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The Best Films on the Criterion Channel

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
Maya Deren, Alexandr Hackenschmied · 89 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
A woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.
Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
Robert Bresson · 82 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.
Pather Panchali (1955)
Satyajit Ray · 77 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Impoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work. Alone, his wife, Sarbojaya, looks after her rebellious daughter, Durga, and her young son, Apu, as well as Harihar's elderly aunt Indir. The children enjoy the small pleasures of their difficult life, while their parents suffer the daily indignities heaped upon them.
Ordet (1955)
Carl Theodor Dreyer · 67 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Darkroom
The three sons of devout Danish farmer Morten have widely disparate religious beliefs. Youngest son Anders shares his father's religion, but eldest son Mikkel has lost his faith, while middle child Johannes has become delusional and proclaims that he is Jesus Christ himself. When Mikkel's wife, Inger goes into a difficult childbirth, everyone's beliefs are put to the test.
M (1931)
Fritz Lang · 59 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel, Mometu · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
In this classic German thriller, Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of a massive Berlin police manhunt. Beckert's heinous crimes are so repellant and disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the seedy underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, the murderer soon realizes that people are on his trail, sending him into a tense, panicked attempt to escape justice.
News from Home (1976)
Chantal Akerman · 55 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Impersonal and beautiful images of Akerman's life in New York are combined with letters from her loving but manipulative mother, read by Akerman herself.
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Sergei Eisenstein · 52 critic votes
Free on Public Domain Movies, JustWatch TV, Darkroom · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre.
Sans Soleil (1983)
Chris Marker · 52 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
Modern Times (1936)
Charlie Chaplin · 45 critic votes
Free on YouTube Free, Amazon Prime Video Free with Ads, Amazon MX Player · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, Criterion Channel
A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time...
A Man Escaped (1956)
Robert Bresson · 45 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A captured French Resistance fighter during World War II engineers a daunting escape from prison.
Blue Velvet (1986)
David Lynch · 44 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child.
Journey to Italy (1954)
Roberto Rossellini · 43 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Married for eight years with no children, Brits Katherine and Alex Joyce are driving to Italy, their ultimate destination just outside of Naples to sell the villa they have just inherited from his uncle, the villa where they will be staying during their time there. On the drive, they come to the realization that this trip marks the first time that they have truly been alone together, and as such don't really know one another in the true sense.
Wild Strawberries (1957)
Ingmar Bergman · 38 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.
The Earrings of Madame de... (1953)
Max Ophüls · 36 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In late 19th century France, the Countess Louise, wife of a wealthy general, sells the earrings her husband gave her on their wedding day to pay off her secret debts, then claims to have lost them. Her husband quickly learns of the deceit, which is the beginning of many tragic misunderstandings, all involving the earrings, the general, the countess, and her new lover, the Italian Baron Donati.
The Ascent (1977)
Larisa Shepitko · 34 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
During a freezing WWII winter, two Soviet partisans on a mission to gather food contend with the temperature, the occupying Germans, and their own psyches.
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
Ernst Lubitsch · 31 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, TCM, HBO Max Amazon Channel
During the Nazi occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.
Ikiru (1952)
Akira Kurosawa · 28 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Where is the Friend's Home? (1987)
Abbas Kiarostami · 28 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An 8-year-old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished by expulsion from school.
Gertrud (1964)
Carl Theodor Dreyer · 27 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Hopeless romantic Gertrud inhabits a turn-of-the-century milieu of artists and musicians, where she pursues an idealized notion of love that will always elude her. She abandons her distinguished husband and embraces an affair with a young concert pianist, who falls short of her desire for lasting affection. When an old lover returns to her life, fresh disappointments follow, and Gertrud must try to come to terms with reality.
L'Argent (1983)
Robert Bresson · 27 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A forged 500-franc note is passed from person to person and shop to shop, until it falls into the hands of a genuine innocent who doesn't see it for what it is—which will have devastating consequences on his life.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)
Pier Paolo Pasolini · 26 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, Plex · Streaming on Kanopy, Fandor Amazon Channel, Hoopla
Along a rocky, barren coastline, Jesus begins teaching, primarily using parables. He attracts disciples; he's stern, brusque, and demanding. His parables often take on the powers that be, so he and his teachings come to the attention of the Pharisees, the chief priests, and elders. They conspire to have him arrested, beaten, tried, and crucified, just as he prophesied to his followers.
India Song (1975)
Marguerite Duras · 26 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Anne-Marie Stretter, the wife of a French diplomat in 1930s India, takes many lovers to relieve the boredom in her life.
The Exterminating Angel (1962)
Luis Buñuel · 25 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel, Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Cultpix
After a lavish dinner party, the guests find themselves unable to depart... and, over the next few days, all of their elaborate societal pretenses and façades deteriorate as they are reduced to living like animals.
A Day in the Country (1936)
Jean Renoir · 23 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
The family of a Parisian shop-owner spends a day in the country. The daughter falls in love with a man at the inn, where they spend the day.
La Notte (1961)
Michelangelo Antonioni · 23 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, AMC+
A day in the life of an unfaithful married couple and their steadily deteriorating relationship in Milan.
Eclipse (1962)
Michelangelo Antonioni · 23 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Vittoria is a beautiful literary translator living in Rome. After splitting from her writer boyfriend, Riccardo, Vittoria meets Piero, a lively stockbroker, on the hectic floor of the Roman stock exchange. Though Vittoria and Piero begin a relationship, it is not one without difficulties, and their commitment to one another is tested during an eclipse.
Le Bonheur (1965)
Agnès Varda · 21 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse, young husband and father François finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Agnès Varda's most provocative films, 'Le bonheur' examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world.
Taste of Cherry (1997)
Abbas Kiarostami · 21 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A middle-aged Tehranian man, Mr. Badii is intent on killing himself and seeks someone to bury him after his demise. Driving around the city, the seemingly well-to-do Badii meets with numerous people, including a Muslim student, asking them to take on the job, but initially he has little luck. Eventually, Badii finds a man who is up for the task because he needs the money, but his new associate soon tries to talk him out of committing suicide.
The River (1951)
Jean Renoir · 19 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Director Jean Renoir’s entrancing first color feature—shot entirely on location in India—is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the Bengal river around which their daily lives unfold. Enriched by Renoir’s subtle understanding and appreciation for India and its people, The River gracefully explores the fragile connections between transitory emotions and everlasting creation.
Viridiana (1961)
Luis Buñuel · 19 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, Darkroom
Viridiana is preparing to start her life as a nun when she is sent, somewhat unwillingly, to visit her aging uncle, Don Jaime. He supports her; but the two have met only once. Jaime thinks Viridiana resembles his dead wife. Viridiana has secretly despised this man all her life and finds her worst fears proven when Jaime grows determined to seduce his pure niece. Viridiana becomes undone as her uncle upends the plans she had made to join the convent.
The Green Ray (1986)
Éric Rohmer · 19 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A lonely Parisian woman comes to terms with her isolation and anxieties during a long summer vacation.
Charulata (1964)
Satyajit Ray · 18 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In 1870s India, Charulata is an isolated, artistically inclined woman who sees little of her busy journalist husband, Bhupati. Realizing that his wife is alienated and unhappy, he convinces his cousin, Amal, to spend time with Charulata and nourish her creative impulses. Amal is a fledgling poet himself, and he and Charulata bond over their shared love of art.
Mouchette (1967)
Robert Bresson · 18 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A young girl living in the French countryside suffers constant indignities at the hand of alcoholism and her fellow man.
Cries and Whispers (1972)
Ingmar Bergman · 18 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so immersed in their own psychic pains that they are unable to offer her the support she needs.
Paisà (1946)
Roberto Rossellini · 17 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Six stories unfold in various regions, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley as American military personnel interact with a variety of Italian locals over eighteen months in the push north during the Italian Campaign of WWII as German forces retreat.
Europe '51 (1952)
Roberto Rossellini · 17 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger · 16 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Tubi TV, The Roku Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
General Candy, who's overseeing an English squad in 1943, is a veteran leader who doesn't have the respect of the men he's training and is considered out-of-touch with what's needed to win the war. But it wasn't always this way. Flashing back to his early career in the Boer War and World War I, we see a dashing young officer whose life has been shaped by three different women, and by a lasting friendship with a German soldier.
Rome, Open City (1945)
Roberto Rossellini · 16 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
During the Nazi occupation of 1944 Rome, Resistance leader Giorgio Manfredi is pursued by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a means of escape.
The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)
Jacques Demy · 16 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In the seaside town of Rochefort, twin sisters Delphine and Solange dream of love and artistic fulfillment beyond their quiet lives. As sailors, artists, musicians, and chance visitors pass through town during a weekend fair, a web of near-misses and romantic longing brings ideal partners tantalizingly close—without their realizing it.
F for Fake (1973)
Orson Welles · 16 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Documents the lives of infamous fakers Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving. De Hory, who later committed suicide to avoid more prison time, made his name by selling forged works of art by painters like Picasso and Matisse. Irving was infamous for writing a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Welles moves between documentary and fiction as he examines the fundamental elements of fraud and the people who commit fraud at the expense of others.
The Cranes Are Flying (1957)
Mikhail Kalatozov · 15 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Artiflix, The Roku Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Veronika and Boris come together in Moscow shortly before World War II. Walking along the river, they watch cranes fly overhead, and promise to rendezvous before Boris leaves to fight. Boris misses the meeting and is off to the front lines, while Veronika waits patiently, sending letters faithfully. After her house is bombed, Veronika moves in with Boris' family, into the company of a cousin with his own intentions.
The Life of Oharu (1952)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 14 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
During the Edo Period, a noblewoman's banishment for her love affair with a lowly page signals the beginning of her inexorable fall.
Rocco and His Brothers (1960)
Luchino Visconti · 14 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
When a impoverished widow’s family moves to the big city, two of her five sons become romantic rivals with deadly results.
Three Colours: Blue (1993)
Krzysztof Kieślowski · 14 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, TCM, HBO Max Amazon Channel
The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.
In Vanda's Room (2000)
Pedro Costa · 14 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people, but taking as main focus the heroin-addicted Vanda Duarte.
Pandora's Box (1929)
Georg Wilhelm Pabst · 13 critic votes
Free on JustWatch TV, Darkroom, Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
The rise and inevitable fall of an amoral but naive young woman whose insouciant eroticism inspires lust and violence in those around her.
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 13 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel
In late 19th-century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that the praise he receives is only due to his status as his father's heir. Devastated, he turns to Otoku, a servant of his family, for comfort, and they fall in love. Kikunosuke becomes determined to leave home and develop as an actor on his own merits, and Otoku faithfully joins him.
A Touch of Zen (1971)
King Hu · 13 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Yang Hui-zhen, a mysterious princess on the run from corrupt government officials, is joined in her endeavors by skilled Buddhist monks and an unambitious painter named Gu Sheng-zhai.
The Gold Rush (1925)
Charlie Chaplin · 12 critic votes
Free on FlixHouse, Darkroom, Tubi TV · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
A gold prospector in Alaska struggles to survive the elements and win the heart of a dance hall girl.
Germany, Year Zero (1948)
Roberto Rossellini · 12 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In the ruins of post-WWII Berlin, a twelve-year-old boy is left to his own devices in order to help provide for his family.
The Double Life of Véronique (1991)
Krzysztof Kieślowski · 12 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Véronique is a beautiful young French woman who aspires to be a renowned singer; Weronika lives in Poland, has a similar career goal and looks identical to Véronique, though the two are not related. The film follows both women as they contend with the ups and downs of their individual lives, with Véronique embarking on an unusual romance with Alexandre Fabbri, a puppeteer who may be able to help her with her existential issues.
The Long Day Closes (1992)
Terence Davies · 12 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Bud is a lonely and quiet boy whose moments of solace occur when he sits in rapture at the local cinema, watching towering and iconic figures on the movie screen. The movies give Bud the strength to get through another day as he deals with his oppressive school environment and his burgeoning homosexuality.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)
Lotte Reiniger, Carl Koch · 11 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, Cultpix
Taken from The Arabian Nights, a wicked sorcerer and the beautiful prince Achmed battle one against the other during a series of wondrous adventures.
Umberto D. (1952)
Vittorio De Sica · 11 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.
Lola Montès (1955)
Max Ophüls · 11 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Lola Montes, previously a great adventuress, is reduced to being the attraction of a circus after having been the lover of various important men.
Throne of Blood (1957)
Akira Kurosawa · 11 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.
Mon Oncle (1958)
Jacques Tati · 11 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel, TCM, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Genial, bumbling Monsieur Hulot loves his top-floor apartment in a grimy corner of the city, and cannot fathom why his sister's family has moved to the suburbs. Their house is an ultra-modern nightmare, which Hulot only visits for the sake of stealing away his rambunctious young nephew. Hulot's sister, however, wants to win him over to her new way of life, and conspires to set him up with a wife and job.
Wings (1966)
Larisa Shepitko · 11 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Former fighter pilot turned provincial schoolmistress Nadezhda Petrovna struggles to adapt to peacetime, having internalised military ideals of service and obedience.
Through the Olive Trees (1994)
Abbas Kiarostami · 11 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
When the actor in a scene for his film Life And Nothing More… has to quit, a film director casts another man for the part. However, complications arise since the man and the woman who was cast for the scene know each other.
Stromboli (1950)
Roberto Rossellini · 10 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
After the end of WWII, a young Lithuanian woman and a young Italian man from Stromboli impulsively marry, but married life on the island is more demanding than she can accept.
Night and Fog (1956)
Alain Resnais · 10 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
Winter Light (1963)
Ingmar Bergman · 10 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A Swedish pastor fails a loving woman, a suicidal fisherman and God.
Opening Night (1977)
John Cassavetes · 10 critic votes
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Actress Myrtle Gordon is a functioning alcoholic who is a few days from the opening night of her latest play, concerning a woman distraught about aging. One night a car kills one of Myrtle's fans who is chasing her limousine in an attempt to get the star's attention. Myrtle internalizes the accident and goes on a spiritual quest, but fails to finds the answers she is after. As opening night inches closer and closer, fragile Myrtle must find a way to make the show go on.
Songs from the Second Floor (2000)
Roy Andersson · 10 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A monumental traffic jam serves as the backdrop for the lives of the inhabitants of a Swedish city.
The Great Dictator (1940)
Charlie Chaplin · 9 critic votes
Free on YouTube Free, Shout! Factory TV, Amazon Prime Video Free with Ads · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, fuboTV
Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.
