The Criterion Project

Louis Gaudio, our good friend and host of the wonderful Robots vs. Dinosaurs podcast joins us to talk about Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL, a retro-futurist satire about an office worker trapped in an oppressive world of bureaucratic nonsense. Inspired by Franz Kafka, George Orwell, and with a good dose of Monty Python-esque comedy, the movie had a lot of trouble getting released in theaters, but ended up...

Conrado and Rachel travel back to 1992 to talk about a great neo-noir crime drama directed by actor-director Bill Duke, whose work has been recently rediscovered and embraced by a new generation of film-lovers. Laurence Fishburne stars as an undercover cop with Jeff Goldblum as a local drug magnate. The movie shows an unforgiven and somewhat surprising political stance on drugs, law enforcement, a...

We continue or tradition of using Halloween as an excuse to talk about the classic Universal Horror movies. This time we go back to the movie that started it all! We are talking about DRACULA, starring Bela Lugosi in his star-making role, as well as the Spanish version of the same movie, which was made using the same script, sets and was filmed during the night shift, when the crew of the English-...

This week Rachel and Conrado are coming to you "live" from the New York Film Festival! They talk about the movies they've watched at this prestigious event, including: Armageddon Time, She Said, The Inspection, Showing Up, Corsage, and more! Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings and reviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-criterion-project/id1479953904 Follow us on anchor https://an...

Conrado and Rachel are joined by Dylan Cuellar, co-host of the Great Movies podcast, to talk about GERTRUD, the final film by legendary Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer. We talk about impenetrable performances, impeccable camera movements, transcendental ways of looking at love, and great last films.  The Jonathan Rosenbaum essay mentioned in this episode: https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/20...

We're doing something a little different this episode! The prestigious Sight and Sound poll of the Best Movies of All Time is conducted every ten years, with the results to be revealed later this year. We didn't get a ballot to vote on the poll itself, but that's never stopped us in the past! We are creating a communal ballot of the ten best movies ever - according to us! Some of the movies discus...

Rachel and Conrado take on one of the big classics, The 400 Blows is one of the movies responsible for kick-starting the French New Wave, featuring Jean-Pierre Leaud as troubled kid Antoine Doinel, and based largely on director François Truffaut's own childhood experiences, the movie has influenced practically every coming-of-age movie that's come since.  Follow us on itunes and leave you rat...

Conrado and Rachel strap their Judo belts tight and travel to Hong Kong to talk about the first movie by prolific director Johnnie To to be included in the Criterion Collection. Known for violent gangster movies and frothy romantic comedies, Throw Down stands out in his filmography as a martial arts melodrama heavily inspired by the work of Akira Kurosawa. Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings...

Rachel and Conrado take on a classic of the 90s American indie scene: join us as we head into the upper classes of the Upper Side East in Whit Stillman's coming-of-age comedy-of-manners, Metropolitan.  Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings and reviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-criterion-project/id1479953904 Follow us on anchor https://anchor.fm/criterionproject Follow our...

We revisit Richard Linklater, one of our personal favorites, and go back to the very beginning: when he broke through with his low budget, talky, and sprawling vision of outsider life in Austin. SLACKER - with its conversations about weird dreams, conspiracy theories, and the monetary value of Madonna's pap smear - was instrumental in kicking off the boom in American independent cinema in the 90s,...

We are talking about Yasujiro Ozu, one of the most celebrated and revered of Japanese filmmakers, and about his key collaborator actress Setsuka Hara. Both director not star are totally unique, not to mention wonderful. In this conversation we are joined by Dave Fiore and Elise Moore, the hosts of the podcast There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film , one of the very be...

We are joined by Youtuber Zach Kircher to talk about Audrey Hepburn playing blind and Alan Arkin playing psycho in a tense thriller famous for  one of the most iconic jump scares of all time!  You can watch Zach's video about Wait Until Dark's iconic jump scare here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBVwnt7OxIw&ab_channel=KircherTalksEntertainment   Follow us on itunes and leave...

