I really like Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru, a film about a middle aged city government bureaucrat who learns he has stomach cancer and is given six months to live. The movie follows him as he tries to perform one last noble act to end a life he feels he has wasted. It's a deeply humanist and life affirming story that includes social commentary that is still relevant nearly 70 years after the film's release.
If you like Parasite, I'd recommend watching High and Low, as the two films have a lot of similarities.
That scene in High and Low in the jazz club is still breathtaking—love that film!
Great pick. Films by Ozu are also great and have a lot of similar themes.
The only Ozu film I've seen is Tokyo Story which I thought was fantastic. I need to watch more of his films.
I recommend Good Morning if you want something light—it's a great comedy about two schoolchildren trying to pressure their parents into buying a TV. An Autumn Afternoon is a more serious film that looks at, well, the same themes almost of his movies look at lol. The End of Summer is wonderful since it looks at death in a way nothing else does. Really all his films are amazing.
les quatre cents coups is my favorite film on the criterion collection
I've been obsessed with David Lynch's Twin Peaks lately. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is in the CC, but you would want to watch the TV show to fully appreciate the film. S 1-2, FWWM, Missing Pieces (deleted scenes from FWWM), and S3 is the order to watch things in. Season 3 (2017) is a fantastic piece of cinema in its own right
Beau Travail. One of the most gorgeous and lyrical films I've seen. About a personal rivalry between two French Foreign Legion troops in Djibouti. Criterion just released a 4k restoration the other month.
they're by no means the best movies in the collection but some of my personal favorites are Repo Man and the Before trilogy. Breakfast Club is in there too but thats too mainstream so it doesnt count. shout out to video drome also
The Great Beauty might be mine. About an old Italian writer who did fuck all after his first book slowly rediscovering the joy of living. Ikiru is a classic, and Yi Yi gets me every time. A lot of favourites in the collection but those are my top 3.
Really hard to choose but 2 that stand out to me are The Elephant Man and Anatomy of a Murder.
The Elephant Man always really effected me, just made me feel viscerally uncomfortable, especially the parts with the night porter.
Anatomy of a Murder is a great courtroom drama, Jimmy Stewart was born to play the folksy small-town lawyer and George C. Scott is excellent as the ruthless prosecuting attorney. Plus the Duke Ellington score is great
Hearts And Minds and Matewan are excellent, topical works that nicely align with what I'm sure are much of our political ideologies here.
There's an unfortunate lack of Herzog in the collection, but Les Blank's Burden Of Dreams is a good stopgap.
Pretty much every David Cronenberg work in the collection is stellar. The editions of Videodrome and Scanners are top tier.
The Seventh Seal is a personal favorite, the first Criterion I ever bought back in 2002, and one of the most deeply affecting movies I've seen to this day.
My dream is for Criterion to do a big book release of Herzog's stuff, everything, TV docs and all, like they did for Bergman and The Olympics, but the rights involved have to be an absolute nightmare. Both the box sets that Shout! and BFI did are good enough for now, but there's still so much that's missing.
Damn I don't know there's a lot from the collection that I love and I don't really have one favorite. Just saw The Cranes Are Flying and thought it was amazing. I guess if I were to name three off the top of my head it'd be Fantastic Planet, Battle of Algiers, and Harakiri.