The Flowers of St. Francis (1950)
Roberto Rossellini · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In a series of simple and joyous vignettes, director Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly convey the universal teachings of the People’s Saint: humility, compassion, faith, and sacrifice. Gorgeously photographed to evoke the medieval paintings of Saint Francis’s time, and cast with monks from the Nocera Inferiore Monastery, The Flowers of St. Francis is a timeless and moving portrait of the search for spiritual enlightenment.
Muriel (1963)
Alain Resnais, Brett Kelly · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In the seacoast town of Boulogne, antique furniture saleswoman Hélène lives with her stepson, Bernard, who's back from military duty in Algiers. An old lover of Hélène's comes to visit, Alphonse, with his niece Françoise; he too is back from Algiers, where he ran a café. Bernard speaks of his fiancée, Muriel, whom Hélène has not met. The past is obscured by guilt, misperceptions, and missed possibilities. Appearances deceive, things change. As Hélène and Alphonse try to sort out a renewal, everyone seems off-kilter just enough to hint that all cannot end well.
Marketa Lazarová (1967)
František Vláčil · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Mikolás and his brother Adam end up with a young German hostage of noble blood during a robbery. While their clan prepares for the wrath of the German king, Mikolás is sent to pressure his neighbor Lazar into a defense pact. Persuasion fails and he abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa on the eve of her initiation as a nun in an act of vengeance.
Teorema (1968)
Pier Paolo Pasolini · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A wealthy Italian household is turned upside down when a handsome stranger arrives, seduces every family member and then disappears. Each has an epiphany of sorts, but none can figure out who the seductive visitor was or why he came.
My Night at Maud's (1969)
Éric Rohmer · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
The Catholic Jean-Louis runs into an old friend, the Marxist Vidal, in Clermont-Ferrand around Christmas. Vidal introduces Jean-Louis to the modestly libertine, recently divorced Maud and the three engage in conversation on religion, atheism, love, morality and Blaise Pascal's life and writings on philosophy, faith and mathematics. Jean-Louis ends up spending a night at Maud's. Jean-Louis' Catholic views on marriage, fidelity and obligation make his situation a dilemma, as he has already, at the very beginning of the film, proclaimed his love for a young woman whom, however, he has never yet spoken to.
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Peter Weir · 9 critic votes
Free on Xumo Play · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In the early 1900s, Miranda attends a girls boarding school in Australia. One Valentine's Day, the school's typically strict headmistress treats the girls to a picnic field trip to an unusual but scenic volcanic formation called Hanging Rock. Despite rules against it, Miranda and several other girls venture off. It's not until the end of the day that the faculty realizes the girls and one of the teachers have disappeared mysteriously.
In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
Nagisa Ōshima · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In late 1920s Berlin, Franz Biberkopf is released from prison and vows to go straight. However, he soon finds himself embroiled in the city’s criminal underworld.
Life, and Nothing More... (1992)
Abbas Kiarostami · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After the earthquake of Guilan, a film director and his son travel to the devastated area to search for the actors from the movie the director made there a few years previously. In their search, they see how people who have lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.
Naked (1993)
Mike Leigh · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An unemployed Brit vents his rage on unsuspecting strangers as he embarks on a nocturnal London odyssey.
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Mike Leigh · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman.
People on Sunday (1930)
Curt Siodmak, Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Fred Zinnemann, Rochus Gliese · 8 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A semi-documentary experimental 1930 German silent film created by amateurs with a small budget. With authentic scenes of the metropolis city of Berlin, it's the first film from the later famous screenwriters/directors Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.
Miracle in Milan (1951)
Vittorio De Sica · 8 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.
The Eternal Breasts (1955)
Kinuyo Tanaka · 8 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Fumiko, mother of two and wife to an unfaithful man, shares her family life with her budding vocation as a poet. The beginning of her successful literary career coincides with her divorce and her breast cancer diagnosis. In her final stages, Fumiko meets a young journalist from Tokyo who wants to write a story on her experiences.
Good Morning (1959)
Yasujirō Ozu · 8 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.
Il Posto (1961)
Ermanno Olmi · 8 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
With his family mired in financial troubles, Domenico moves to Milan, Italy, from his small town to get a job in lieu of furthering his education. A lack of options forces him to take a position as a messenger at a big company, where he hopes to receive a promotion soon. There, Domenico meets Antonietta, a young woman in a similar situation as himself. The two form a tentative relationship, but the soulless nature of their jobs threatens to keep them apart.
Campanadas a Medianoche (1965)
Orson Welles · 8 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Henry IV usurps the English throne, sets in motion the factious War of the Roses and now faces a rebellion led by Northumberland scion Hotspur. Henry's heir, Prince Hal, is a ne'er-do-well carouser who drinks and causes mischief with his low-class friends, especially his rotund father figure, John Falstaff. To redeem his title, Hal may have to choose between allegiance to his real father and loyalty to his friend.
Withnail and I (1987)
Bruce Robinson · 8 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Two out-of-work actors -- the anxious, luckless Marwood and his acerbic, alcoholic friend, Withnail -- spend their days drifting between their squalid flat, the unemployment office and the pub. When they take a holiday "by mistake" at the country house of Withnail's flamboyantly gay uncle, Monty, they encounter the unpleasant side of the English countryside: tedium, terrifying locals and torrential rain.
La Haine (1995)
Mathieu Kassovitz · 8 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After a chaotic night of rioting in a marginal suburb of Paris, three young friends, Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, wander around unoccupied waiting for news about the state of health of a mutual friend who has been seriously injured when confronting the police.
The Celebration (1998)
Thomas Vinterberg · 8 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The family of a wealthy businessman gather to celebrate his 60th birthday. During the course of the party, his eldest son presents a speech that reveals a devastating secret that turns the night into a battle of truth and denial.
Shoes (1916)
Lois Weber · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
A young working girl, struggling to support her family on her meager salary, desperately wishes for a new pair of shoes.
The Phantom Carriage (1921)
Victor Sjöström · 7 critic votes
Free on JustWatch TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, IndieFlix, IndieFlix Shorts Amazon Channel
An alcoholic, abusive ne'er-do-well is shown the error of his ways through a legend that dooms the last person to die on New Year's Eve before the clock strikes twelve to take the reins of Death's chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year.
I Was Born, But... (1932)
Yasujirō Ozu · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
Brothers Keiji and Ryoichi move to a new neighborhood in the Tokyo suburbs after their father, an office clerk, is promoted. The boys join the local gang as lowly new kids and emerge as natural leaders after defeating a bully. While visiting the home of their father's boss, the brothers witness the ridicule their father endures to please his superior. Angry and embarrassed, the boys find their naive ideas about power being challenged.
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)
Fritz Lang · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
After a detective is assaulted by thugs and placed in an asylum run by Professor Baum, he observes the professor's preoccupation with another patient, the criminal genius Dr. Mabuse the hypnotist. When Mabuse's notes are found to be connected with a rash of recent crimes, Commissioner Lohmann must determine how Mabuse is communicating with the criminals, despite conflicting reports on the doctor's whereabouts, and capture him for good.
Day of Wrath (1943)
Carl Theodor Dreyer · 7 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel
In a Danish village in the early 1600s, a young woman named Anne, whose mother was thought to be a witch, develops sympathy toward an old woman, Marte, who is accused of witchcraft. The intervention of Anne's older but kindly husband, Pastor Absalon saved her mother -- but now, urged on by his overbearing mother, he refuses to help Marte. When Absalon's son returns home and is attracted to Anne, it's a matter of time before her family destiny catches up with her.
Apur Sansar (1959)
Satyajit Ray · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Apu, now a jobless ex-student dreaming vaguely of a future as a writer, is invited to join an old college friend on a trip up-country to a village wedding.
Harakiri (1962)
Masaki Kobayashi · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual. The senior counselor for the Iyi clan questions the ronin’s resolve and integrity, suspecting Hanshirō of seeking charity rather than an honorable end. What follows is a pair of interlocking stories which lay bare the difference between honor and respect, and promises to examine the legendary foundations of the Samurai code.
Mamma Roma (1962)
Pier Paolo Pasolini · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.
Not on Your Life (1963)
Luis García Berlanga · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Britbox Apple TV channel
An undertaker gets married to an old executioner's daughter and, although he doesn't like it, must continue the profession of his father-in-law after his retirement.
The Woman in the Dunes (1964)
Hiroshi Teshigahara · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Darkroom
A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.
Red Beard (1965)
Akira Kurosawa · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.
Faces (1968)
John Cassavetes · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Sun Nxt, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Middle-aged suburban husband Richard abruptly tells his wife, Maria, that he wants a divorce. As Richard takes up with a younger woman, Maria enjoys a night on the town with her friends and meets a younger man. As the couple and those around them confront a seemingly futile search for what they've lost -- love, excitement, passion -- this classic American independent film explores themes of aging and alienation.
W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (1971)
Dušan Makavejev · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
What does the energy harnessed through orgasm have to do with the state of communist Yugoslavia circa 1971? Only counterculture filmmaker extraordinaire Dušan Makavejev has the answers (or the questions). His surreal documentary-fiction collision begins as an investigation into the life and work of controversial psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Reich and then explodes into a free-form narrative of a beautiful young Slavic girl’s sexual liberation.
Scenes from a Marriage (1974)
Ingmar Bergman · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Johan and Marianne are married and seem to have it all. Their happiness, however, is a façade for a troubled relationship, which becomes even rockier when Johan admits that he's having an affair. Before long, the spouses separate and move towards finalizing their divorce, but they make attempts at reconciling. Even as they pursue other relationships, Johan and Marianne realize that they have a significant bond, but also many issues that hinder that connection.
À Nos Amours (1983)
Maurice Pialat · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Fifteen-year-old Suzanne seeks refuge from a disintegrating family in a series of impulsive, promiscuous affairs. Her fulsome sexuality further ratchets up the suppressed passions of her narcissistic brother, insecure mother and brooding, authoritarian father.
Brief Encounters (1987)
Kira Muratova · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Klassiki
Country girl Nadia moves to the city and becomes a maid in Valya's apartment. Valya, who is a member of the local District Committee, does not know that Nadia fell in love with her currently absent husband, a geologist named Maksim, when he had visited Nadia's village during a recent expedition.
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (1987)
Kazuo Hara · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Kenzo Okuzaki, a 62-year-old veteran of the New Guinea campaign in World War II, sets out to conduct interviews with survivors and relatives to find the truth behind atrocities committed by Japanese military, in particular the unexplained killing of two Japanese privates in his unit.
Orpheus (1950)
Jean Cocteau · 6 critic votes
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A famous poet in postwar Paris, scorned by the Left Bank youth, is in love with both his wife Eurydice and a mysterious princess. Seeking inspiration, the poet becomes obsessed and follows the princess from the world of the living to the land of the dead.
The Golden Coach (1952)
Jean Renoir · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A viceroy, a nobleman and a bullfighter court a comedy-troupe actress in 18th-century Peru.
Aparajito (1956)
Satyajit Ray · 6 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Plex, Cineverse · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Fandor, Kanopy
Apu and his family have moved away from the country to live in the bustling holy city of Benares. As he progresses from wide-eyed child to intellectually curious teenager, eventually studying in Kolkata, we witness his academic and moral education, as well as the growing complexity of his relationship with his mother.
Lola (1961)
Jacques Demy · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A bored young man meets with his former girlfriend, now a cabaret dancer and single mother, and soon finds himself falling back in love with her.
Ivan's Childhood (1962)
Andrei Tarkovsky · 6 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel
In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.
The Silence (1963)
Ingmar Bergman · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Traveling through an unnamed European country on the brink of war, sickly, intellectual Ester, her sister Anna and Anna's young son, Johan, check into a near-empty hotel. A basic inability to communicate among the three seems only to worsen during their stay. Anna provokes her sister by enjoying a dalliance with a local man, while the boy, left to himself, has a series of enigmatic encounters that heighten the growing air of isolation.
The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966)
Pier Paolo Pasolini · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A man and his son take an allegorical stroll through life with a talking bird that spouts social and political philosophy.
Scattered Clouds (1967)
Mikio Naruse · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he leaves, he gives the man's widow a large sum of money that she uses to move back to her hometown.
Shame (1968)
Ingmar Bergman · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In the midst of a civil war, a pair of former violinists in a tempestuous marriage oversee a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.
Within Our Gates (1920)
Oscar Micheaux · 5 critic votes
Free on Public Domain Movies, The Roku Channel, Cineverse · Streaming on MUBI, MGM Plus, Kanopy
Abandoned by her fiancé, an educated black woman with a traumatizing past dedicates herself to helping a near bankrupt school for impoverished black children.
Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953)
Jacques Tati · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Monsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati’s endearing clown, takes a holiday at a seaside resort, where his presence provokes one catastrophe after another. Tati’s masterpiece of gentle slapstick is a series of effortlessly well-choreographed sight gags involving dogs, boats, and firecrackers; it was the first entry in the Hulot series and the film that launched its maker to international stardom.
French Cancan (1955)
Jean Renoir · 5 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Nineteenth-century Paris comes vibrantly alive in Jean Renoir’s exhilarating tale of the opening of the world-renowned Moulin Rouge. Jean Gabin plays the wily impresario Danglard, who makes the cancan all the rage while juggling the love of two beautiful women—an Egyptian belly-dancer and a naive working girl turned cancan star.
La Pointe Courte (1955)
Agnès Varda · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple and a documentary-like look at the daily struggles of the inhabitants of Sète in the South of France.
Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
François Truffaut · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Charlie is a former classical pianist who has changed his name and now plays jazz in a grimy Paris bar. When Charlie's brothers, Richard and Chico, surface and ask for Charlie's help while on the run from gangsters they have scammed, he aids their escape. Soon Charlie and Lena, a waitress at the same bar, face trouble when the gangsters arrive, looking for his brothers.
The Virgin Spring (1960)
Ingmar Bergman · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
Devout Christians Töre and Märeta send their only daughter, the virginal Karin, and their foster daughter, the unrepentant Ingeri, to deliver candles to a distant church. On their way through the woods, the girls encounter a group of savage goat herders who brutally rape and murder Karin as Ingeri remains hidden. When the killers unwittingly seek refuge in the farmhouse of Töre and Märeta, Töre plots a fitting revenge.
Diamonds of the Night (1964)
Jan Němec · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Two Jewish boys escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. Beyond themes of war and anti-Nazism, the film concerns itself with man's struggle to preserve human dignity.
