Lost in Criterion

Luis Buñuel was a man who absolutely loved a metaphorical dinner party. I believe The Exterminating Angel is our fourth encounter with one in one of the man's films, and it may be one of my favorites, though they are all amazing in their own right. This week Criterion also provides us with some bonus biographical material on Buñuel that includes a story about ruining a Christmas dinner at Charlie...

Gregory Nava's El Norte is a gut-wrenching tale of indigenous teen siblings escaping violence in Guatemala. It tells a story that really hadn't been told before, centering characters whose stories often go ignored even today. But Nava seems reluctant to tell the whole story, to show where the blame lies, to make the connections between the violence Enrique and Rosa are fleeing and the history of c...

For Douglas Sirk's adaptation of Lloyd C. Douglas's "liberal Christianity x pop psychology" novel the director makes the right choice to instead just remake the earlier 1935 John M. Stahl directed adaptation, which Criterion helpfully provides as a bonus feature on this release. While the 1935 version tries to show the absurdity of the melodrama with a slapstick-y comedy style, Sirk just ratchets...

Is Roberto Rossellini's French television biopic of Louis XIV an attack on the aristocracy or a treatise of the loneliness of being king? Is it an examination of the excesses that led to the Revolution or a celebration of the founding of modern France? It's a little complicated, possibly because Rossellini came to the project late into pre-production and did what he could with material he didn't r...

Sam Fuller was hired to adapt a novel that was written by a French diplomat friend of his as an attack on that man's ex-wife Jean Seberg and her anti-racist activism. Sam Fuller attempted to remake this book into an anti-racist movie. This was a fool's errand, and as the NAACP said at the time there were better books from Black authors that took a more nuanced look at racism that could be adapted...

Years ago we watched Lars von Trier's The Element of Crime and Pat loved it. At Spine 80 it was the first time in our journey that Pat's reaction to a movie genuinely surprised me. I'm happy to report that von Trier is 2 for 2 with Pat. Europa is an ambitious and weird movie that wears its pedigree and influences on its sleeve. And it's got trains! AND it's about the failings of American foreign p...

Long time friend of the show Jason Westhaver makes his main podcast debut talking about one of his favorite movies: Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express (1994). Jason's been on a few of our Patreon bonus episodes before ( www.patreon.com/LostInCriterion ), so we're very happy to have him join us for a proper episode to talk about this beautiful film.

Friend of the show Donovan H often shows up for our episodes on samurai films as he’s been a life-long fan of the genre. His other big obsession isn’t covered as often but we finally get one: the spy fiction of John le Carré. Martin Ritt’s 1965 adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is among the best le Carrê films and stars Richard Burton at nearly his Richard Burtonest. We’re happy to h...

Christian-Jaque's Fanfan la Tulipe was, apparently, an incredibly popular film across Europe in 1952, despite the fact that it cannot decide if it wants to be a satire of the French war machine or a silly, sexy swashbuckler. A movie could, theoretically, be both, but this one doesn't seem interested in that prospect either? 

Casey Hape is probably the person we know who has liked Wes Anderson the longest. Her husband Jonathan is also an Anderson fan (and composed our theme song). They’ve been on every Wes Anderson episode we’ve done so far, so while this one isn’t quite as full of guests as previous Anderson episodes have been, we wanted to be sure to have these two dear friends. Plus it's a special occasion! Spine 45...

Costa-Gavras' first film in America is "not political" according to the director, and he is wrong. Missing, the story of the wife and father of an American journalist killed in a US-backed South American coup searching for him and getting the runaround from a complicit US government is patently a political film. And a very good one.

This is the first time we've watched two Jean-Pierre Melville films in a row. After last week's very good Le doulos we were excited to see what Melville had to offer us this time. After watching it we are significantly less excited, in light of last week and the conversation there we once again dig deeper into our relationship with the man's catalogue.

A very fun Jean-Pierre Melville film causes us to reconsider how we’ve viewed the director and his works in the past. Le doulos is a comedy. It must be. Did we make a mistake in not interacting with Le Samourai as parody? Probably not.

Adam Spieckermann joins us to talk about Ozu's final film, An Autumn Afternoon from 1962. Between Adam S.'s and Pat's areas of expertise and study we have a sprawling talk about Ozu's style and post-war Japanese culture. Also, thanks to a bonus feature on the Criterion DVD we get to indulge in that most joyous of pastimes: complaining about 20th century France's racist exoticism of Asia.

We finish up a trio of Max Ophüls films with The Earrings of Madame De... costarring Vittorio De Sica who apparently acted much more often than he directed, and did both quite well, leading Ophüls to be rather embarrassed at having to direct the famed director.

Our second in a series of Max Ophüls' films adapts a selection of short stories by Guy de Maupassant, climaxing in the third part with one of the most amazing continuous takes I've ever seen. And this is the Criterion Collection! We've seen a lot of amazing continuous takes!

We kick off a string of Max Ophüls films with a sex comedy starring a narrator who may or may not be a metaphor for syphilis? La Ronde is based on an 1897 play by Arthur Schnitzler that was actively suppressed first because it was just too sexy for the general public, and then by the author himself once political backlash against the play morphed into antisemitism because everything is bad. Except...

Keisuke Kinoshita's Twenty-Four Eyes is the story of a Marxist-leaning school teacher in rural Japan who enters her profession during the Depression, teaches through World War 2, and sees nationalism, patriarchy, and capitalism destroy her students her family to the point that she has to quit teaching until she can find hope again. It's anti-war in much the same way The Cranes are Flying is, and i...

Powell and Pressburger make (often) beautiful movies but their work during and about World War II leaves us wanting. The Small Back Room is no exception to either of those statements.

Guy Madden describes Brand Upon the Brain! as one of his most biographical films and I hope that's not true even in a weird metaphorical sense. There's a lot going on here, and all of it is good. Too bad its 6 years before we get to watch another Madden movie.

We revisit the world of Jaques Tati and his Mr. Hulot for one last time with Trafic, in which Mr. Hulot invents a very good car and has an adventure trying to get it to the autoshow. Along the way we talk about car culture, the proper collective name for a group of hippies, and whether or not Tati is a reactionary.

We reach a boiling point today as the Collection serves us another coming of age story about a white boy. Claude Jutra’s Mon Oncle Antoine isn’t a bad movie! It’s extremely well regarded in it’s native Canada, and for good reason. But there are more stories to tell, and we’re kinda tired of this same old one.

We finally return to the work of Carl Th. Dreyer with a dreamy horror film on the edge of the silent/sound divide. Stephen G. brings some research on vampire film history as we talk the beautiful, surprising Vampyr (1932).

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 wik...