Search - The Exterminating Angel - Criterion Collection on DVD


The Exterminating Angel - Criterion Collection
The Exterminating Angel - Criterion Collection
Director: Luis Buñuel
Genres: Indie & Art House, Comedy, Drama, Music Video & Concerts, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Mystery & Suspense
NR     2009     1hr 34min

A group of bourgeois cosmopolitans are invited to a mansion for dinner and inexplicably find themselves unable to leave, in Luis Buñuel's daring masterpiece The Exterminating Angel. Made just one year after his internation...  more »

     
4

Larger Image

Movie Details

Director: Luis Buñuel
Genres: Indie & Art House, Comedy, Drama, Music Video & Concerts, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Mystery & Suspense
Sub-Genres: Indie & Art House, Comedy, Drama, Music Video & Concerts, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Mystery & Suspense
Studio: Criterion Collection
Format: DVD - Black and White - Subtitled
DVD Release Date: 02/10/2009
Original Release Date: 01/01/2009
Theatrical Release Date: 01/01/2009
Release Year: 2009
Run Time: 1hr 34min
Screens: Black and White
Number of Discs: 2
SwapaDVD Credits: 2
Total Copies: 0
Members Wishing: 22
Edition: Special Edition,Criterion Collection
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Languages: Spanish
Subtitles: English
See Also:

Similar Movies

Viridiana - Criterion Collection
Director: Luis Buñuel
   UR   2006   1hr 30min
The Phantom of Liberty
Director: Luis Buñuel
4
   R   2005   1hr 44min
The Asphalt Jungle
   NR   2004   1hr 52min
The Before Trilogy
The Criterion Collection
Director: Richard Linklater
?
   R   2017   4hr 50min

Similarly Requested DVDs

Pale Rider
Snap Case
Director: Clint Eastwood
   R   1997   1hr 55min
   
O Brother Where Art Thou
Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
   PG-13   2001   1hr 46min
   
West Side Story
Special Edition Collector's Set
Directors: Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise
   NR   2003   2hr 32min
   
Giant
Two-Disc Special Edition
Director: George Stevens
   NR   2005   3hr 21min
   
The Wild Bunch - The Original Director's Cut
Two-Disc Special Edition
Director: Sam Peckinpah
   R   2006   2hr 25min
   
Life
narrated by David Attenborough
   NR   2010   9hr 10min
   
The Deer Hunter
Director: Michael Cimino
   R   1998   3hr 2min
   
Titanic
Director: James Cameron
   PG-13   1999   3hr 14min
   
Almost Famous
   R   2001   2hr 2min
   
 

Movie Reviews

Bunuel's BEST - and that's saying quite a lot.
Donkey Dick | Blubber Land | 08/27/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)

"A brilliant concept if I've ever heard one, Bunuel's finest film involves a group at a dinner party who are inexplicably unable to go home. Absolutely nothing is holding them back -- doors are unlocked, there are no barriers -- but they just can't leave the house. Kind of a precursor to Godard's 1967 masterpiece, WEEKEND, we then witness socialites and the upper-class reduced to barbaric acts of desperation. Although Bunuel claims ANGEL has no literal meaning, his contempt for the rich has never been more obvious, and he would return to similar terrain with 1972's DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, where dinner guests find themselves unable to sit down and eat. Subtle surreal touches round off this film, as random scenes repeat for absolutely no reason and sheep run about the house; not to mention the frustratingly incomprehensible yet inexplicably appropriate final scenes."
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Donkey Dick | 10/11/1998
(4 out of 5 stars)

"When invited guests arrive for an elegant dinner party and find themselves unable to leave the dining room, Spanish surreal master Luis Bunuel, enters the undeworld of human desires and relations, peeling the crust of the burgoeis thinking and emancipating the subconcious of all the characters. After three days, hunger, thirst and desperation take over, leaving the semi-savage guests to undergo a formidable transformation of both, mind and spirit. After hearing the disturbing news, the social institutions (police, army, politicians, even other citizens) are unable to even enter the house, moved by the same invisible force. Filmed in 1962 and considered by many his greatest surreal film after L'age D'or, Exterminating Angel gives Bunuel a chance to go back to his cultural roots of the French Surrealism, not allowing culture, education, religion or other institutions to interfere with the content of characterization but to allow his characters to roam free like dreams or sometimes nightmares in a world of pre-fabricated emotions.Arthur A. Sabina New York END"
Masterwork
David A. Roman | Los Angeles, CA | 03/04/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)

"The film's central characters are overcome by their bourgeois sense of propriety and, due to pretense, are seemingly trapped in an opulent parlor room by their incapacity to overcome their own outrageous forms of hypocritical propriety. The inability to leave the dinner party first grows to absurd proportions leading to the inability of all attendees to leave at all. They are psychologically impaired and degenerate, slowly, into their basest elements until they realize, collectively, that escape is possible. Rejecting rationalism, and accessing the unconscious desires of mankind, is at the heart of this film. The constructs of man, the masks of artifice he appropriates, are fashioned out of rationalism and serve to obfuscate reality. Man becomes pretentious, corrupt, immoral, and despondent because he has lost sense of himself. For Buñuel, the bourgeoisie is ripe for attack, given that they shape and determine the values of their society. If our social leaders reject true humanity, then how can society hope to find truth? For Buñuel, humanity cannot thrive under such conditions. Hell is divestiture from the self.This film is for anyone who enjoys an intelligent and beautiful film (Cinematography by Mexican master Gabriel Figueroa). Buñuel is clearly one of the greatest pillars of modern film."
All Time Classic
Scott | MI | 01/01/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Exterminating Angel is a brilliant movie. Luis Bunuel is one of the few directors to be able to create a completely fascinating world with seemingly mundane ideas. The film is about guests arriving at a dinner party and for various reasons are unable to leave. This simple, but interesting premise illustrates how we do not live our lives in any logical fashion and how the situations with which we are faced are what shape our world not anything as ridiculous as free will. For anyone who can see life as it really is and not brainwashed by our societies propoganda this is the most entertaining movie ever made about human nature. This is not a movie to take a date to it is one to be savored the rest of your life as you watch an innocent situation turn into the most thought provoking film you will ever see. The pace is slow, but in the hands of Bunuel it is also very entertaining and yes funny."