Loves of a Blonde (1965)
Miloš Forman · 5 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Andula, an innocent Czech girl from a factory town, is desperately in search of love. She believes she's found it when she beds Milda, a charming young musician visiting from Prague. Milda, however, is only looking for a casual encounter, and leaves town assuming he'll never see Andula again. But when Andula doesn't hear from him, she packs up and heads to Prague, to the surprise of Milda and his parents.
Dragon Gate Inn (1967)
King Hu · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
China, year 1457. The Minister of Defense is executed, and his children are sentenced to exile by order of the tyrannical Tsao. Fearful of future revenge from the young people, Tsao sends cruel soldiers to murder them, but a brave group of swordsmen can change the course of the battle at the Dragon Inn.
I Am Somebody (1970)
Madeline Anderson · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Fandor Amazon Channel, Hoopla
Madeline Anderson’s documentary brings viewers to the front lines of the civil rights movement during the 1969 Charleston hospital workers’ strike, when 400 poorly paid Black women went on strike to demand union recognition and a wage increase, only to find themselves in confrontation with the National Guard and the state government. Anderson personally participated in the strike, along with such notable figures as Coretta Scott King, Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young, all affiliated with Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Anderson’s film shows the courage and resiliency of the strikers and the support they received from the local black community. It is an essential filmed record of this important moment in the history of civil and women’s rights. The film is also notable as arguably the first televised documentary on civil rights directed by a woman of color, solidifying its place in American film history.
Zorns Lemma (1970)
Hollis Frampton · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Zorns Lemma is a 1970 American structuralist film by Hollis Frampton. It is named after Zorn's lemma (also known as the Kuratowski–Zorn lemma), a proposition of set theory formulated by mathematician Max Zorn in 1935. Zorns Lemma is prefaced with a reading from an early grammar textbook. The remainder of the film, largely silent, shows the viewer an evolving 24-part "alphabet" (where i & j and u & v are interchanged) which is cycled through, replaced and expanded upon. The film's conclusion shows a man, woman and dog walking through snow as several voices read passages from On Light, or the Ingression of Forms by Robert Grosseteste.
The Long Farewell (1971)
Kira Muratova · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Klassiki
A single mother is confused by the changes in her teenage son, who has become distant since spending summer vacation with his father.
Walkabout (1971)
Nicolas Roeg · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Cinemax Amazon Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance encounter with an Aboriginal boy who shows them how to survive, and in the process underscores the disharmony between nature and modern life.
Alice in the Cities (1974)
Wim Wenders · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
German journalist Philip Winter has a case of writer’s block when trying to write an article about the United States. He decides to return to Germany, and while trying to book a flight, encounters a German woman and her nine year old daughter Alice doing the same. The three become friends (almost out of necessity) and while the mother asks Winter to mind Alice temporarily, it quickly becomes apparent that Alice will be his responsibility for longer than he expected.
Dersu Uzala (1975)
Akira Kurosawa · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods.
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)
John Cassavetes · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Cosmo Vittelli, the proprietor of a sleazy, low-rent Hollywood cabaret, has a real affection for the women who strip in his peepshows and the staff who keep up his dingy establishment. He also has a major gambling problem that has gotten him in trouble before. When Cosmo loses big-time at an underground casino run by mobster Mort, he isn't able to pay up. Mort then offers Cosmo the chance to pay back his debt by knocking off a pesky, Mafia-protected bookie.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Woody Allen · 5 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, YouTube Free · Streaming on MGM Plus, Hoopla, fuboTV
Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.
A Short Film About Killing (1988)
Krzysztof Kieślowski · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive.
The Thin Blue Line (1988)
Errol Morris · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, Criterion Channel
This unique documentary dramatically re-enacts the crime scene and investigation of a police officer's murder in Dallas.
Boogie Nights (1997)
Paul Thomas Anderson · 5 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
In 1977, an idealistic porn producer and his promising protege try to catch up with the end of an era before their never-ending party collides with cold, hard reality.
Eve's Bayou (1997)
Kasi Lemmons · 5 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
Summer heats up in rural Louisiana beside Eve’s Bayou, 1962, as the Batiste family tries to survive the secrets they’ve kept and the betrayals they’ve endured.
The End of Evangelion (1997)
Kazuya Tsurumaki, Hideaki Anno · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Netflix, Criterion Channel, Netflix Standard with Ads
SEELE orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can advance his own plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji is pushed to the limits of his sanity as he is forced to decide the fate of humanity.
Toni (1935)
Jean Renoir · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In the 1920s, the Provence is a magnet for immigrants seeking work in the quarries or in the agriculture. Many mingle with locals and settle down for good — like Toni, an Italian who has moved in with Marie, a Frenchwoman. Even a well-ordered existence is not immune from boredom, friendship, romance, or enmity, and Toni becomes entangled in a web of increasingly passionate relationships. For there is his best pal Fernand, but also Albert, his overbearing foreman; there is Sebastian, a steady Spanish peasant, but also Gabi, his young rogue relative; there is Marie, but there is also Josefa.
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Alfred Hitchcock · 4 critic votes
Free on Public Domain Movies, FlixHouse, JustWatch TV · Streaming on Fandor, Fandor Amazon Channel, Hoopla
On a train headed for England a group of travelers is delayed by an avalanche. Holed up in a hotel in a fictional European country, young Iris befriends elderly Miss Froy. When the train resumes, Iris suffers a bout of unconsciousness and wakes to find the old woman has disappeared. The other passengers ominously deny Miss Froy ever existed, so Iris begins to investigate with another traveler and, as the pair sleuth, romantic sparks fly.
Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Charlie Chaplin · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, TCM
The film is about an unemployed banker, Henri Verdoux, and his sociopathic methods of attaining income. While being both loyal and competent in his work, Verdoux has been laid-off. To make money for his wife and child, he marries wealthy widows and then murders them. His crime spree eventually works against him when two particular widows break his normal routine.
Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out (1947)
Carol Reed · 4 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Pluto TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Belfast police conduct a door-to-door manhunt for an IRA gunman wounded in a daring robbery.
Le Plaisir (1952)
Max Ophüls · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
19 year old Linnéa leaves her small town in Sweden and heads for Los Angeles with the aim of becoming the world's next big porn star, but the road to her goal turns out to be bumpier than she imagined.
The Crucified Lovers (1954)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 4 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
When the wife of a 17th-century Kyoto scrollmaker is falsely accused of having an affair with his best employee, the pair flee the city and find themselves truly falling for one another.
Plácido (1961)
Luis García Berlanga · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In a small Spanish town, during the Christmas holidays, a group of rich old ladies organize a peculiar event that consists of inviting a homeless person to sit down to dinner at their wealthy table. Plácido, a humble worker, is hired by the organizers to participate in a parade with his three-wheeled vehicle, a seemingly simple mission that will not be easy for him to accomplish.
Il sorpasso (1962)
Dino Risi · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Roberto, a shy law student in Rome, meets Bruno, a forty-year-old exuberant, capricious man, who takes him for a drive through the Roman and Tuscany countries in the summer. When their journey starts to blend into their daily lives though, the pair’s newfound friendship is tested.
Mahanagar (1963)
Satyajit Ray · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Arati takes a job as a door-to-door saleswoman in Calcutta's wealthy neighbourhoods, in defiance of her traditionally-minded husband, Subrata, and his live-in parents. Emulating her Anglo-Indian friend Edith, who speaks equal to the men she encounters on the job, Arati quickly becomes her firm's top salesperson. When Subrata loses his job, the power dynamic begins to shift.
Something Different (1963)
Věra Chytilová · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In her first feature, Věra Chytilová uses a combination of documentary and fiction film techniques to tell two stories in counterpoint. The first follows Olympic champion gymnast Eva Bosáková, who contemplates retirement as she undergoes a gruelling training schedule; the second, a housewife who is unappreciated and ignored by her husband.
The Naked Kiss (1964)
Samuel Fuller · 4 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Tubi TV, Plex · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, Hoopla
A former prostitute works to create a new life for herself in a small town, but a shocking discovery could threaten everything.
Closely Watched Trains (1966)
Jiří Menzel · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Klassiki
At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot.
The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (1966)
Roberto Rossellini · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Cardinal Mazarin dies, leaving a power vacuum in which the young Louis asserts his intention to govern as well as rule. Mazarin's fiscal advisor, Colbert, warns against Fouquet, the Superintendant who has been systematically looting the treasury and wants to be prime minister. Fouquet believes Louis will soon tire of exercizing power and overplays his hand by offering a bribe to Louis' mistress to be his ally. She reports this to the king who arrests Fouquet. Louis and Colbert design a brilliant strategy to keep merchants making money, nobles in debt, the urban poor working and fed, and peasants untaxed.
Naked Childhood (1968)
Maurice Pialat · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Handed over to foster care by his mother—who's unwilling to give up permanent custody—the now-adolescent François understands that nothing in life is permanent, and his increasingly erratic actions reflect this knowledge.
The Cremator (1969)
Juraj Herz · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films
In 1930s Prague, a Czech cremator who firmly believes cremation relieves one from earthly suffering is drawn inexorably to Nazism.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
Russ Meyer · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An all-girl rock band moves to Hollywood in the hope of achieving success, only to fall into a whirlpool of wickedness and decadence.
Nostalgia (1971)
Hollis Frampton · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Michael Snow narrates a series of Hollis Frampton's photographs (speaking as Frampton, in the first person)—as each picture catches fire on a hot plate.
Two English Girls (1971)
François Truffaut · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In the early 20th-century, Frenchman Claude meets Englishwoman Ann in Paris. Ann invites him to her family home, intending him for her sister Muriel. Claude falls for Muriel, but families demand year-long separation before approving marriage.
My Childhood (1972)
Bill Douglas · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, BFI Player Amazon Channel
The first part of Bill Douglas' influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-'40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars - and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an eight-year-old living on the breadline with his half-brother and sick grandmother in a poor mining village.
My Little Loves (1974)
Jean Eustache · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Daniel lives with his grandmother and, after a year of high school, goes to live with his mother in the south of France; a harsher environment which rapidly changes his perception of friends, work, and women.
Daguerréotypes (1975)
Agnès Varda · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films
An intimate portrait of the small shops and shopkeepers of the Rue Daguerre in Paris, a picturesque street that has been the filmmaker’s home for more than 50 years.
Kings of the Road (1976)
Wim Wenders · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Itinerant projection-equipment repairman Bruno Winter and depressed hitchhiker Robert Lander - a doctor who has just been through a break-up with his wife and a half-hearted suicide attempt - travel along the Western side of the East-German border in a repair truck, visiting worn-out movie theaters, learning to communicate across their differences.
Monsieur Klein (1976)
Joseph Losey · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Paris, France, 1942, during the Nazi occupation. Robert Klein, a successful art dealer who benefits from the misfortunes of those who are ruthlessly persecuted, discovers by chance that there is another Robert Klein, apparently a Jewish man; someone with whom he could be mistakenly identified, something dangerous in such harsh times.
Asparagus (1979)
Suzan Pitt · 4 critic votes
Streaming on MUBI Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel
A symbolic reflection on issues of female sexuality, art and identity constructs.
Camera Buff (1979)
Krzysztof Kieślowski · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, TCM
Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it's the first camera in town, he's named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his focus on movie making also leads to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas.
The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 4 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone.
Veronika Voss (1982)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In Munich 1955, German film star Veronika Voss becomes a drug addict at the mercy of corrupt Dr. Marianne Katz, who keeps her supplied with morphine. After meeting sports writer Robert Krohn, Veronika begins to dream of a return to stardom. As the couple's relationship escalates in intensity, Veronika begins seriously planning her return to the screen -- only to realize how debilitated she has become through her drug habit.
Full Moon in Paris (1984)
Éric Rohmer · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Feeling suffocated by a possessive boyfriend, work and suburban life, a young woman starts spending the weekends in her Paris apartment in order to reclaim some of her lost freedom.
Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
Susan Seidelman · 4 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, YouTube Free · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
A bored New Jersey suburban housewife's fascination with a free-spirited woman she has read about in the personal columns leads to her being mistaken for the woman herself and into a chaotic adventure of amnesia and self-discovery.
Calendar (1993)
Atom Egoyan · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A photographer and his wife travel across Armenia photographing churches for a calendar project. Travelling with them is a local man acting as their driver and guide. As the project nears completion, the distance between husband and wife grows.
The White Balloon (1994)
Jafar Panahi · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Several people try to take advantage of a little girl's innocence to hustle money her mom gave to her to buy a goldfish with.
Drifting Clouds (1996)
Aki Kaurismäki · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The ever-poker-faced Ilona loses her job as a restaurant hostess, as her tram driver husband, Lauri, also finds himself out of work. Together they must hit the streets of Helsinki, facing up to hardship and humiliation in their quest for survival, guided through the gloom by a ray of hope.
Colossal Youth (2006)
Pedro Costa · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After the Portuguese government demolishes his slum and relocates him to a housing project on the outskirts of Lisbon, 75-year-old Cape Verde immigrant Ventura wanders between his new and old homes, reconnecting with people from his past.
The Social Network (2010)
David Fincher · 4 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Fandango at Home Free · Streaming on MGM Plus, fuboTV, Criterion Channel
In 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programmer Mark Zuckerberg begins work on a new concept that eventually turns into the global social network known as Facebook. Six years later, Mark is one of the youngest billionaires ever, but his unprecedented success leads to both personal and legal complications when he ends up on the receiving end of two lawsuits, one involving his former friend.
Body and Soul (1925)
Oscar Micheaux · 3 critic votes
Free on JustWatch TV, Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, Kino Film Collection
A convict escapes to a Southern town and passes himself off as a reverend, giving him the perfect cover to swindle the townspeople and corrupt an innocent young woman.
À propos de Nice (1930)
Jean Vigo · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.
Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)
Jean Renoir · 3 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Michel Simon gives one of the most memorable performances in screen history as Boudu, a Parisian tramp who takes a suicidal plunge into the Seine and is rescued by a well-to-do bookseller, Edouard Lestingois. The Lestingois family decides to take in the irrepressible bum, and he shows his gratitude by shaking the household to its foundations. With Boudu Saved from Drowning, legendary director Jean Renoir takes advantage of a host of Parisian locations and the anarchic charms of his lead actor to create an effervescent satire of the bourgeoisie.
Man of Aran (1934)
Robert J. Flaherty · 3 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Plex · Streaming on Criterion Channel
A documentary on the life of the people of the Aran Islands, who were believed to contain the essence of the ancient Irish life, represented by a pure uncorrupted peasant existence centred around the struggle between man and his hostile but magnificent surroundings. A blend of documentary and fictional narrative, the film captures the everyday trials of life on Ireland's unforgiving Aran Islands.
Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937)
Sadao Yamanaka · 3 critic votes
Free on Plex, Cineverse, Plex Channel · Streaming on Fandor, Fandor Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel
In a slum in Edo Japan, a ronin hopes that his deceased father's former master will hire him while a disgraced hairdresser attempts to regain his pride by kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy pawnbroker, who is set to be married.
Olympia (1938)
Leni Riefenstahl · 3 critic votes
Free on FlixHouse, Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, FlixFling
Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.
Ornamental Hairpin (1941)
Hiroshi Shimizu · 3 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel
A Japanese mountain inn patron's foot is cut by an ornamental hairpin accidentally left behind by a former patron, leading to much curiosity among the other patrons regarding her identity.
The Blood of Jesus (1941)
Spencer Williams · 3 critic votes
Free on Public Domain Movies, JustWatch TV, Tubi TV · Streaming on MGM Plus, Kanopy, Hoopla
Razz accidentally shoots his wife Martha when his hunting rifle drops on the floor and discharges. The church congregation gathers at Martha’s bedside to pray for her recovery, and during this period an angel arrives to take Martha’s spirit from her body, but she is tempted by the slick Judas Green, who is an agent for Satan.
Great Expectations (1946)
David Lean · 3 critic votes
Free on Artiflix, Tubi TV, The Roku Channel · Streaming on fuboTV, Criterion Channel, FlixFling
In this Dickens adaptation, orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.
Flowing (1956)
Mikio Naruse · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mother's trade in the late days of Geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portraits the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers.
India: Matri Bhumi (1958)
Roberto Rossellini · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Several stories depicting the landscapes and fauna of India are mixed with documentary footage.
The Naked Island (1960)
Kaneto Shindō · 3 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
A family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island, where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.
Accattone (1961)
Pier Paolo Pasolini · 3 critic votes
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel
A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.
Kwaidan (1964)
Masaki Kobayashi · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.
Yearning (1964)
Mikio Naruse · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
War widow Reiko rebuilds and runs the grocery shop in the house of her husband's family. Many years later, their business is threatened by a newly built supermarket and Reiko's in-laws plan to convert their small shop into a supermarket, to her detriment.
Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
Federico Fellini · 3 critic votes
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Middle-aged Giulietta grows suspicious of her husband, Giorgio, when his behavior grows increasingly questionable. One night when Giorgio initiates a seance amongst his friends, Giulietta gets in touch with spirits and learns more about herself and her painful past. Slightly skeptical, but intrigued, she visits a mystic who gives her more information -- and nudges her toward the realization that her husband is indeed a philanderer.
The Fireman's Ball (1967)
Miloš Forman · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The firemen of a provincial Czechoslovakian town throw a ball in honor of the old chief's retirement. There will be music and dancing, a beauty pageant and a raffle. The whole town will be in attendance. However, the proceedings are dogged by difficulty at every step. Workplace injuries, stolen prizes, a shortage of pretty girls... and fire.
Blow Up My Town (1968)
Chantal Akerman · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A young girl shuts herself away in her apartment and goes about her business in a strange way, as she wastes the night in the kitchen – humming all along.
Dillinger Is Dead (1969)
Marco Ferreri · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A man decides to cook for himself and finds a revolver (which may have belonged to John Dillinger) hidden in his kitchen.
Fruit of Paradise (1970)
Věra Chytilová · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An experimental retelling of the story of Adam and Eve which then progresses into an allegorical depiction of the loss of innocence.
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)
Jaromil Jireš · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Valerie, a Czechoslovakian teenager living with her grandmother, is blossoming into womanhood, but that transformation proves secondary to the effects she experiences when she puts on a pair of magic earrings. Now seeing the world around her in a different light, Valerie must endure her sexual awakening while attempting to discern reality from fantasy as she encounters lecherous priest Gracian, a vampire-like stranger and otherworldly carnival folk.
Fantastic Planet (1973)
René Laloux · 3 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, The Roku Channel, Plex · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Cinemax Amazon Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
On the planet Ygam, the Draags, extremely technologically and spiritually advanced blue humanoids, consider the tiny Oms, human beings descendants of Terra's inhabitants, as ignorant animals. Those who live in slavery are treated as simple pets and used to entertain Draag children; those who live hidden in the hostile wilderness of the planet are periodically hunted and ruthlessly slaughtered as if they were vermin.
We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974)
Ettore Scola · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Three partisans bound by a strong friendship return home after the war, but the clash with everyday reality puts a strain on their bond.
Cría Cuervos (1976)
Carlos Saura · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Darkroom
Ana, an eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her grandmother and two sisters, mourns the death of her mother.
Autumn Sonata (1978)
Ingmar Bergman · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, TCM, HBO Max Amazon Channel
After a seven-year absence, Charlotte Andergast travels to Sweden to reunite with her daughter Eva. The pair have a troubled relationship: Charlotte sacrificed the responsibilities of motherhood for a career as a classical pianist. Over an emotional night, the pair reopen the wounds of the past. Charlotte gets another shock when she finds out that her mentally impaired daughter, Helena, is out of the asylum and living with Eva.
Down by Law (1986)
Jim Jarmusch · 3 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Fandango at Home Free, Plex · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A disc jockey, a pimp and an Italian tourist escape from jail in New Orleans.
Jean de Florette (1986)
Claude Berri · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In a rural French village, an old man and his only remaining relative cast their covetous eyes on an adjoining vacant property. They need its spring water for growing their flowers, and are dismayed to hear that the man who has inherited it is moving in. They block up the spring and watch as their new neighbour tries to keep his crops watered from wells far afield through the hot summer. Though they see his desperate efforts are breaking his health and his wife and daughter's hearts, they think only of getting the water.
Chocolat (1988)
Claire Denis · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
On her way to visit her childhood home in a colonial outpost in Northern Cameroon, a young French woman recalls her childhood, her memories concentrating on her family's houseboy.
Alexandria Again and Forever (1990)
Youssef Chahine · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Set in 1987 against the backdrop of a hunger strike by the Egyptian film industry, Chahine himself steps in to play Yehia, the famed Egyptian director whose life is chronicled in "Alexandria, Why?" and "An Egyptian Story". Obsessed with Amr, the handsome actor he discovered and cast as his alter-ego in parts one and two of The Alexandria Trilogy, Yehia pressures Amr to star in various film projects that change even as Yehia's perception of the young actor begins to change. He first casts Amr as Hamlet, which the actor deems too demanding for his talents, then as the lead in a musical biopic of demigod Alexander the Great, who founded the city of Alexandria in 332 B.C.
La Belle Noiseuse (1991)
Jacques Rivette · 3 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Fandor Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel
The former famous painter Frenhofer lives quietly with his wife on a countryside residence in the French Provence. When the young artist Nicolas visits him with his girlfriend Marianne, Frenhofer decides to start again the work on a painting he long ago stopped: La Belle Noiseuse. And he wants Marianne as model.
Welcome II the Terrordome (1993)
Ngozi Onwurah · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In a dystopian near-future ghetto known as the Terrordome, a Black community erupts after a child's death triggers state violence and cycles of revenge.
La Cérémonie (1995)
Claude Chabrol · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Sophie, a quiet and shy maid working for an upper-class French family, finds a friend in the energetic and uncompromising postmaster Jeanne, who encourages her to stand up against her bourgeois employers.
Funny Games (1997)
Michael Haneke · 3 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Shout! Factory TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Two psychotic young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement.
Infernal Affairs (2002)
Andrew Lau, Alan Mak · 3 critic votes
Free on Shout! Factory TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Chan Wing Yan, a young police officer, has been sent undercover as a mole in the local mafia. Lau Kin Ming, a young mafia member, infiltrates the police force. Years later, their older counterparts, Chen Wing Yan and Inspector Lau Kin Ming, respectively, race against time to expose the mole within their midst.
A Man There Was (1917)
Victor Sjöström · 2 critic votes
Free on JustWatch TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Terje Vigen, a sailor, suffers the loss of his family through the inflexibility of another man. Years later, when his enemy's family finds itself dependent on his benevolence, Terje must decide whether to avenge himself.
Strike (1925)
Sergei Eisenstein · 2 critic votes
Free on Public Domain Movies, JustWatch TV, Darkroom · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, FlixFling
Workers in a factory in pre-revolutionary Russia go on strike and are met by violent suppression.
The Crazy Ray (1925)
René Clair · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A night watchman on the Eiffel Tower wakes up to find the entire population of the city frozen in place.
The Circus (1928)
Charlie Chaplin · 2 critic votes
Free on JustWatch TV, Darkroom, Amazon Prime Video Free with Ads · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Criterion Channel, FlixFling
Charlie, a wandering tramp, becomes a circus handyman - soon the star of the show - and falls in love with the circus owner's stepdaughter.
La Chienne (1931)
Jean Renoir · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Cashier Maurice Legrand is married to the wretched Adele. By chance, he meets Lucienne, 'Lulu', and makes her his mistress. He thinks he has finally found love, but Lulu is a streetwalker, still in love with her pimp.
The Blood of a Poet (1932)
Jean Cocteau · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In a poet’s room, an armless statue abruptly comes to life. It invites the poet to step through a mirror and to discover another world. Strange places and characters present themselves to him. The poet tears himself away from these twisted fascinations and returns, with some difficulty, to his room.
The Seahorse (1935)
Jean Painlevé · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Examines the sea horse, the only fish that swims upright. We watch it use its prehensile tail to wrap around plants and other sea horses. A frontal bulge houses organs including an air ballast. Three fins propel this fish. We see a female place her eggs in a male's pouch where they are fertilized and nurtured until birth in violent contractions. Inside the pouch are nurturing blood vessels. We then follow the growth of an embryo, greatly magnified: we examine its heart beating and its dorsal fin moving. Young sea horses attach themselves to each other. The film ends with images of many sea horses moving on the ocean floor, superimposed on a horse race.
The Lower Depths (1936)
Jean Renoir · 2 critic votes
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, France Channel Amazon Channel
Inhabitants of a flophouse struggle to survive under the harsh treatment imposed by the landlord, Kostyleva. One resident, young thief Wasska Pepel, ends his affair with the landlord's wife, Vassilissa, and takes up with her sister, Natacha. Pepel also befriends the baron, a former nobleman fallen on hard times, but Pepel's attempts at happiness are complicated when he's accused of murder by a spiteful Vassilissa.
Le Jour Se Lève (1939)
Marcel Carné · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After committing a murder, a man locks himself in his apartment and recollects the events that led him to the killing.
Blood of the Beasts (1949)
Georges Franju · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An early example of ultra-realism, this movie contrasts the quiet, bucolic life in the outskirts of Paris with the harsh, gory conditions inside the nearby slaughterhouses. Describes the fate of the animals and that of the workers in graphic detail.
Casque d'Or (1952)
Jacques Becker · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
At the end of the 19th century, during a ball in Joinville, on the outskirts of Paris, Georges, a former delinquent working as a carpenter, meets Marie, a young woman connected to a criminal gang.
Summer with Monika (1953)
Ingmar Bergman · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
One summer day, two teens begin a reckless affair and abandon their families to be with one another.
Godzilla (1954)
Ishirō Honda · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Cinemax Amazon Channel, Shout! Factory Amazon Channel
Japan is thrown into a panic after several ships are sunk near Odo Island. An expedition to the island led by Dr. Kyohei Yamane soon discover something far more devastating than imagined in the form of a 50 meter tall monster whom the natives call Gojira. Now the monster begins a rampage that threatens to destroy not only Japan, but the rest of the world as well.
The Moon Has Risen (1955)
Kinuyo Tanaka · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Mokichi Asai is a widowed father living in Nara with three daughters—Chizuru, Ayako, and Setsuko. The youngest, Setsuko, plays matchmaker for her older sisters, leading to humorous and awkward romantic entanglements.
Street of Shame (1956)
Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasuzō Masumura · 2 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.
The Red Balloon (1956)
Albert Lamorisse · 2 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel, Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, FlixFling, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A young boy discovers a stray balloon, which seems to have a mind of its own, on the streets of Paris. The two become inseparable, yet the world’s harsh realities finally interfere.
A King in New York (1957)
Charlie Chaplin · 2 critic votes
Free on Amazon Prime Video Free with Ads, Amazon MX Player · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A recently-deposed "Estrovian" monarch seeks shelter in New York City, where he becomes an accidental television celebrity. Later, he's wrongly accused of being a Communist and gets caught up in subsequent HUAC hearings.
Canal (1957)
Andrzej Wajda · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In the last few days of the Warsaw Uprising during World War II, a modest group of Resistance members remains. The band must take refuge in the sewers under the orders of leader Zadra, but it's only a matter of time before they will have to emerge. However, when they try, they are met only with intense hostility from the Nazis. Despite their attempts stay resolute through immense mental strain, it becomes increasingly apparent that they may be doomed.
Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958)
Mario Monicelli · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Best friends Peppe and Mario are thieves, but they're not very good at it. Still, Peppe thinks that he's finally devised a master heist that will make them rich. With the help of some fellow criminals, he plans to dig a tunnel from a rented apartment to the pawnshop next door, where they can rob the safe. But his plan is far from foolproof, and the fact that no one in the group has any experience digging tunnels proves to be the least of their problems.
Black Orpheus (1959)
Marcel Camus · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Young lovers Orfeu and Eurydice run through the favelas of Rio during Carnaval, on the lam from a hitman dressed like Death and Orfeu's vengeful fiancée Mira and passing between moments of fantasy and stark reality. This impressionistic retelling of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice introduced bossa nova to the world with its soundtrack by young Brazilian composers Luiz Bonfá and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Shadows (1959)
John Cassavetes · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
The relationship between Lelia, a light-skinned black woman, and Tony, a white man is put in jeopardy when Tony meets Lelia’s darker-skinned jazz singer brother, Hugh, and discovers that her racial heritage is not what he thought it was.
A Taste of Honey (1961)
Tony Richardson · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
While out to avoid spending time with her narcissistic and promiscuous mother, sixteen-year-old Jo has a brief affair that leaves her pregnant and abandoned. When her mother remarries, Jo's only support becomes her friend Geoffrey, a homosexual.
Léon Morin, Priest (1961)
Jean-Pierre Melville · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Barny, although a Marxist, is intrigued by the mysteries of religion. In confession, she teases a priest, Léon Morin, but he is a young and intelligent man and ready to discuss anything.
