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In Cult Of Criterion, The A.V. Club highlights a new release from The Criterion Collection each month, examining the films entering an increasingly accessible film canon.

A Halloween watchlist doesn’t need to be a bloody romp slicing through a polycule of horny teenagers, nor does it need to be...

Shinoda Masahiro’s Demon Pond unfolds at its own singular pace. The film’s ethereal, hypnagogic qualities are enhanced equally by the burnt orange and cerulean hues of Kosugi Masao and Sakamoto Noritaka’s painterly cinematography, which reflect its remote mountain village setting being stuck in a state of permanent evening twilight, and the constantly unpredictable ebbs and flows of electronic music pioneer Tomita Isao’s transfixingly restless Moog score. Where Tomita’s music includes modernized reworkings of pieces by 19th-century composers Claude Debussy and Modest Mussorgsky, Shinoda’s film fuses the kabuki theatricality of the 1913 play by Izumi Kyôka on which it was based with the uncanny artifice of then-groundbreaking, and still mind-bending, visual effects.

These collisions between the classical and the modern are fitting for a film that discomfitingly resides in various liminal states—between night and day, the otherworldly and the worldly, the artificial and the organic.

Blu-ray collectors, rejoice. The Criterion Collection unveiled its November 2024 slate of releases this week, and the month looks like an embarrassment of riches for cinephiles looking to expand their physical media collections. The boutique distributor will be rolling out six new titles, several of which have long been coveted by Criterion fans: “Funny Girl,” “Paper Moon,” “Demon Pond,” and “Scarface,” along with new 4K editions of “Godzilla” and “Seven Samurai.”

William Wyler’s 1968 film adaptation of the musical “Funny Girl” marked Barbara Streisand’s big screen debut, turning the actress into one of Hollywood’s biggest stars overnight and earning her an Oscar for Best Actress on her first nomination. The film quickly became a cultural phenomenon and has remained one of the most popular (and quoted) movie musicals of all time.

Peter Bogdanovich’s “Paper Moon” is widely regarded as one of the greatest showcases for a child actor in film history.

The live-action series adaptation of Hirohiko Araki's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure spinoff Thus Spoke Rohan Kishibe is getting ready to continue with a new episode. This time around the installment will be based on the manga's "Mitsuryo Kaigan" story, and it's currently set to make its debut in Japan on May 5. The premiere date reflects a broadcast via Nhk's Bs Premium 4K, with an airing on Nhk General to follow closely behind on May 10. The episode finds Rohan and editor Kyoka Izumi visiting an Italian restaurant with a chef, Tonio Trussardi (played by Alfredo Chiarenza), who has the power to improve the health of his customers with his food. In order to cure his fiancée, Hatsune Morishima (played by Misako Renbutsu), who is suffering from a serious illness, Tonio tasks Rohan with tracking down a rare ingredient that could serve as a cure. A new visual for the overall...

Based on the homonymous manga written by Kafka Asagiri and illustrated by Sango Harukawa, “Bungo Stray Dogs” is a rather intriguing series that combines elements of action, the supernatural, comedy, detective stories and literature in a very entertaining package.

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The story follows Atsushi Nakahima, an orphan who finds himself homeless and starving on the streets of Yokohama. One day, Atsushi encounters Osamu Dazai, a suicidal young man who eventually introduces him to a group of individuals, all of which have names in the same path, including Ranpo Edogawa and Junichiro Tanizaki. They also happen to be members of the Armed Detective Agency, a group of detectives with supernatural abilities who handle cases involving dangerous and otherworldly criminals. Atsushi quickly learns that he possesses a unique ability called “Beast Beneath the Moonlight,” which grants him immense strength in the form of a weretiger.

After he had cut ties with production company Nikkatsu, director Seijun Suzuki struggled for a long time to find new projects, due to the structure of the Japanese film industry as a whole and his recognition as someone who could not follow orders. With “Zigeunerweisen”, released over a decade after his last work for Nikkatsu, he returned to the spotlight in a way, directing a feature that would also mark a blend of his former stylistic approach as well as new themes and aesthetics. “Kagero-za” is the second entry into the so-called Taisho trilogy, named after the period all three features are set in, and is widely regarded as perhaps the best one in the series. While the feature may prove just as challenging for the viewer, narratively and stylistically, as the other entries in the trilogy, the story about disorientation as well as past and present longings contains some...

Celebrating 100 years of iconoclast director Seijun Suzuki (1923-2017), a singular force in Japanese cinema whose radical stylistic vision and unpredictable narratives shaped the B-movie genre, Japanese cinephilia and the political New Left, Japan Society and The Japan Foundation present Seijun Suzuki Centennial—a selection of six films from across the filmmaker’s nearly 60-film body of work, all on imported 35mm prints straight from Japan. Covering ground from his earliest yakuza feature (Satan’s Town) to his unbridled return to studio filmmaking after being blacklisted for 10 years (A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness) and his subsequent independent success (Kagero-za), this special series offers a rare glimpse into the core of Suzuki’s creative genius.

Organized in conjunction with the recent publication of series’ guest curator William Carroll’s Suzuki Seijun and Postwar Japanese Cinema (Columbia University Press, 2022), Seijun Suzuki Centennial delves into the versatility and audacious nature of the...

Mubi is showing Seijun Suzuki's Taisho Trilogy from November 13 - December 27, 2017 in the United States and United Kingdom.In a now-famous quote from a 1997 video interview, the late Japanese filmmaker Seijun Suzuki paraphrases Nikkatsu Studio executives when he declares, "I make movies that make no sense and make no money.” The quip is put forth in the context of 1967’sBranded to Kill, the pop-influenced noir that arguably stands as the artistic pinnacle of Suzuki’s career as a filmmaker of yakuza, gangster, and proto-pink films with Nikkatsu. While others have contested Suzuki’s claims that his nonsensical and unbankable output lead to the fissure between the filmmaker and Nikkatsu—pointing instead to the drain he and his dedicated coterie of assistant directors placed on the studio—Branded to Kill was the cap to a prodigious run of no less than two features a year from 1956 through 1966, and Suzuki's his...