Janus Films.
1) The 39 Steps
Series
Criterion collection volume 56
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
A man in London tries to help a counterespionage agent. But when the agent is killed and he stands accused, he must go on the run to both save himself and also stop a spy ring trying to steal top secret information. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Cast: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll and Lucie Mannheim.
Series
Criterion collection volume 490
Language
Deutsch
Formats
Description
Wings of Desire is one of cinema's loveliest city symphonies. Bruno Ganz is Damiel, an angel perched atop buildings high over Berlin who can hear the thoughts fears, hopes, and dreams of all the people living below. But when he falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, he is willing to give up his immortality and come back to earth to be with her. Made not long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, this stunning tapestry of sounds and images, shot...
Series
Criterion collection volume 716
Language
Français
Appears on list
Description
The story of Guy and Genevieve, young lovers who live in the seaport of Cherbourg. They are separated when Guy must leave the pregnant Genevieve to fight in the war in Algeria. While he's away Genevieve's mother encourages her to marry an elegant diamond merchant who fell in love with her at first sight. Set during 1957-1963. The dialogue is entirely sung in French.
Series
Criterion collection volume 699
Language
English
Formats
Description
Errol Morris (The Fog of War) turns his camera on one of the most fascinating men in the world: the pioneering astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, afflicted by a debilitating motor neuron disease that has left him without a voice or the use of his limbs. An adroitly crafted tale of personal adversity, professional triumph, and cosmological inquiry, Morris's documentary examines the way the collapse of Hawking's body has been accompanied by the untrammeled...
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
From H.G. Wells' shocking book comes one of the most lavish science fiction epics ever to hit the screen! It is the year 1940 and civilization has been torn apart by a global war–transformed from a place of order and progress into a nightmarish landscape of fear and disease. One small warring tribe struggles for its existence, when out of the sky comes a fantastic craft bearing a mysterious stranger who offers them a new path, one free of war and...
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
A nice, tweedy old English woman disappears from her compartment on a European train. A young woman who wonders why becomes frantic when everyone tells her there never was such a person. A young man comes to her aid and they solve a criss-cross puzzle of espoinage, counter-espionage and attempted assassination.
7) Grey Gardens
Series
Criterion collection volume 123
Language
English
Description
Portrait of the relationship between Edith Bouvier Beale and her grown daughter, Little Edie, once and aspiring actress in New York who left her career to care for her aging mother in their East Hampton home, and never left again. The aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis feed their cats and raccoons and rehash their pasts behind the walls of their decaying mansion, Grey Gardens.
Series
Language
Swedish
Description
In medieval Sweden a knight returns from war only to find a ravaged homeland. He meets up with a group of traveling players and eventually confronts the embodiment of death with whom he engages in a game of chess for his life. The knight and Death play as the cultural turmoil envelopes the people around them as they try, in different ways, to deal with the upheaval the plague has caused.
Series
Language
English
Description
In the hands of the renowned experimental theater director Peter Brook, William Golding's legendary novel on the primitivism lurking beneath civilization becomes a film as raw and ragged as the lost boys at its center. Taking an innovative documentary-like approach, Brook shot Lord of The Flies with an off-the-cuff naturalism, seeming to record a spontaneous eruption of its characters' IDs. The result is a rattling masterpiece, as provocative as its...
10) Ikiru
Series
Language
日本語
Formats
Description
Discovering that he is in the terminal stages of cancer, a clerk spends his last months in search of the meaning to life. After his pursuit of pleasure has failed, he finds self-realization in bringing about the building of a children's playground in the slums and dies quietly fulfilled.
11) Seven samurai
Series
Language
日本語
Appears on these lists
Description
This epic masterpiece is about a group of 16th century samurai who are hired to defend a small Japanese village that finds itself annually raided by an army of bandits who steal the meager crops harvested by the peasants. Tired of relinquishing their food supply but woefully inept in combat skills, the villagers decide to hire a band of samurai to protect them. In addition to the primary conflict between the villagers and the bandits, much of the...
12) Rashōmon
Series
Language
日本語
Formats
Description
A riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice, widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife. This eloquent masterwork and international sensation revolutionized film language and introduced Japanese cinema, and a commanding new star.
13) Tōkyō monogatari
Series
Criterion collection volume 217
Language
日本語
Formats
Description
Follows an aging couple, Tomi and Sukichi, on their journey from their rural village to visit their two married children in bustling, post-war Tokyo. Their reception is disappointing: too busy to entertain them, their children send them off to a health spa. After Tomi falls ill she and Sukichi return home, while the children, grief-stricken, hasten to be with her.
14) Watership down
Series
Criterion collection volume 748
Language
English
Formats
Description
Nestled among the rolling hills and peaceful meadows of England lives a community of rabbits. When their warren is threatened, a small group of brave rabbits escapes into the unknown countryside seeking a new home. Led by the visionary Fiver, they face huge challenges and use strength and cunning to survive, while gaining new allies, battling new enemies and always pursuing their dream
Series
Criterion collection volume 139
Language
Swedish
Description
A distinguished professor emeritus who lives alone with his housekeeper can only come to terms with his egocentricity by traveling back in time to his earliest youth, finding there the seeds of his failure as husband, lover, father. This film deals with the phenomena of old age wherein childhood memories return with ever-increasing clarity while great stretches of the prime of life vanish into obscurity. In Swedish with English subtitles.
16) Hamlet
Series
Criterion collection volume 82
Language
English
Description
The classic version of Shakespeare's Hamlet, the towering tragedy of the Danish prince who feigns madness to trap his father's murderer.
Language
English
Formats
Description
The film that made Charles Laughton a star tells the story of the infamous King Henry VIII and his tumultuous matrimonial journey. Renowned for his excess, King Henry VIII took on six wives during his rule, each marriage ending more violently than the last. Instances of treason, execution, and beheading are all cited as reasons for divorce for Henry VIII and his bundle of brides. This comedic take on English royalty is widely considered to be the...
Series
Criterion collection volume 62
Language
Français
Appears on list
Description
Dramatization of the life of Joan of Arc centering on her trial and execution.
19) 49th parallel
Series
Criterion collection volume 376
Language
English
Description
"When a Nazi U-boat crew, headed by the ruthless Lieutenant Hirth is stranded in Canada during the thick of World War II, the men evade capture by hiding out in a series of rural communities before trying to cross the border into the still-neutral United States"--Container.
20) The vanishing
Series
Language
Nederlands
Description
During a road trip with her husband, a woman is abducted by a methodical, calculating psychopath. Her husband becomes obsessed with learning her fate, and neither time nor the love of another woman can end his tormented quest.