The End of Summer (1961)
Yasujirō Ozu · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.
All Night Long (1962)
Basil Dearden · 2 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Shout! Factory TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Over the course of one eventful evening, the anniversary celebration of the musical and romantic partners Aurelius Rex and Delia Lane, a jealous, ambitious drummer, Johnny Cousin, attempts to tear the interracial couple apart.
The Fire Within (1963)
Louis Malle · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Depressed Alain Leroy leaves the clinic where he was detoxified. He meets friends, acquaintances and women, trying to find a reason to continue living.
Fists in the Pocket (1965)
Marco Bellocchio · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
A deeply disturbed and epileptic young man benignly decides to murder other members of his dysfunctional family for altruistic reasons.
Intimate Lighting (1965)
Ivan Passer · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Two classically trained musicians and childhood friends - one a successful cellist in Prague, the other a violinist who makes his money playing provincial funerals - reconvene on the eve of a small-town symphony concert.
Simon of the Desert (1965)
Luis Buñuel · 2 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Simon, a deeply religious man living in the 4th century, wants to be nearer to God so he climbs a column. The Devil wants him come down to Earth and is trying to seduce him.
Tokyo Olympiad (1965)
Kon Ichikawa · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
This impressionistic portrait of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics pays as much attention to the crowds and workers as it does to the actual competitive events. Highlights include an epic pole-vaulting match between West Germany and America, and the final marathon race through Tokyo's streets. Two athletes are highlighted: Ethiopian marathon runner Abebe Bikila, who receives his second gold medal, and runner Ahamed Isa from Chad, representing a country younger than he is.
La Collectionneuse (1967)
Éric Rohmer · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A man kidnaps a woman and holds her hostage just for the pleasure of having her there.
Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (1967)
Dušan Makavejev · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Klassiki
After many adventures, a young female switchboard operator starts a love relationship with a serious young man. But while he's away on business, she gets lonely and succumbs to her colleague's passes.
Oedipus Rex (1967)
Pier Paolo Pasolini · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In pre-war Italy, a young couple have a baby boy. The father, however, is jealous of his son - and the scene moves to antiquity, where the baby is taken into the desert to be killed. He is rescued, given the name Oedipus, and brought up by the King and Queen of Corinth as their son. One day an oracle informs Oedipus that he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified, he flees Corinth and his supposed parents - only to get into a fight and kill an older man on the road…
Samurai Rebellion (1967)
Masaki Kobayashi · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped by the lord. Her husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to rescue her.
Hour of the Wolf (1968)
Ingmar Bergman · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
While vacationing on a remote German island with his younger pregnant wife, an artist has an emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires.
In the Year of the Pig (1968)
Emile de Antonio · 2 critic votes
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
Both sober and sobering, producer-director Emile de Antonio’s In the Year of the Pig is a powerful and, no doubt for many, controversial documentary about the Vietnam War.
Boy (1969)
Nagisa Ōshima · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A family of four lives off of scams in which they pretend to be injured by automobiles.
Pigsty (1969)
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sergio Citti · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Two dramatic stories. In an undetermined past, a young cannibal (who killed his own father) is condemned to be torn to pieces by some wild beasts. In the second story, Julian, the young son of a post-war German industrialist, is on the way to lie down with his farm's pigs, because he doesn't like human relationships.
Days and Nights in the Forest (1970)
Satyajit Ray · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Four friends from Calcutta who have very different personalities make a holiday excursion into the country, to a tiny village in the state of Bihar where they set themselves up in a bungalow. A series of minor events, all connected to their respective reactions to their new environment, reveals their characters more deeply.
Dodes'ka-den (1970)
Akira Kurosawa · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.
Beware of a Holy Whore (1971)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Film director Jeff and his lead actor are taking their time getting to set. In their absence, the crew lack a purposeful way to spend their time waiting, so they drink heavily. However, as booze is downed and frustration sets in, morale hits rock bottom.
Emitaï (1971)
Ousmane Sembène · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
As World War II rages in Europe, a conflict arises between the French and the Diola-speaking tribe of Africa, prompting the village women to organize their men to sit beneath a tree to pray.
Murmur of the Heart (1971)
Louis Malle · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
This loosely plotted coming-of-age tale follows the life of 15-year-old Laurent Chevalier as he stumbles his way over the burgeoning swell of adolescence in 1950s France. After having his first sexual experience with a prostitute and dodging the lips of a priest, Chevalier contracts a case of scarlet fever. When the fever leaves him with a heart murmur, Chevalier is placed in a sanatorium, along with his over-attentive and adulterous mother.
Blaise Pascal (1972)
Roberto Rossellini · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In this evocative, atmospheric biography, Roberto Rossellini brings to life philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who, amid religious persecution and ignorance, believed in a harmony between God and science.
Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
Paul Morrissey, Antonio Margheriti, Andy Warhol · 2 critic votes
Free on The Roku Channel, Fandango at Home Free, Plex · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, Night Flight Plus
Within the decadent walls of the Frankenstein mansion, the Baron and his depraved assistant Otto have discovered the means of creating new life. As the Baron's laboratory begins to fill up with stitched body parts, the Baroness dallies with the randy new manservant and soon the decadent, permissive household is consumed by an outrageous, bizarre and hilarious combination of death and dismemberment.
World on a Wire (1973)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In the future, Simulacron, a computer project simulating reality, encounters strange occurrences after its leader's death. Dr. Stiller questions the sudden disappearance of a friend and wonders if Simulacron holds the answers.
Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (1974)
Kazuo Hara · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
When his wife, the outspoken feminist Miyuki Takeda, announced that she was leaving him in order to find herself, Kazuo Hara began this raw, intensely personal documentary as a way to both maintain a connection to the woman he still cared for and to make sense of their complex relationship. Granted at times shockingly intimate access to Miyuki’s personal life, Hara follows her wayward journey toward liberation as she explores her sexuality with both men and women, becomes pregnant and raises a family as a single mother, and grows increasingly disenchanted with the constraints of traditional social structures.
Lacombe, Lucien (1974)
Louis Malle · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In Louis Malle's lauded drama, Lucien Lacombe is a young man living in rural France during World War II who seeks to join the French Resistance. When he is rejected due to his youth, the resentful Lucien allies himself with the Nazis and joins the Gallic arm of their Gestapo. Lucien grows to enjoy the power that comes with his position, but his life is complicated when he falls for France Horn, a beautiful young Jewish woman.
Martha (1974)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After the death of her abusive father, lonely librarian Martha finds herself caught up in a strange, sadomasochistic relationship with a monstrous husband whom she begins to suspect may be trying to murder her.
Mother Küsters' Trip to Heaven (1975)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Frau Emma Küsters prepares dinner late one seemingly-ordinary afternoon in her seemingly-ordinary Frankfurt kitchen. She wants to add canned sausages to the stew; her irritating daughter-in-law thinks otherwise. But the point is moot: Ernst Küsters has not only murdered the personnel director at the soap factory where he's employed but succeeded that by committing suicide.
Nuts in May (1976)
Mike Leigh · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Britbox Apple TV channel
A middle-class couple go camping in Dorset, but peace and quiet elude them.
House (1977)
Nobuhiko Obayashi · 2 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Shout! Factory TV, Plex · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip with her friends to visit her aunt's ancestral house in the countryside. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.
The Last Wave (1977)
Peter Weir · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A Sydney lawyer defends five Aboriginal people in a ritualised taboo murder and in the process learns disturbing truths about himself and premonitions.
Une sale histoire (1977)
Jean Eustache · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A group of friends listen as one man tells them a story about a time when, in a small cafe, he discovered a peephole into the ladies' bathroom and became addicted to looking through it at female genitals. They ask him questions and come to conclusions about sex. This is a filmed, scripted version. Then, the actual person who this happened to relates the same story; this time, however, it is an unscripted documentary, in which the same things occur as in the scripted one.
Always for Pleasure (1978)
Les Blank · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A musical portrait of New Orleans' street celebrations and unique cultural gumbo in 1977: second-line parades, Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest. Features live music from Professor Longhair, the Wild Tchoupitoulas, the Neville Brothers and more. This glorious, soul-satisfying film is among Blank's special masterworks. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 1999.
Anna's Meetings (1978)
Chantal Akerman · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Detached filmmaker Anna Silver arrives in Germany to show her latest film; over the course of some days, she encounters a variety of new and old faces, some of whom make personal revelations to her to little affect.
Gates of Heaven (1978)
Errol Morris · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, Criterion Channel
A documentary about a pet cemetery in California, and the people who have pets buried there.
The Third Generation (1979)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A wildly anarchic satire of guerrilla terrorism in which a band of leftist radicals inadvertently become puppets of the West German government, which uses them to justify its authoritarian policies.
Documenteur (1981)
Agnès Varda · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films
After separating from the father of her son, a young French woman tries to find lodging and a fresh start in L.A. for herself and her son.
Elippathayam (1981)
Adoor Gopalakrishnan · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Unni is the last male heir of a decaying feudal family in rural Kerala. His inability to accept the socio-economic changes of a new society causes him to gradually withdraw into isolation and paranoia.
Kisapmata (1981)
Mike De Leon · 2 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel
A young womans gets married but her possessive father refuses to let her out of his sight.
And the Ship Sails On (1983)
Federico Fellini · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In 1914, a cruise ship sets sail from Naples to spread the ashes of beloved opera singer Edmea Tetua near Erimo, the isle of her birth. During the voyage, the eclectic array of passengers discovers a group of Serbian refugees aboard the vessel. Peace and camaraderie abound until the ship is descended upon by an Austrian flagship. The Serbians are forced to board it, but naturally they resist, igniting a skirmish that ends in destruction.
The South (1983)
Víctor Erice · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A woman recalls her childhood growing up in the North of Spain, focusing on her relationship with her father.
Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987)
Alan John Clarke · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
On a run-down Bradford council estate, teenagers Rita and Sue both share a job babysitting for Bob and Michelle's children. On the way home one night, Bob takes Rita and Sue up to a deserted, countryside landscape. Knowing what he has in mind, the girls are only too happy to oblige and both have a sexual encounter with him that becomes a regular occurrence.
A Short Film About Love (1988)
Krzysztof Kieślowski · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Klassiki
19-year-old Tomek whiles away his lonely life by spying on his opposite neighbour Magda through binoculars. She's an artist in her mid-thirties, and appears to have everything - not least a constant stream of men at her beck and call. But when the two finally meet, they discover that they have a lot more in common than appeared at first sight...
The Seventh Continent (1989)
Michael Haneke · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Chronicles three years of a middle-class family seemingly caught up in their daily routines, troubled only by minor incidents. Behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence, however, they're planning something much more sinister.
The Match Factory Girl (1990)
Aki Kaurismäki · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Iris is a shy and dowdy young woman stuck in a dead-end job at a match factory, who dreams of finding love at the local dancehall. Finding herself pregnant after a one-night stand and abandoned by the father, Iris finally decides the time has come to get even and she begins to plot her revenge.
Chronicle of a Lying Spirit by Kelly Gabron (1992)
Cauleen Smith · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
“Chronicles of a Lying Spirit (by Kelly Gabron) is less a depiction of 'reality' than an exploration of the implications of the mediation of Black history by film, television, magazines, and newspapers. Using her alter ego, Kelly Gabron, Smith fabricates a personal history of her emergence as an artist from white-male-dominated American history (and American film history). Smith collages images and bits of text from a scrapbook by 'Kelly Gabron' that had been completed before the film was begun, and provides female narration by 'Kelly Gabron' that, slowly but surely, makes itself felt over the male narration about Kelly Gabron (Chris Brown is the male voice). The film's barrage of image, text and voice is repeated twice, and is followed by a coda. That most viewers see the second presentation of the imagery differently from the original presentation demonstrates one problem with trusting any media representation.” Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
Water Lilies (2007)
Céline Sciamma · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Set during a sultry summer in a French suburb, Marie is desperate to join the local pool's synchronized swimming team, but is her interest solely for the sake of sport or for a chance to get close to Floriane, the bad girl of the team? Sciamma, and the two leads, capture the uncertainty of teenage sexuality with a sympathetic eye in this delicate drama of the angst of coming-of-age.
Tomboy (2011)
Céline Sciamma · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Ten-year-old Laure isn't like most girls. She prefers football to dolls and sweaters to dresses. When Laure and her family move to a new neighbourhood, local girl Lisa mistakes Laure for a boy. Indulging in this exciting new identity, Laure becomes Mickaël, and so begins a summer of long sunny afternoons, playground games and first kisses. Yet with the school term fast approaching, and with suspicions arising amongst friends and family, Laure must face up to an uncertain future.
A Thousand Suns (2013)
Mati Diop · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In 1972, Djibril Diop Mambety shoots "Touki Bouki." Mory and Anta are in love. Two young lovers share the same dream: to leave Dakar for Paris. At the fateful moment, Anta embarks. Mory stays alone on quay, unable to tear himself away from his land. Forty years later, "A Thousand Suns" investigates the personal and universal inheritance which represents "Touki Bouki." What has happened since? Magaye Niang, the hero of the movie, has never left Dakar. And today, the old cowboy wonders where Anta is, the love of his youth. Stories about family, exile and cinema meet between the sphere of intimacy and that of myth.
Sieranevada (2016)
Cristi Puiu · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Back from a professional trip to Paris, a neurologist at the pinnacle of his career has to pick up his wife so that they can attend a family meal to commemorate his father, who died a year before. At his mother's flat, the guests are waiting for the priest to arrive while arguing about all kinds of things connected and unconnected with the world’s events and wars.
The Inheritance (2020)
Ephraim Asili · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
Based on real events, the film’s protagonist inherits a house in West Philadelphia that becomes home to an urban collective for activists of color. The increasingly claustrophobic drama unfolds as the group attempts to live together and find consensus through Black political discourse and social philosophy.
The Immigrant (1917)
Charlie Chaplin · 1 critic vote
Free on Public Domain Movies · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A European immigrant endures a challenging voyage only to get into trouble as soon as he arrives in New York.
A Dog's Life (1918)
Charlie Chaplin · 1 critic vote
Free on Amazon Prime Video Free with Ads, Amazon MX Player · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Criterion Channel, FILMBOX+ Now Amazon Channel
The Tramp and his dog companion struggle to survive in the inner city.
