased playboy Henry Van Cleve arrives at the outer offices of Hades where he asks a bemused Satan for permission to enter the gates of Hell. Though the Devil doubts he will qualify, Henry proceeds to recount a lifetime wooing and pursuing women.
43) Bull Durham
Description
A fan who has an affair with one minor-league baseball player each season meets an up-and-coming pitcher and the experienced catcher assigned to him.
44) Mudbound
Description
In the Mississippi Delta of the 1940s, two farming families one of white landholders, and one of Black tenant farmers are bound by the unforgiving soil they share as they struggle to survive amid the upheavals of World War II and the poisonous hatred of the Jim Crow South. Each family sends a young man off to battle; when they return home, scarred, and find a common bond, the community is ripped apart. Writer-director Dee Rees, with co-writer Virgil...
Description
A full-throttle espionage thriller, starring Joel McCrea as a green Yank reporter sent to Europe to get the scoop on the imminent war. It's wall-to-wall witty repartee, head-spinning plot twists, and brilliantly mounted suspense set pieces, including an ocean plane crash climax with astonishing special effects.
Description
Reworking of Chaucer's epic 14th century tale, largely set in 1940s wartime Kent. It centers on three modern-day incarnations of Chaucer's pilgrims: a plainspoken American Army sergeant (Sweet), a resourceful British sergeant (Price), and a melancholy landgirl (Sim). While enroute to Canterbury, they are waylaid and forced to solve a bizarre village crime: the mystery of a man who pours glue over the hair of village girls at night.
47) 1984
Description
Based on the novel by George Orwell which is the story of impossible love and tragic betrayal set in the twisted, horrific world of "1984".
Winston Smith (Hurt) endures a squalid existence in totalitarian Oceania under the constant surveillance of Big Brother. But his life takes a horrifying turn when he begins a forbidden love affair and commits the crime of independent thought. Sent to the chillingly labeled 'Ministry of Love, he is placed at the...
50) Fail safe
Description
The unnerving procedural thriller painstakingly details an all-too-plausible nightmare scenario in which a mechanical failure jams the United States military's chain of command and sends the country hurtling toward nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
51) Chasing Amy
Description
Holden thinks Alyssa is the woman of his dreams but she has someone a little different in mind--another woman. They share the kind of relationship they've been looking for all along and discover the confusing ups and downs of love, sex and friendship in the '90s.
52) Hoop dreams
Description
Follows the experiences of Chicago teenagers Arthur Agee and William Gates as they compete in the world of high school basketball.
54) Tootsie
Description
"Michael Dorsey is a talented actor, but his demanding nature and stubborn temperament have antagonized every producer in New York. Now his agent insists no one will hire him. But Michael needs money - eight thousand dollars to be exact - and to earn it, he's willing to play the role of a lifetime"--Container.
55) Notorious
Description
A beautiful woman with a tainted past is enlisted by American agent Devlin to spy on a ring of Nazis in post-war Rio. Her espionage work becomes life-threatening after she marries the most debonair of the Nazi ring, Alex. Only Devlin can rescue her, but to do so he must face his role in her desperate situation and acknowledge that he has loved her all along.
Description
Emerging from the primordial soup of glamour, gutter sleaze, and feverish creativity that was New York₂s 1960s underground culture, the Velvet Underground redefined music with its at once raw and exalted blend of experimentation and art-damaged rock and roll. In his kaleidoscopic documentary The Velvet Underground, Todd Haynes vividly evokes the band's incandescent world: the creative origins of the twin visionaries Lou Reed and John Cale, Andy...
57) Blood simple
Description
A man hires a private investigator to kill his wife, who he thinks is cheating on him, and her lover, but the investigator has a plan of his own. A bad situation suddenly gets worse.
58) Monterey pop
Description
Monterey Pop is the first filmed document of a rock festival. The Monterey Pop Festival, held on California's Monterey Peninsula in 1967. It would help launch the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding. Captured on film that became immortalized, Pete Townshend destroying his guitar and Jimi Hendrix burning his.
59) Brazil
Description
Terry Gilliam draws on footage from the American and European versions of his film "Brazil" to offer a director's cut of the movie, which features a common man risking everything to fight totalitarian rule.