Lost in Criterion

In 1965 Jean-Luc Godard took an established film-noir detective character and shoved him into a dystopian future city ruled by an authoritarian computer that runs everything on cold logic while quoting Borges' poetry about the nature of myth and maintaining the most inefficient public execution system in history. Alphaville is weird. It's disjointed. It's baffling.

As our resident Kurosawa obsessive Donovan Hill joins us again to talk about the director's 1963 crime drama High and Low. The first hour is a morality play taking place in a shoe company executive's living room. The next one and a half are a police procedural that feels like Law and Order. I'm not selling this right.

Great and interesting movie. Fun conversation. Always glad to have Donovan around. If you'd like to join us for any conversations talk to us on at www.facebook.com/lostincriterion

Paul Verhoeven's first American film is a violently subtle attack on corporatism. The 1987 film also looks forward to a hypothetical dystopian Detroit that looks like it might be better off than current actual Detroit.  In a movie about excess Kurtwood Smith still manages to steal the show as the over-the-top villain. It's a really fun movie and I'm happy to report that Donovan Hill is joining us again to discuss it.

David Lean's 1955 tale of summer love was called Summer Madness in Britain, which might give you an idea of how well Kathrine Hepburn's attempts at a relationship in Venice go. Or the madness of the title may be the production's insistence that Kathrine Hepburn's accent is that of an elementary school secretary from Akron, Ohio.

David Cronenberg's 1988 psychological drama is a lot like most of what Cronenberg was doing in the 80's: weird. What The Fly does for physical horror, Dead Ringers does for mental horror (with quite a bit of the physical left in). Jeremy Irons is amazing as twin gynecologists who share enough screen time that I'm beginning to think that Cronenberg modified the machine from The Fly to just make two Ironses. 

Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungeon are two horrible people who are horribly perfect for one another. That about sums up the plot of Alex Cox's 1986 biopic of the ill-fated couple. We had, shall we say, mixed feelings on it.

Episode 20 though! Is that a milestone? Nearly half a year already. We've seen some real greats so far, and some real stinkers, and Salo. Trudging right along though. Only 700 or so more to watch! 

This week we're watching Shock Corridor, Sam Fuller's 1963 tale of a so-so journalist's ill-advised plan to get a Pulitzer.  It's not as good a movie as his next one, The Naked Kiss, which we watched last week, mostly due to Constance Towers being featured less prominently and in a much more subdued (in a lot of senses) way. We posit that The Naked Kiss is an apology for how she gets treated in this movie. 

Anyway, still enjoyable pulpy goodness. 

Ever pressing on, we recover from Salo and move on to Sam Fuller's 1964 neo-noir The Naked Kiss, kicking off a duo of back to back Fuller. It's lively and pulpy and fun, due mostly to Constance Towers being a far better actress and Fuller a far better director than this script probably deserves, though Fuller did write it himself. So hopefully our joy in The Naked Kiss isn't just a direct result of having watched Salo directly before.

Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote and directed this 1975 film that almost made me vomit. I stopped it four times to keep from doing so.

This film is the reason we decided to do the podcast in order of Criterion's Spine numbers, because it forced us to have a system which meant we wouldn't just watch the ones we wanted to watch first and never ever ever watch Salo. I almost regret that. I watched this before Pat did and sent him an email apologizing for ever having the idea to watch the Criterion Collection and considered putting an end to it. 

I endured.  Pat endured. We chatted about it for an hour.

From now on whenever I am faced with a seemingly impossible task I will remember: I watched all of Salo; I can do anything. 

Well, Donovan Hill finishes off Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy with us as we discuss the 1956 end to the saga: Duel at Ganryu Island. It's not quite as action oriented as the other two films, but it does a lot to tie up loose ends and put a cap on the story.

Hopefully Donovan will be back, it was pretty fun having him on.

But I don't think we'll convince him or anyone else to join us next week.