The Outlaw and His Wife (1918)
Victor Sjöström · 1 critic vote
Free on JustWatch TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel
A stranger comes to work at widow Halla's farm. Halla and the stranger fall in love, but when he is revealed as Eyvind, an escaped thief forced into crime by his family's starvation, they flee and become two of the many outlaws of Iceland's mountains.
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
Alfred Hitchcock · 1 critic vote
Free on FlixHouse, JustWatch TV, Darkroom · Streaming on Hoopla, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
London. A mysterious serial killer brutally murders young blond women by stalking them in the night fog. One foggy, sinister night, a young man who claims his name is Jonathan Drew arrives at the guest house run by the Bunting family and rents a room.
Fieldwork Footage (1928)
Zora Neale Hurston · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Under the tutelage of anthropologist Franz Boas (her former Columbia professor) and Harlem Renaissance arts patron Charlotte Osgood Mason, Zora Neale Hurston spent nearly two years, from 1927 to 1929, studying the folkloric customs, work songs, spirituals, and vernacular language of African American communities along the River Road and from New Orleans to Florida.
Comradeship (1931)
Georg Wilhelm Pabst · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
At a mine on the shared edge of France and Germany, an underground explosion leads to the entrapment of a group of French miners. In an effort to save the trapped Frenchmen, German miners Wittkopp and Kasper take it upon themselves to traverse a crumbling war tunnel leading down into the mines. Yet, though the workers harbor no political biases against one another, their callous, less tolerant bosses hope to halt this cross-cultural rescue mission.
The Threepenny Opera (1931)
Georg Wilhelm Pabst · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In London at the turn of the century, underworld kingpin Mack the Knife marries Polly Peachum without the knowledge of her father, the equally enterprising 'king of the beggars'.
Tokyo Chorus (1931)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
During the Depression, a young man struggles to provide for his family after he is sacked for defending an older colleague.
Ten Minutes to Live (1932)
Oscar Micheaux · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, Mometu · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, Night Flight Plus
A movie producer offers a nightclub singer a role in his latest film, but all he really wants to do is bed her. She knows, but accepts anyway. Meanwhile, a patron at the club gets a note saying that she'll soon get another note, and that she will be killed ten minutes after that.
The Red Head (1932)
Julien Duvivier · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A red-haired boy is his mother's punching bag; only his father's presence is a great comfort to him, but this weak man is under the shrew's thumb. His pain is so great he feels suicidal.
Dragnet Girl (1933)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A gangster tries to find redemption with the inadvertent help of an innocent shop girl and his jealous girlfriend will do anything to keep him.
Japanese Girls at the Harbor (1933)
Hiroshi Shimizu · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Set in the port city of Yokohama, two girls, Sunako and Dora who attend a Christian school, pledge to be friends. But when a youth named Henry appears on his motorcycle and offers to take Sunako for a ride, we know that this friendship won't last and that the lives of both girls will change in ways they are barely able to comprehend, and can do little to change.
Woman of Tokyo (1933)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Ryoichi and Chikako, brother and sister, live together. Chikako toils during the day and, at night, prostitutes herself to fund his college tuition.
An Inn in Tokyo (1935)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel
An unemployed Japanese man and his two sons wander the industrial flatlands of Depression-era Tokyo, until he chances upon an old friend and befriends a woman and her daughter, who are in a similar predicament.
Confessions of a Cheat (1936)
Sacha Guitry · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Life story of a charming scoundrel, with little dialogue other than the star/director's witty narration. As a boy, only he survives a family tragedy when he's deprived of supper (poisonous mushrooms!) for stealing...concluding that dishonesty pays. Through years of dabbling in crime and amusing adventures, two women appear and reappear in his life, a dazzling blonde jewel thief and a stunning brunette gambler. Finally, he meets the mysterious Charbonnier who had saved his life in World War I, leading to the surprising next phase in his career...
César (1936)
Marcel Pagnol · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Leaping forward twenty years, the trilogy continues with the death of Fanny's husband, Panisse, and the discovery of her secret by her son, Césariot. The young man resolves to track down his biological father, Marius, whose life has been fraught with calamity and poverty.
Osaka Elegy (1936)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
Ayako becomes the mistress of her boss in order to pay her father's debt and prevent him from going to prison for embezzlement.
Sabotage (1936)
Alfred Hitchcock · 1 critic vote
Free on Public Domain Movies, FlixHouse, JustWatch TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
Karl Anton Verloc and his wife own a small cinema in a quiet London suburb where they live seemingly happily. But Mrs. Verloc does not know that her husband has a secret that will affect their relationship and threaten her teenage brother's life.
Sisters of the Gion (1936)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
A geisha in the Gion district of Kyoto feels obliged to help her lover when he asks to stay with her after going bankrupt and leaving his wife. However, her younger sister opposes this, thinking that they should both find wealthy patrons to support them.
Young and Innocent (1937)
Alfred Hitchcock · 1 critic vote
Free on Public Domain Movies, Darkroom, Tubi TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, IndieFlix Shorts Amazon Channel, Fawesome
When a young writer is falsely accused of murdering a famous actress, he escapes custody and joins forces with the daughter of a police constable to prove his innocence.
La Bête Humaine (1938)
Jean Renoir · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Returning by train to the French port of Le Havre, Jacques Lantier, a tormented railwayman, meets by chance the impulsive stationmaster Roubard and Séverine, his wife.
The Baker's Wife (1938)
Marcel Pagnol · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In this little Provencal village, a new baker, Aimable, settles down. His wife Aurelie is beautiful and much younger than he. She departs with a shepherd the night after Aimable produces his first breads. Aimable is so afflicted that he can not work anymore. Therefore, the villagers, who initially laughed at his cuckoldry, take the matter very seriously (they want the bread) and organize a plan to find Aurelie and to bring her back to the bakery.
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Alfred Hitchcock · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, YouTube Free · Streaming on Hoopla, Criterion Channel, TCM
American crime reporter John Jones is reassigned to Europe as a foreign correspondent to cover the imminent war. When he walks into the middle of an assassination and stumbles on a spy ring, he seeks help from a beautiful politician’s daughter and an urbane English journalist to uncover the truth.
The Woman Who Dared (1944)
Jean Grémillon · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The strength of a couple's fascination with airplanes and flight is to the detriment of their family.
Blithe Spirit (1945)
David Lean · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, YouTube Free · Streaming on fuboTV, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
While holding a séance for skeptical novelist Charles Condomine, self-proclaimed 'spiritualist medium' Madame Arcati inadvertently summons the spirit of his deceased first wife Elvira, leading to an increasingly complex love triangle with Ruth, his current wife of five years.
The Vampire (1945)
Jean Painlevé · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After a look at some strange creatures, the narrator and camera take us to the Chaco forest, on the borders of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, where a vampire bat lives, desmodus rotondus, attacking wildlife and domesticated creatures, killing small ones by draining all their blood and killing large ones by leaving a parasite in their bloodstream. Four inches long, with a 12-inch wingspread, we see it walk, approach a victim, pull out a patch of fur large enough for it to engage its teeth, then lap six or seven ounces of blood. Its saliva may be an anesthetic keeping its victims from waking. A stub nose and harelip contribute to its efficiency and its hideous look.
A Hen in the Wind (1948)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Cineverse, Plex Channel · Streaming on Fandor, Fandor Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel
Tokiko patiently awaits her husband's return from WWII when her four-year old son falls ill. She takes him to the doctor but has no means of paying, so she resorts to prostitution. A month later, her husband returns to find his desperate wife, who tells him the truth. Together, they must deal with the consequences.
L'Amore (1948)
Roberto Rossellini · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
L'Amore ('Love') is a 1948 Italian drama anthology film that consists of two parts, The Human Voice (Una voce umana), based on Jean Cocteau's 1929 play of the same title, and The Miracle (Il miracolo), based on Ramón del Valle-Inclán's 1904 novel Flor de santidad.
Oliver Twist (1948)
David Lean · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, YouTube Free · Streaming on fuboTV, Criterion Channel, FlixFling
When 9-year-old orphan Oliver Twist dares to ask his cruel taskmaster, Mr. Bumble, for a second serving of gruel, he's hired out as an apprentice. Escaping that dismal fate, young Oliver falls in with the street urchin known as the Artful Dodger and his criminal mentor, Fagin. When kindly Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver in, Fagin's evil henchman Bill Sikes plots to kidnap the boy.
Bitter Rice (1949)
Giuseppe De Santis · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Francesca and Walter are two-bit criminals in Northern Italy, and, in an effort to avoid the police, Francesca joins a group of women rice workers. She meets the voluptuous peasant rice worker, Silvana, and the soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco. Walter follows her to the rice fields, and the four characters become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder.
Stray Dog (1949)
Akira Kurosawa · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on fuboTV, Criterion Channel, Fawesome
A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.
La Ronde (1950)
Max Ophüls · 1 critic vote
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, France Channel Amazon Channel, Fawesome
An all-knowing interlocutor guides us through a series of affairs in Vienna, 1900. A soldier meets an eager young lady of the evening. Later he has an affair with a young lady, who becomes a maid and does similarly with the young man of the house. The young man seduces a married woman. On and on, spinning on the gay carousel of life.
Summer Interlude (1951)
Ingmar Bergman · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
During a brief summer vacation, a lonely woman recalls her first love thirteen years earlier.
The Steel Helmet (1951)
Samuel Fuller · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A ragtag group of American stragglers battles against superior Communist troops in an abandoned Buddhist temple during the Korean War.
Mother (1952)
Mikio Naruse · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.
Love Letter (1953)
Kinuyo Tanaka · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Five years after the end of the Second World War, Reikichi, a repatriated veteran, translates love letters for Japanese women to American GIs, while searching for his lost love, Michiko.
Fear (1954)
Roberto Rossellini · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Irene Wagner, the wife of the prominent German scientist Professor Albert Wagner, had been having an affair with Erich Baumann. She does not disclose this to her husband, hoping to preserve his innocence and their "perfect marriage". This fills her with anxiety and guilt. However, Johanna Schultze, Erich's jealous ex-girlfriend, learns about the affair and begins to blackmail Irene, turning Irene's psychological torture into a harsh reality.
Islands of Fire (1954)
Vittorio De Seta · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The first light of dawn. The sound of a boat and the screech of birds fill the wide expanse of sea. Black rocks emerge from the water, the “sciara” – the volcanic scoria – of Stromboli, the underwater sulfurous emanations, the layers of reddish rock eroded by the sea. The roar of the volcano can be heard, the flames and the liquid lava are thrown skyward. As nature unleashes itself, the fishermen row toward the shore, the sheep stray and the women return home.
Robinson Crusoe (1954)
Luis Buñuel · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Pluto TV · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Criterion Channel, FlixFling
The titular adventurer, after defying his parents to go to sea, survives a shipwreck and becomes a castaway on a deserted island for nearly thirty years, learning to build a new life from scratch, discovering companionship with a native man he names Friday, and eventually returning to civilisation a changed man, finding wealth and new challenges.
Sound of the Mountain (1954)
Mikio Naruse · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.
Golden Parable (1955)
Vittorio De Setta · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Filming amid the flaxen wheat fields of Sicily, Vittorio De Seta documents the everyday rituals of farmers during harvest time.
Princess Yang Kwei-Fei (1955)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
In 8th-century China, the Emperor grieves the death of his wife. The Yang family wants to provide the Emperor with a consort so that they may consolidate their court influence. General An Lushan finds a distant relative working in their kitchen, whom they groom to present to the Emperor. The Emperor falls in love and she becomes the Princess Yang Kwei-fei. The Yangs are then appointed important ministers, though An Lushan is not given the court position he covets.
She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (1955)
Keisuke Kinoshita · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
On the way back to his childhood home, a septuagenarian man recalls his childhood and adolescence, in particular his love for a young woman.
Elena and Her Men (1956)
Jean Renoir · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Set amid the military maneuvers and Quatorze Juillet carnivals of turn-of-the-century France, Jean Renoir’s delirious romantic comedy Elena and her Men stars a radiant Ingrid Bergman as a beautiful, but impoverished, Polish princess who drives men of all stations to fits of desperate love. When Elena elicits the fascination of a famous general, she finds herself at the center of romantic machinations and political scheming, with the hearts of several men—as well as the future of France—in her hands.
The Burmese Harp (1956)
Kon Ichikawa · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
In Burma during the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier separated from his unit disguises himself as a Buddhist monk to escape imprisonment as a POW.
Tokyo Twilight (1957)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.
Bridges-go-round (1958)
Shirley Clarke · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
New York City’s bridges dissolve into shifting abstractions through montage, superimposition, and color. Set to an electronic score by Louis and Bebe Barron, the film transforms familiar urban structures into an uncanny, alien landscape (an alternate version of the film features a jazz score by Teo Macero).
Equinox Flower (1958)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Wataru's outwardly liberal views on marriage are severely tested when his daughter declares her love for a coworker and is adamant to live her own way, instead of agreeing to an arranged marriage. Outwitted by his female relatives, Hirayama stubbornly refuses to admit defeat.
L'opéra-mouffe (1958)
Agnès Varda · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films
Impressions of the rue Mouffetard, Paris 5, through the eyes of a pregnant woman.
Fires on the Plain (1959)
Kon Ichikawa · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
In the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier afflicted with tuberculosis is abandoned by his company and left to wander the Philippine island of Leyte.
The Human Condition (1959)
Masaki Kobayashi · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labour chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service. He accepts and moves with his newlywed wife Michiko, but when he tries to put his ideas of more humane treatment into practice, he finds himself at odds with scheming officials, cruel foremen, and the military police.
The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (1959)
Masaki Kobayashi · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Kaji, sent to the Japanese army labeled Red, witnesses cruelties in the army and revolts against the abusive treatment against a fellow recruit. He also sees his friend Shinjô defecting to the Russian border, and he ends in the front to fight a lost battle against the Russian tanks division.
Devi (1960)
Satyajit Ray · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A devout upper-class Hindu has a vision in a dream that his daughter-in-law is the human incarnation of the Goddess Kali and begins worshipping her.
Late Autumn (1960)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.
Night and Fog in Japan (1960)
Nagisa Ōshima · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Long takes and a highly theatrical visual approach combine to form a tense and confrontational look at the decline of a socialist student activists' movement in Japan.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)
Karel Reisz · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A 22-year-old factory worker lets loose on the weekends: drinking, brawling, and dating two women, one of whom is older and married.
