Lost in Criterion

Spine 501: Paris, Texas

After we watched Wings of Desire a few months ago we were greatly anticipating another Wim Wenders film and Paris, Texas (1984) does not disappoint. The term "modern western" is usually applied to cowboyish action films, but I think it's fitting here for a story of the southwest US that doubles as a parable on the lack of community and connection when living in places built for cars not people.

Spine 499: Germany Year Zero

We finish up the Roberto Rossellini War Trilogy boxset with our least favorite of the bunch. Germany Year Zero (1948) is a deeply impactful film, but it also gets us thinking about the nature of Rossellini's commitment to "realism".

Spine 498: Paisan

We continue through the Roberto Rossellini War Trilogy boxset with 1946's episodic Paisan. This week we get six separate stories with various amounts of tragic endings and the lasting reminder that Italy would like America to be its friend now.

Spine 497: Rome, Open City

This week we kick off Robert Rossellini's War Trilogy, a boxset of the Italian director's films from the end of World War 2 and the beginning of the Neo-realist movement. First up is Rome, Open City, a movie that codifies Rossellini's neo-realist style out of necessity instead of ideology.

This episode is a bit late because the laptop I have recorded Lost in Criterion since 2013 on died. RIP the macbook I promised myself I would keep for a full decade in order to justify the cost. You almost made it.

Spine 496: Che

Steven Soderbergh's Che (2008) is surprisingly pro-Che (and unsurprisingly anti-Castro) telling the story of the revolutionary's rise in Cuba and fall in Bolivia. Most of the bonus features on the Criterion dvd though are dedicated to the fact that this epic film is shot on a RED digital camera and isn't that neat?

Spine 495: The Golden Age of Television - Part 3

We finish up the Golden Age of Television boxset with two Playhouse 90 episodes both directed by John Frankenheimer, who averaged directing about one live television broadcast every other week during his early career. This week it's The Comedian, Rod Serling's stinging look at a caustic comedian, and Days of Wine and Roses, a melodramatic very special episode in association with Alcoholic's Anonymous.

Spine 495: The Golden Age of Television - Part 2

We continue through The Golden Age of Television boxset with the three teleplays from disc 2: the perfectly comedic and tragic Bang the Drum Slowly, the ambitious and poignant Requiem for a Heavyweight, and the why-is-this-in-the-set A Wind from the South.

Spine 495: The Golden Age of Television - Part 1

This week we start a boxset of teleplays from various 1950s live dramatic anthology series. Criterion here is releasing a PBS retrospective from the early 80s showcasing the teleplays that mostly hadn't been seen since then, and really weren't publicly available until Criterion's release.
We'll be taking this set over the course of three weeks, focusing on each separate disc in the box. Criterion front-loaded the set with three bangers straight out of the gate. Adam S. joins us to talk about Marty (written by Paddy Chayefsky), Patterns (written by Rod Serling), and No Time for Sergeants (starring Andy Griffith).

Spine 494: Downhill Racer

Michael Ritchie's directorial debut is one of the greatest sports films to ever come out of Hollywood, second only to Ritchie's later Bad News Bears.

Spine 493: Gomorrah

A spiritual successor to the works of Francesco Rosi, in content if not style, Matteo Garrone's 2008 film Gomorrah takes a look at the modern state of organized crime in Naples. Filmed on location in the real life places the portrayed crimes take place, and with non-professional actors who would go on to serve prison time for their involvement in real life crimes, Gomorrah shows us the all-too-common story of those ground up and left behind by capitalism.

Spine 492: A Christmas Tale

Arnaud Desplechin's 2008 A Christmas Tale wears its influences on its sleeve and meshes them into a cohesive whole, but perhaps an overly-full whole. There's a lot going on here, and clearly the version we're seeing was meant to have even more going on.

Spine 491: Z

We loved the last Costa-Gavras film we saw, and we love this one. Z (1969) is a story pulled from the headlines of the director’s homeland of Greece that takes a hard look at police alignment with far-right politics and the disastrous results oh letting that power go unchecked.

Spine 490: Wings of Desire

Wim Wenders Wings of Desire is one of the most arthousey arthouse films we've seen since our last Jean Cocteau, but this one has Peter Falk and is thus much more accessible.

