Of the 600+ films in The Criterion Collection, almost 200 are listed as from the United States. While not all of these films are explicitly thematically based  around life in the US, the American selections for the Collection do make up a mosaic of diverse perspectives on life in this country, proving that there is no sustainable solitary understanding of what it means to be an “American,” but there exists instead an array of possibilities for interpreting American identity. What the American films do have in common, though, is provide proof that excellent films have been made in the US for quite some time. So, after exhausting yourself with Independence Day Parades, firecracker-lighting, and Budweiser, settle down with a great American movie. Here are a dozen great titles from the Criterion Collection about “America” and “freedom” in the many senses of those terms.

For some time now, we’ve been in love with the art of short filmmaking, but we’ve never found a good way to cover them. So once a week, we will bring you a short film that we’ve enjoyed, or that we find interesting, in a new feature we call Sunday Shorts. This week, Sunday Shorts presents Dan Clifton’s For All Mankind.

It has been a long year for Blu-ray releases, and one that has seen some great gems and some major disappointments. But in the end, we have ten honorable mentions and ten best releases, all of which should be in your collection.

This week in the world of Blu-ray, we go to the Moon for all mankind, to the end of the Earth with Nic Cage, to the 1980s with Spike Lee and all the way back to the 60s with a group of Mad Men.

Rob Hunter loves movies. He also loves working as an assistant at the Tyrell Corporation. These two joys come together in the form of cash money payments that he receives every week and immediately uses to buy more DVDs.