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The Criterion Collection’s 40th Anniversary boxset is your very own film school

The Criterion Collection's new box set has 40 of the best films ever made.

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The Criterion Collection's 40th Anniversary boxset.
Criterion

The Criterion Collection has long been the home for all film snobs and lovers of cinema more generally. With their carefully curated lineup of films, the Collection and its streaming service have made a name for themselves in part by curating only the best cinema from around the world.

Now, Criterion is celebrating its 40th anniversary with the announcement of a new boxset designed to give you the best of what the collection has to offer. The boxset, which is called CC40, encompasses works “frequently chosen by the hundreds of filmmakers, actors, writers, and other movie-loving luminaries who have visited Criterion over the years, as documented in our popular Closet Picks video series,” according to the press release announcing the new box set.

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“Neither a historical survey nor a top-40 compilation, this exciting, personal, unpredictable anthology reflects the cinematic joys and inspirations of the creative community that makes the Criterion Collection possible.”

The Blu-Ray boxset includes 40 films, all of which are in the collection, that span a wide range of genres and time periods. The titles on the box set include His Girl Friday, Love & Basketball, Persona, In the Mood for Love, Night of the Living Dead, 8 1/2, and more.

While no 40 film collection could be comprehensive, the selections represent a wide swath of what’s available through the Criterion Collection, and could also double as a sort of intro to film course. The box set also has deluxe packaging, and a 216 page booklet featuring essays on the films by critics, scholars, and authors. Criterion itself was founded in 1984, and it launched The Criterion Channel in 2019.

Joe Allen
Joe Allen
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Joe Allen is a freelance culture writer based in upstate New York. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The…
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