Spine 489: Mira Nair Fiction Shorts

We finish up the "And Seven Short Films" included on the Monsoon Wedding release with the four fiction shorts included: The Day the Mercedes Became a Hat (1993), her section of the 11'09'01 anthology (2002), Migration (2007), and How Can it Be? (2008).
They are an interesting mix of Nair's work made under a variety of political impetuses. 

Spine 489: Mina Nair Documentary Shorts

According to the cover, the title of Criterion Spine 489 is Monsoon Wedding and Seven Short Films, and we're being extra completionist by dedicating two episodes for covering the Seven Short Films. This week it's the three documentary shorts: So Far from India (1983), India Cabaret (1985), and The Laughing Club of India (2002).

Spine 489: Monsoon Wedding

Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding is a fantastic look at family at a few crossroads in an India at a few national crossroads of its own. And as if the movie itself weren’t enough, the Criterion Collection packs this release with seven other shorter pieces from Nair, which we’ll be covering in the coming weeks.

Spine 488: Howard’s End

James Ivory’s adaptation o the E. M. Forster novel, Howard’s End is a star-studded, period-accurate recreation of a Britain in transition from patriarchal colonialism to kindler, gentler, female-inclusive neoliberal colonialism. It actually doesn’t deal with the colonialism all that directly, but we still see the failings of the new order in regards to class equality, how a even a little power can corrupt and how charity isn’t justice.

Spine 487: That Hamilton Woman

Alexander Korda’s 1941 biopic of Emma Hamilton and her love affair with Horatio Nelson doubles as an attempt to convince the US to enter World War 2. Korda almost faced a Congressional inquiry for this act of propaganda, but Pearl Harbor happened five days before he was to appear. As far as pro-war propaganda goes, this is possibly the worst we’ve encountered in the Collection, which would explain why it’s Winston Churchill’s favorite movie.

Spine 486: Homicide

The Criterion Collection was kind enough to give us a David Mamet film previously so that we could establish our distaste for him before diving into the complicated and delicate political and racial identity issues at the heart of Homicide. I doubt we threaded the needle we were trying to thread here.

Spine 485: The Last Days of Disco

Honestly, it's hard to remember that Whit Stillman's ode to the yuppies who killed disco is a period piece. One because there's very little in the main characters that feel of the time period the movie is set in, but also because the moneyed class gentrifying neighborhoods and cultural movements out of existence is a perennial problem.

Spine 484: Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

New Year New You

In Chantal Akerman’s 1975 meticulous look at domestic life, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, her protagonist makes some changes. Maybe we all should.

Spine 483: Repulsion

After many years we finally see another Roman Polanski film and maybe moving forward it would be best if we don't watch the bonus features that contain interviews with Roman Polanski, who always seems to come off as a misogynistic jerk. Repulsion itself is a pretty good thriller, technically, though it would be better if we felt that the filmmaker wanted us to be sympathetic to the main character at all.

Holiday Special 2021: The Long Kiss Goodnight

For this year's Holiday Special we come to the saint of "movies that incidentally take place at Christmas" Shane Black. Black wrote The Long Kiss Goodnight before taking a long break from screenwriting. Renny Harlin directs, and he's no stranger to holiday-adjacent action fare having also directed Die Harder.

Joining us this year are Stephen G. and Ben JW, and Ben makes a compelling argument that this is Shane Black's most actual Christmas movie. Whether or not that's true, it's ridiculous.

Spine 482: 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her

In 1967 Jean-Luc Godard was like any modern young Marxist: blaming all of life’s ills on consumerism, blaming consumerism on America, yelling at his old friends for being bourgeoisie, getting into public debates with people who know his side better than he does, dating teenagers…but those young Marxists are usually college sophomores and Godard was 37. But like any good leftist unwilling to read theory, he eventually got a friend who wasn’t and could explain it to him, his in the form of Jean-Pierre Gorin. But before he and Gorin started working together, Godard had a few more things to work out and he decided to do so publicly. 2 0r 3 Things I Know About Her is just one of the half dozen or so films he made while in this ideological flux, all of which are more interesting for the meta-commentary they offer us on Godard’s mind than for being good movies.

Spine 481: Made in USA

In the mid 1960's Jean-Luc Godard was going through a lot: his politics were changing, his marriage to Anna Karina was ending, and he was becoming more and more disillusioned with US cultural hegemony. So he made a lot of movies about it, and this is the most scattershot one: Made in USA .