Lost in Criterion

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.

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.

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.

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).

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).

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.