Lost in Criterion

I mean, at least Salo had a point I could grasp.

Peeping Tom is a dark thriller about a young man with daddy-issues. It came out 6 months before Psycho. Everyone hated it. We don't.

"The best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made" according to unciteable sources.

Hands down the best film with an autogyro. Well, except for The Rocketeer.

"Unfilmable" novels still get filmed. Unfilmable novels are still unfilmable. Lost in Criterion explores The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Al Reinert's 1989 documentary made of NASA's own footage of the Apollo missions is raw and exciting and wonderful.

Donovan and Mifune and Kurosawa back one more time.

Donovan's back to talk about Kurosawa's Yojimbo with us. It's a fun conversation as always.

Donovan, Stephen, Andrew Tobias, and Wrion Bowling gather around our hearts and hearths to talk Die Harder.

Gilliam's 1985 version of 1984 is a bit fatalistic, but stilll fun.

And the Ship Sails On is a tribute to film's artificiality and an 80-year late critique of European culture pre-WWI.

We're joined again by Stephen Goldmeier for Fellini's 1957 delight: Nights of Cabiria.

Black Orpheus is Marcel Camus' ode to Greek myth with a bossa nova beat. It's also a beautiful film.

Stephen Goldmeier joins Lost in Criterion once more to discuss Erik Skjoldbjærg's 1997 debut Insomnia and the problems with subtitles in multi-lingual works.

Stephen Goldmeier joins us once again to discuss the b-side to King Kong, 1932's The Most Dangerous Game

Abbas Kiarostami's Tate of Cherry (1997) is probably one of the more famour films to come out of Iran. That doesn't mean Pat or Adam had ever heard of it.

You can tell this films a fantasy because it opens with people excited to watch ballet.

Peter Brook's 1963 adaptation of the classic novel about a bunch of boys lost on an island who slowly kill each other because that's how humanity works, apparently?

John Lurie's hilariously surreal fishing show from 1992. Why it's in the Criterion Collection, no man can say, but we're glad it is.

Laurence Olivier's 1944 propagandist (at the behest of Churchill himself) adaptation of Henry V is not only Olivier's first film directorial, it's also the first time in film history that an adaptation of one of Shakespeare's plays actually made money. It was nominated for four Academy Awards but only managed to garner Olivier an Honorary Oscar for "for his outstanding achievement as actor, produc...

It's the episode you've all been waiting for. Since we made it through Pasolin's Salo this was the next film of dread albeit for (thankfully) different reasons. But still dread nevertheless. Armageddon is Michael Bay's 1998 sophomore work that challenges our understanding of what The Criterion Collection is actually collecting. We come up some good justifications with this week's special guest Ste...

Seijun Suzuki's 1966 film Tokyo Drifter is more comprehensible than  Branded to Kill  -- it does actually have a discernible plot for most of the film --  but barely -- there's an extended fight scene that plays like a Merry Melodies short. The studio didn't like this one either. While Tokyo Drifter didn't lead directly to Suzuki's firing, it did get his color film privileges revoked, which is why...

Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill (as well as next week's film, Tokyo Drifter) is a B movie Yakuza film from a guy who could make a B movie Yakuza film in his sleep who wanted to do something different. Released in 1967 Branded to Kill led directly to Suzuki being fired for turning in a completely "incomprehensible" film. Considering that Suzuki is a director who doesn't believe there's even such a...

Terry Gilliam's 1981 fantasy film Time Bandits is a polarizing film, it seems. If you experience it at a time when you can relate to the main character, a put-upon boy with a Roald Dahl-ian family life, it may be your favorite movie of all time. Elsewise, well, you may not like it at all. It's a movie that is successfully written (and often physically shot) from the point of view of its young prot...

Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear (1953), only serves to hammer home the fact that he had a better hand for suspense than Hitchcock. The Wages of Fear manages to be one of the most suspenseful films in history without being anything close to a murder mystery or spy thriller or horror film. Take the explosive threat that drives the suspense in the opening scene of Touch of Evil and expand t...