The Hole (1960)
Jacques Becker · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Four prison inmates have been hatching a plan to literally dig out of jail when another prisoner, Claude Gaspard, is moved into their cell. They take a risk and share their plan with the newcomer. Over the course of three days, the prisoners and friends break through the concrete floor using a bed post and begin to make their way through the sewer system – yet their escape is anything but assured.
Kill (1962)
Kenji Misumi · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In Edo-period Japan, Shingo is born the son of an assassin who was executed for murdering her lord’s concubine. Decades later, his adoptive family is massacred for keeping the secret. Armed with an unbeatable swordfighting technique, Shingo embarks on the path of the masterless samurai in search of vengeance and a path beyond his own ignominious origins.
Night of Only Women (1962)
Kinuyo Tanaka · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In the wake of the 1956 Prostitution Prevention Law, a young woman recently released from one of Japan's new rehabilitation centers struggles to build a new life.
An Actor's Revenge (1963)
Kon Ichikawa · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In Edo Japan, a kabuki actor seeks revenge against the three men who drove his parents to their deaths years ago.
Barnvagnen (1963)
Bo Widerberg · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A tale of a young woman, Britt, who has two flings, but finds herself with difficult decisions when she finds herself pregnant.
Bay of Angels (1963)
Jacques Demy · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A bank clerk is drawn into the risky world of a gorgeous gambling addict.
Hands Over the City (1963)
Francesco Rosi · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Prior to a city council election, the collapse of a building leaves a land developer and his political backers defending themselves against a scandal.
Lord of the Flies (1963)
Peter Brook · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, Cinemax Amazon Channel
Following a plane crash a group of schoolboys find themselves on a deserted island. They appoint a leader and attempt to create an organized society for the sake of their survival. Democracy and order soon begin to crumble when a breakaway faction regresses to savagery with horrifying consequences.
The Insect Woman (1963)
Shohei Imamura · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A woman, Tome, is born to a lower class family in Japan in 1918. The title refers to an insect, repeating its mistakes, as in an infinite circle. Imamura, with this metaphor, introduces the life of Tome, who keeps trying to change her poor life.
The Organizer (1963)
Mario Monicelli · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In the late 19th century, a former high school teacher turned unionist tries to organize workers laboring with inhuman conditions at a textile factory in Turin, Italy.
Assassination (1964)
Masahiro Shinoda · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In 1863, when American warships approach Japan, an enigmatic ronin becomes an important figure in a complex game of power between the Shogunate and the empire.
Film (1964)
Alan Schneider · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A man attempts to evade observation by an all-seeing eye.
Loving Couples (1964)
Mai Zetterling · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
As three pregnant women wait to have their babies in a hospital in Stockholm at the outbreak of the Great War, they relive their childhood and youthful experiences.
The Soft Skin (1964)
François Truffaut · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Pierre Lachenay is a well-known publisher and lecturer, married to Franca and father of Sabine. He starts a love affair with air hostess Nicole, which Pierre is hiding, but he cannot stay away from her.
Man Is Not a Bird (1965)
Dušan Makavejev · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Klassiki
A Serbian engineer falls for a younger woman, but he is inept at courtship.
The Shop on Main Street (1965)
Ján Kadár, Elmar Klos · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In a small town in Nazi-occupied Slovakia during World War II, decent but timid carpenter Tono is named "Aryan comptroller" of a button store owned by an old Jewish widow, Rozalie. Since the post comes with a salary and standing in the town's corrupt hierarchy, Tono wrestles with greed and guilt as he and Rozalie gradually befriend each other. When the authorities order all Jews in town to be rounded up, Tono faces a moral dilemma unlike any he's known before.
A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966)
Jan Němec · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A group of the bourgeois head for a prominent figure's birthday party. As they venture through the woods and have a picnic, they're suddenly surrounded by some suspicious strangers.
Here's Your Life (1966)
Jan Troell · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A working class teenager comes of age in 1910s rural Sweden, moving through a series of jobs and romances that gradually shape his future.
Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus (1966)
Jean Eustache · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Daniel needs some money to buy a duffle coat that is in fashion, so he agrees to work for a photographer by dressing up as Santa Claus. He discovers that it is much easier to meet girls when he is in his costume.
Nayak (1966)
Satyajit Ray · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Arindam, a matinee idol, is going by train to collect an acting award. On the train, he is confronted by Aditi, a journalist who somewhat unwillingly starts to take his interview. Arindam, won over by Aditi's naivete, starts to disclose his past, his fears and his secrets.
Night Games (1966)
Mai Zetterling · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A man on the verge of marriage is haunted by traumatic memories from his childhood.
The Sword of Doom (1966)
Kihachi Okamoto · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Ryunosuke, a gifted swordsman plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule, has no moral code and kills without remorse. It’s a way of life that leads to madness.
Peppermint Frappé (1967)
Carlos Saura · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Julián, a middle-aged single doctor, is reunited with Pablo, a childhood friend who has just married Elena, a beautiful young woman.
Death by Hanging (1968)
Nagisa Ōshima · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but somehow survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.
Head (1968)
Bob Rafelson · 1 critic vote
Streaming on fuboTV, Criterion Channel
In this surrealistic and free-form follow-up to the Monkees' television show, the band frolic their way through a series of musical set pieces and vignettes containing humor and anti-establishment social commentary.
Innocence Unprotected (1968)
Dušan Makavejev · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A documentary about the famous athlete and movie enthusiast who made Serbia's first sound film, Innocence Unprotected. The Nazi occupation of Belgrade prevented the film from gaining wider acclaim. Director Makavejev intersperses clips of the original film with interviews of surviving cast and crew members, as well as newsreel and archival footage.
La Rosiere de Pessac (1968)
Jean Eustache · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
This landmark documentary by Jean Eustache, filmed in 1968, hilariously exposes small-town pomposity and naiveté as it chronicles the preparations for an annual contest to crown a village’s most virtuous young woman.
Stolen Kisses (1968)
François Truffaut · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The third in a series of films featuring François Truffaut's alter-ego, Antoine Doinel, the story resumes with Antoine being discharged from military service. His sweetheart Christine's father lands Antoine a job as a security guard, which he promptly loses. Stumbling into a position assisting a private detective, Antoine falls for his employers' seductive wife, Fabienne, and finds that he must choose between the older woman and Christine.
The Profound Desire of the Gods (1968)
Shohei Imamura · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A Tokyo engineer is sent to a remote island to modernize its infrastructure, where he becomes entangled with a deeply isolated family whose customs blur the line between myth and taboo.
Windy Day (1968)
John Hubley, Faith Hubley · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Two little girls muse on marriage and babies, love and death as they create and act out plays in their backyard. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2006.
Lemon (1969)
Hollis Frampton · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Light begins to illuminate the small, nipple-like end of a lemon on the right edge of the frame and gradually spreads until the entire lemon is clearly visible. Then the light recedes across the frame.
Medea (1969)
Pier Paolo Pasolini · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Medea centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.
The Ear (1969)
Karel Kachyňa · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Government bureaucrat Ludvik becomes suspicious after several colleagues disappear and he overhears something strange at a cocktail party. Returning home with his wife, Anna, he finds their house under surveillance and spends a fraught night worrying about his possible arrest in the morning. Marital difficulties come to light as Ludvik and his wife attempt to act normal in front of the cameras while dredging up their problems out of sight.
Z (1969)
Costa-Gavras · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max
A prominent politician is murdered during a demonstration. The government and army are trying to suppress the truth, but a tenacious magistrate is determined to not to let them get away with it.
Ådalen 31 (1969)
Bo Widerberg · 1 critic vote
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel
A film about the 1931 Ådalen shootings, in which Swedish military forces opened fire against labour demonstrators in the Swedish sawmill district of Ådalen.
Peau d'Âne (1970)
Jacques Demy · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A fairy godmother helps a princess disguise herself so she won't have to marry her father.
The Bread and Alley (1970)
Abbas Kiarostami · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After returning from an errand to get bread, a young boy encounters a dog that frightens him making the journey to get home more difficult than he could’ve imagined.
Spend It All (1971)
Les Blank · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Another short documentary of "Real Food, Roots Music, and People Full of Passion for what they do!", Spend It All is Les Blank's spirited look at the French-speaking Cajun community of southwest Louisiana. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
The Ceremony (1971)
Nagisa Ōshima · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.
La chambre (1972)
Chantal Akerman · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Furniture and clutter of one small apartment room become the subject of a moving still life—with Akerman herself staring back. This breakthrough formal experiment is Akerman's first film made in New York.
State of Siege (1972)
Costa-Gavras · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Assigned to South America, US official Philip Michael Santore is employed by a counterinsurgency agency. His position makes him a target for a local band of guerrillas, and, before long, Santore is kidnapped. As a prisoner, he undergoes interrogation, shedding light on the violent situation in the country. Once the insurgents are done with their questioning, they must decide whether Santore lives or dies.
The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Hans is a street fruit peddler and born loser. His choice of career upsets his bourgeois family, causing him to turn to drinking and violence. After recovering from a debilitating heart attack, his business finally begins to take off. However, the more he becomes a credit to his family, the more depressed he becomes.
Lady Snowblood (1973)
Toshiya Fujita · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Plex · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Yuki's family is nearly wiped out before she is born due to the machinations of a band of criminals. These criminals kidnap and brutalize her mother but leave her alive. Later her mother ends up in prison with only revenge to keep her alive. She creates an instrument for this revenge by purposefully getting pregnant. Yuki never knows the love of a family but only killing and revenge.
Blood for Dracula (1974)
Paul Morrissey, Antonio Margheriti · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, Fandango at Home Free, Plex · Streaming on Kanopy, Shudder Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel
Deathly ill Count Dracula and his slimy underling, Anton, travel to Italy in search of a virgin's blood. They're welcomed at the crumbling estate of indebted Marchese Di Fiore, who's desperate to marry off his daughters to rich suitors. But there, instead of pure women, the count encounters incestuous lesbians with vile blood and Marxist manservant Mario, who's suspicious of the aristocratic Dracula.
Hearts and Minds (1974)
Peter Davis · 1 critic vote
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Many times during his presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson said that ultimate victory in the Vietnam War depended upon the U.S. military winning the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people. Filmmaker Peter Davis uses Johnson's phrase in an ironic context in this anti-war documentary, filmed and released while the Vietnam War was still under way, juxtaposing interviews with military figures like U.S. Army Chief of Staff William C. Westmoreland with shocking scenes of violence and brutality.
The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
Luis Buñuel · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975)
Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
After a chance encounter with a wanted man, a woman is harassed by the police and press until she takes violent action.
Chinese Roulette (1976)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Ariane and Gerhard Christ, a wealthy Munich couple, plan for the weekend on separate trips, lying to the other about their trysts. However, their itineraries are complicated when they both arrive at the family's country home with their respective lovers.
Satan's Brew (1976)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A famous poet who hasn't written a word in two years unconsciously plagiarizes the work of Stefan George, while dealing with several mistresses, his dimwitted brother, and a murder investigation.
The Shout (1978)
Jerzy Skolimowski · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, Shout! Factory TV, Plex · Streaming on Criterion Channel, AMC+ Amazon Channel, Fawesome
A traveller by the name of Crossley forces himself upon a musician and his wife in a lonely part of Devon, and uses the aboriginal magic he has learned to displace his host.
Watership Down (1978)
Martin Rosen, John Hubley · 1 critic vote
Free on Shout! Factory TV, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
When the warren belonging to a community of rabbits is threatened, a brave group led by Fiver, Bigwig, Blackberry and Hazel leave their homeland in a search of a safe new haven.
Family Nest (1979)
Béla Tarr · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A family slowly disintegrates under various pressures in late 1970s communist Hungary.
First Case, Second Case (1979)
Abbas Kiarostami · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A documentary about a teacher who sends a group of pupils out of the classroom when one of them does not own up to talking behind the master's back.
The Driller Killer (1979)
Abel Ferrara · 1 critic vote
Free on Public Domain Movies, Cultpix, FlixHouse · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, MUBI, Kanopy
An artist slowly goes insane while struggling to pay his bills, work on his paintings, and care for his two female roommates, which leads him taking to the streets of New York after dark and randomly killing derelicts with a power drill.
The Terror and the Time (1979)
The Victor Jara Collective · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Documentary about repressive violence in colonial Guyana.
Vengeance Is Mine (1979)
Shohei Imamura · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Darkroom
A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu is on the run from the police.
Wise Blood (1979)
John Huston · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A Southerner--young, poor, ambitious but uneducated--determines to become something in the world. He decides that the best way to do that is to become a preacher and start up his own church.
Blind Chance (1981)
Krzysztof Kieślowski · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Witek runs after a train. Three variations follow on how such a seemingly banal incident could influence the rest of Witek's life.
Eijanaika (1981)
Shohei Imamura · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ei ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji Restoration. It examines the effects of the political and social upheaval of the time, and culminates in a revelrous march on the Tokyo Imperial Palace, which turns into a massacre. Characteristically, Imamura focuses not on the leaders of the country, but on characters in the lower classes and on the fringes of society.
Jamal (1981)
Ibrahim Shaddad · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The short film Jamal (1981) by Ibrahim Shaddad is a report from the life of a camel, most of which plays out in a dreary, small room – a sesame mill.
My Dinner with Andre (1981)
Louis Malle · 1 critic vote
Free on YouTube Free, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Two old friends meet for dinner; as one tells anecdotes detailing his experiences, the other notices their differing worldviews.
Thief (1981)
Michael Mann · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, YouTube Free · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
Frank is an expert professional safecracker, specialized in high-profile diamond heists. He plans to use his ill-gotten income to retire from crime and build a nice life for himself complete with a home, wife and kids. To accelerate the process, he signs on with a top gangster for a big score.
A Room in Town (1982)
Jacques Demy · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Set against the backdrop of an increasingly violent strike, a worker falls in love with the middle-class daughter of his landlady.
An Egyptian Story (1982)
Youssef Chahine · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After we last see him in "Alexandria, Why?" Egyptian filmmaker Yehia Mourad is in his thirties, and successful in his work, he has grown distant from his wife and children and suﬀers a symbolic blockage of the heart while shooting the final scenes of his latest film. After being flown to England for evaluation, it's determined that Yehia must undergo emergency surgery. Fact and fiction blend seamlessly—with healthy doses of cleverly absurdist fantasy—as the film explores the various personalities and forces that have made Yehia (and Youssef Chahine) the man he has become.
