Lost in Criterion

Milcho Manchevski's 1994 Before the Rain is a circular look at ethnic violence in Macedonia and a reminder to other countries that may view themselves as more "civilized" that violence is their daily life as well. Nationalism: it's bad!

Stephen G. joins us for a rootin’ tootin’ good time as we discuss our first proper western! Though discussion of course turns to other movies we’ve covered that are western-adjacent and also the fact that this may not be the sort of movie most people think of when they think of westerns. But there’s one shootout! And horses! And even a saloon! Anthony Mann’s The Furies (1950) has, according to wikipedia, a “reputation” as a “Freudian western” and we even have to explore the caveats needed to call this Freudian.

"Consider the risks" is the title of Claude Sautet's adaptation of the "José Giovanni" novel. Giovanni, real name Joseph Damiani, made a post-death row career of writing novels fictionalizing his own and others criminal exploits. On the one hand you love to see a man get out of prison and into a better life. On the other he and the men whose stories he draws from were all collaborators, leading Pat and I to interrogate if we have a double standard.

Lost in Criterion posted its first episode on January 1, 2013. In the 8 years since, we have never looked been less enthused for a movie than we are for this week's film, Yukio Mishima's Patriotism. At worst this should have been an extra on the DVD for Schrader's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. At best, this shoddy, self-aggrandizing, dry run for the man's sexual suicide should never have been put in our view.

Happy New Year. It can only go up from here.

Gather ‘round your screens and join Pat and Adam with old friends Stephen G. and Ben JW to talk about the Charles Band “classic” Trancers starring Tim Thomerson as a cop from the future come to kill a mall Santa and fall in love with helper-elf Helen Hunt. Spoilers? Can you spoil a movie like Trancers?

We’ve seen a lot of good movies this year, even through our last Criterion (and first of the year next week) are real low points as far as our opinions of the Collection. But the Varda boxset was certainly a highlight, and the Teshigahara set as well. When we started this project we joked that it would take us a dozen or so years. It’s been 8 and we’re barely closer to the end now than we were then. Time and Criterions march on.

Merry whichever holiday you may celebrate this time of year, and a very happy new year to us all. May we continue the first steps we’re taking out of the long dark.

Paul Schrader makes a visually lovely movie about a man we do not care about whose politics we find abhorrent, and who Schrader seems to have far more empathy for than we can muster.

Alex Korda leads a cadre of directors in this tour du force of visual effects and casual racism. Come for the children's adventure film, stay for the killer six-armed sexbot.

Louis Malle takes his turn at the classic genre of alcoholic and suicidal writer wanders around a large city for a day or so, and really just knocks it out of the park by remembering the key to these tales that so many creators forget: the protagonist is a narcissistic jerk who surrounds himself with narcissistic jerks.

We return to the well of Louis Malle’s films with one that was famously banned in Ohio, so much so that it led to a landmark US Supreme Court case. I think the last movie we saw that led to trials in Ohio was Salo. The Lovers is very much not Salo.

As we enter a holiday season of increased isolation -- please, please let it be a holiday season of increased isolation -- we take a look at a film about a man who spends Christmas failing to connect with old friends, and failing to make new ones who he's not trying to kill or aren't trying to kill him.