Ulysse (1982)
Agnès Varda · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
At the sea shore, a goat, a child, and a naked man. This is a photograph taken in 1954 by Agnès Varda. The goat was dead, the child was named Ulysses, and the man was naked. Starting from this frozen image, the film explores the real and the imaginary.
Meantime (1983)
Mike Leigh · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A working-class family in London's East End is struggling to stay afloat during the recession under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Only the mother Mavis is working; father Frank and the couple's two sons Colin, a timid, chronically shy individual and Mark, an outspoken, headstrong young man, are on the dole. This situation is contrasted by the presence of Mavis's sister Barbara, and her husband John, whose financial and social loftiness appears to be a comfortable facade over the unspoken soreness of a lackluster marriage.
Ma'loul Celebrates its Destruction (1984)
Michel Khleifi · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After the destruction of the Palestinian village of Ma’loul in 1948 and the forced displacement of its inhabitants, the site remains uninhabited. Each year, former residents are allowed to return for a single day, gathering among the ruins to share memories, recount the village’s past, and introduce younger generations to a place they cannot permanently inhabit, sustaining collective history through ritual return and testimony.
Streetwise (1984)
Martin Bell · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
This documentary about teenagers living on the streets in Seattle began as a magazine article. The film follows nine teenagers who discuss how they live by panhandling, prostitution, and petty theft.
Police Story (1985)
Jackie Chan · 1 critic vote
Free on Shout! Factory TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, WeTV, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Officer Chan Ka Kui manages to put a major Hong Kong drug dealer behind the bars practically alone, after a shooting and an impressive chase inside a slum. Now, he must protect the boss' secretary, Selina, who will testify against the gangster in court.
Betty Blue (1986)
Jean-Jacques Beineix · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A lackadaisical handyman and aspiring novelist tries to support his younger girlfriend as she slowly succumbs to madness.
Golden Eighties (1986)
Chantal Akerman · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In a lively shopping center, proprietors and customers are bustling, including three women vying for a man's heart with song and dance.
Rosa Luxemburg (1986)
Margarethe von Trotta · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Polish socialist and Marxist Rosa Luxemburg works tirelessly in the service of revolution in early 20th century Poland and Germany. While Luxemburg campaigns for her beliefs, she is repeatedly imprisoned as she forms the Spartacist League offering a new vision for Germany.
Shadows in Paradise (1986)
Aki Kaurismäki · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Nikander, a rubbish collector and would-be entrepreneur, finds his plans for success dashed when his business associate dies. One evening, he meets Ilona, a down-on-her-luck cashier, in a local supermarket. Falteringly, a bond begins to develop between them.
An Autumn's Tale (1987)
Mabel Cheung · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, WeTV
Hong Kong native Lee Kay moves to NYC's Chinatown while attending college. When she learns that her boyfriend's cheating, her cousin comforts her.
Anantaram (1987)
Adoor Gopalakrishnan · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A young man narrates two conflicting accounts of his life, changing the details and incidents in both, as he slowly approaches madness.
Au revoir les enfants (1987)
Louis Malle · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.
Diary for My Lovers (1987)
Márta Mészáros · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A continuation of "Diary for My Children," the film picks up in 1950, when Juli, the diarist, is 18 and determined to become a movie director.
The Last Emperor (1987)
Bernardo Bertolucci · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Cinemax Amazon Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
Dreaming Rivers (1988)
Martina Attille · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A bittersweet and nostalgic short drama illustrating the spirit of modern families touched by the experience of migration. Miss T., from the Caribbean, lives alone in her one-room apartment, her children and husband having left her to pursue new dreams. When she dies her family and friends gather at her wake. The tapestry of words that interweave the drama convey the fragments of a life lived, but only partly remembered.
Virgin Machine (1988)
Monika Treut · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
A German woman travels to San Francisco to find her mother, but winds up distracted by the sexually flamboyant culture of the city.
American Stories, Food, Family and Philosophy (1989)
Chantal Akerman · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An exploration of Jewish American identity in a multilayered portrait of the immigrant experience. A series of first-person addresses delivered by a cross-section of Jewish New Yorkers, whose by turns tragic and humourous tales speak to a collective history of trauma, displacement, and resilience.
Homework (1989)
Abbas Kiarostami · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Young male students at a local Iranian school are asked about their feelings on homework.
American Dream (1990)
Barbara Kopple · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are asked to take a substantial pay cut in a highly profitable year, the local labor union decides to go on strike and fight for a wage they believe is fair. But as the work stoppage drags on and the strikers face losing everything, friends become enemies, families are divided and the very future of this typical mid American town is threatened.
Daddy Nostalgie (1990)
Bertrand Tavernier · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A half English, half French screenwriter visits her parents on the Riviera after her father's heart surgery. Once there, she begins to connect with him in a way she never did before, as each member of the family tries to cope with his imminent death.
Once Upon a Time in China (1991)
Tsui Hark · 1 critic vote
Free on Shout! Factory TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, WeTV, HBO Max Amazon Channel
In late 19th-century Canton, legendary hero Wong Fei-Hung battles foreign forces' (English, French and American) plundering of China. When Aunt Yee returns from America totally westernised, Wong assumes the role of protector. This proves difficult when his martial arts school and local militia become involved in fierce battles with foreign and local governments. As violence escalates, even Aunt Yee has to question her new western ideals, but is it possible to fight guns with Kung Fu?
Poison (1991)
Todd Haynes · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
A trio of interweaved transgressive tales, telling a bizarre stories of suburban patricide and a miraculous flight from justice, a mad sex experiment which unleashes a disfiguring plague, and the obsessive sexual relationship between two prison inmates.
A Tale of Winter (1992)
Éric Rohmer · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
As winter comes, little Bear decides to eat all the snow around him, but soon falls ill.
Bad Lieutenant (1992)
Abel Ferrara · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, Amazon Prime Video Free with Ads · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
While investigating a young nun's rape, a corrupt New York City police detective, with a serious drug and gambling addiction, tries to change his ways and find forgiveness.
The Bohemian Life (1992)
Aki Kaurismäki · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise.
Guelwaar (1993)
Ousmane Sembène · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Burial of a Christian political activist in a Muslim cemetary forces a conflict imbued with religious fervor.
I Was a Teenage Serial Killer (1993)
Sarah Jacobson · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, Cineverse · Streaming on Fandor, Criterion Channel, Philo
Mary was a good girl until she decides to kill all the "sexist pigs". She of course encounters many of which, and enjoys killing them.
The East Is Red (1993)
Ching Siu-tung · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Shout! Factory TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Shout! Factory Amazon Channel
A royal official accompanies a Portuguese warship to the Black Cliffs to see the site of the defeat of the evil Invincible Asia, who attained supernatural abilities by following the sacred scroll and castrating himself.
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994)
Michael Haneke · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
71 scenes revolving around multiple Viennese residents who are by chance involved with a senseless gun slaughter on Christmas Eve.
A Confucian Confusion (1994)
Edward Yang · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Over the course of a few days, the paths of a group of young friends, lovers, and acquaintances in Taipei intersect, prompting them to arrive at realizations about their lives.
Before the Rain (1994)
Milcho Manchevski · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The circularity of violence seen in a story that circles on itself. In Macedonia, during the war in Bosnia, Christians hunt an ethnic Albanian girl who may have murdered one of their own. A young monk who's taken a vow of silence offers her protection. In London, a photographic editor who's pregnant needs to talk it out with her estranged husband and chooses a toney restaurant.
Cold Water (1994)
Olivier Assayas · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An outer suburb of Paris, 1972. Gilles and Christine, both sixteen, are classmates and lovers who have become frustrated with the aloofness of their families and the general monotony of their lives. When the pair are caught shoplifting, Christine's father ships her off to a home for emotionally disturbed children, temporarily putting space between her and Gilles. Luckily for them, though, she escapes and the couple contemplate running away together.
Premonition Following an Evil Deed (1995)
David Lynch · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A short film about the events following a murder.
The Addiction (1995)
Abel Ferrara · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, ARROW
A vampiric doctoral student tries to follow the philosophy of a nocturnal comrade and control her thirst for blood.
The Son Of… (1995)
Maurice Pialat · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A self-centered man with many diversions occasionally visits his 4-year-old son and the boy's mother.
When It Rains (1995)
Charles Burnett · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A musician spends New Year's Day trying to help his friend pay the rent.
A Summer's Tale (1996)
Éric Rohmer · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Awaiting his girlfriend Léna’s arrival at the Breton seaside resort of Dinard, Gaspard befriends — and flirts heavily with — two other women, the companionable ethnology student Margot and the sensual townie Solène, making for a rather complicated situation when Léna finally arrives.
Lost Book Found (1996)
Jem Cohen · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The result of over five years of Super-8 and 16mm filming on New York City streets, Lost Book Found melds documentary and narrative into a complex meditation on city life. The piece revolves around a mysterious notebook filled with obsessive listings of places, objects, and incidents. These listings serve as the key to a hidden city: a city of unconsidered geographies and layered artifacts—the relics of low-level capitalism and the debris of countless forgotten narratives. The project stems from the filmmaker's first job in New York—working as a pushcart vendor on Canal Street. As usual, Cohen shot in hundreds of locations using unobtrusive equipment and generally without any crew. Influenced by the work of Walter Benjamin.
Mahjong (1996)
Edward Yang · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Amid a rapidly changing cityscape, the lives of a disparate group of swindlers, hustlers, gangsters, and expats collide, with a naive French teenager and a sensitive young local who tries to protect her caught dangerously in the middle.
My Sex Life... or How I Got into an Argument (1996)
Arnaud Desplechin · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Paul Dedalus is at a crossroads in his life. He has to make several decisions; should he complete his doctorate, does he want to become a full professor, does he really love his long-standing girlfriend, or should he re-start with one of his other lovers?
The Mirror (1997)
Jafar Panahi · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
When a young girl's mother doesn't meet her after school, she tries to navigate the streets of Tehran by herself.
The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
Atom Egoyan · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A small mountain community in Canada is devastated when a school bus accident leaves more than a dozen of its children dead. A big-city lawyer arrives to help the survivors' and victims' families prepare a class-action suit, but his efforts only seem to push the townspeople further apart. At the same time, one teenage survivor of the accident has to reckon with the loss of innocence brought about by a different kind of damage.
Gasman (1998)
Lynne Ramsay · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A story of two children who react with naive simple emotion to a situation imposed upon them by their father's secret.
Velvet Goldmine (1998)
Todd Haynes · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Almost a decade since larger-than-life glam-rock enigma Brian Slade disappeared from public eye, an investigative journalist is on assignment to uncover the truth behind his former idol.
It All Starts Today (1999)
Bertrand Tavernier · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In a mining town which has been blighted by economic downturns, an elementary school headmaster struggles to obtain social services on behalf of his students.
Matir Moina (2002)
Tareque Masud · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
A family must come to grips with its culture, its faith, and the brutal political changes entering its small-town world.
The Hand (2004)
Wong Kar-wai · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Hong Kong, 1960s. Zhang, a shy tailor's assistant, is riveted by his imperious client Miss Hua. Upon meeting her, she seduces him to make sure he will truly remember her when designing her garments. After this intimate first encounter, a rapport develops between the two. Entry is for the theatrically released extended version, not the segment from the Eros anthology.
Linda Linda Linda (2005)
Nobuhiro Yamashita · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Only three days before their high school festival, guitarist Kei, drummer Kyoko, and bassist Nozomi are forced to recruit a new lead vocalist for their band. They choose Korean exchange student Son, though her comprehension of Japanese is a bit rough! It's a race against time as the group struggles to learn three songs for the festival's rock concert—including a classic '80s song by the Japanese punk rock band The Blue Hearts called "Linda Linda".
Police, Adjective (2009)
Corneliu Porumboiu · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel
A cop named Cristi must go undercover to trail teen Victor who is suspected of selling pot in the north-eastern city of Vaslui.
Aurora (2010)
Cristi Puiu · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, Klassiki
A taciturn Romanian divorcee acquires a hunting rifle and initiates a killing spree.
Poetry (2010)
Lee Chang-dong · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Hoopla, Criterion Channel
A South Korean woman in her sixties enrolls in a poetry class as she grapples with her faltering memory and her grandson's appalling wrongdoing.
Drunktown's Finest (2014)
Sydney Freeland · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
On a desolate Navajo reservation in New Mexico, three young people – a college-bound, devout Christian; a rebellious and angry father-to-be; and a promiscuous but gorgeous Nádleehi (trans person) – search for love and acceptance.
An Ecstatic Experience (2015)
Ja’Tovia Gary · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A meditative invocation on transcendence as a means of restoration.
Ash Is Purest White (2018)
Jia Zhangke · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Fandor Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel
Set in China's underworld, this tale of love and betrayal follows a dancer who fired a gun to protect her mobster boyfriend during a fight. On release from prison 5 years later, she sets out to find him.
Party on the CAPS (2018)
Meriem Bennani · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
" ... Bennani's mother, a real-life pharmacist and pathologist, also plays one here on the CAPS. Her own mother's 80th birthday is the occasion for the titular party, at which she will debut a youthful new look, the product of an extensive rejuvenation procedure ... Shot in the artist's home city of Rabat, Morocco, the 30-minute video channel-surfs between pirate frequencies, surveillance footage, and documentation of the raucous celebration. We spend time with the party’s MC-for-hire as he slurps harira, flips off a trooper, and dispenses a longish musical interlude about a food vendor who once invoked his ire. Eventually, we land on the nightmarish, static-riven eyes and mouth of ZIP, a user interface promising an illicit escape from the CAPS, suggesting we "sign the lease" on a new body in Florida." — Maxwell Paparella (Screen Slate)
the names have changed, including my own and the truths have been altered (2019)
Onyeka Igwe · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A film telling the same story in four different ways - using British colonial moving images to tell a folk story of two brothers, a VHS Nollywood TV series of the first published Igbo novel, a passed down story of a the family patriarch and the diary entries of the artist's first solo trip to her family's hometown.
Blue Heron (2025)
Sophy Romvari · 1 critic vote
Free on Criterion Channel
In the late 1990s, a family of six settles into their new home on Vancouver Island, as internal dynamics are slowly revealed through the experiences of the youngest child, Sasha. Their fresh start is interrupted by the increasingly dangerous behavior of Jeremy, the family's oldest child.
Resurrection (2025)
Bi Gan · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
In a future where humanity has surrendered its ability to dream in exchange for immortality, an outcast finds illusion, nightmarish visions, and beauty in an intoxicating world of his own making.

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