Welcome to the super-sized season four premiere of The Criterion Project! We decided to go big or go home and talk about the one and only GODZILLA! What's more we are joined by not one, but two Godzilla experts: Alexander Robinson from The Real Mr. Robinson and the great Yanni Patsurakis are here! Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings and reviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-crit...

Conrado and Rachel close off the third year of Criterion Project and celebrate Conrado's impending 30th birthday by talking about their favorite movies that came out the year he was born! Some of the movies talked about in this episode include Malcolm X, The Player, Muppet Christmas Carol, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and more!  Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings and reviews: https://...

Rachel and Conrado take a look at Colma: the Musical, a totally creative micro budget musical made for only 15 thousand dollars that went on to become a bit of a cult classic and has now been included in Criterion's collection of Asian American cinema.  Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings and reviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-criterion-project/id1479953904 Follow us on...

Conrado and Rachel are joined by film critic and classic film fan Katie Carter to talk about Merrily We Go to Hell, starring Silvia Sidney, Fredric March and directed by Dorothy Arzner - one of the very few female directors of the classic Hollywood era. Comedy, romance, drama... this pre-code classic has it all!  Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings and reviews: https://podcasts.apple.co...

Rachel and Conrado take on the 2018 romance by Oscar-winning director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, before his Drive My Car took the art film world by storm, he was adapting a novel about a young woman torn between two lovers who look exactly the same.  Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings and reviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-criterion-project/id1479953904 Follow us on anchor http...

Rachel and Conrado are joined by Jen Johans to take a look at the cinematic adaptation of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer-winning book. Leave it to Martin Scorsese to show New York high society of the 1870s to be as cold and brutal as the mob. Starring a trio of gorgeous people - Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder - this The Age of Innocence is an under-appreciated masterpiece! Follow...

Rachel and Conrado finally tackle the master Ingmar Bergman and they do so with one of his darkest movies no less! What do you do when you pray but God doesn't answer? Let's find out! Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings and reviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-criterion-project/id1479953904 Follow us on anchor https://anchor.fm/criterionproject Follow our twitter at https://twi...

Rachel and Conrado are joined by Jose Solís, film and theatre critic extraordinaire, to talk about a doozy of a melodrama. It's the hugely popular 1959 version of the hugely popular novel Imitation of Life. Directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Lana Turner, Susan Kohnner, and Juanite Moore, the movie was Universal's most successful movie up to that point. Conrado thinks it's one of the most fascin...

Rachel and Conrado are joined by the great Stanford Clark to talk about a total Hollywood classic: All About Eve! Join us backstage to dig into this fabulous satire about the cut-throat world of professional theatre, featuring a stellar cast led by Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm, George Sanders, podcast favorite Thelma Ritter and one of the first performances by Marilyn Monroe! Follow us o...

Conrado and Rachel tackle one the master of suspense's best movies. There's plenty of Hitchcock talk in here, but we also talk plenty about Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter and we revisit our friend Jimmy Stewart.  Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings and reviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-criterion-project/id1479953904 Follow us on anchor https://anchor.fm/criterionproject Fol...

Merry Christmas! Today Rachel is joined by Kevin Falk to wish you all Happy Holidays and to talk about the musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol from 1970 called Scrooge!  Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings and reviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-criterion-project/id1479953904 Follow us on anchor https://anchor.fm/criterionproject Follow our twitter at https://twitter....

Rachel and Conrado swoon over Jane Campion's romantic biopic Bright Star, and they also have a conversation about the director's latest movie: The Power of the Dog!  Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings and reviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-criterion-project/id1479953904 Follow us on anchor https://anchor.fm/criterionproject Follow our twitter at https://twitter.com/crit...

Conrado and Rachel talk about actress Maggie Cheung and director Stanley Kwan's unconventional biography of legendary Chinese actress Ruan Lingyu  Follow us on itunes and leave you ratings and reviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-criterion-project/id1479953904 Follow us on anchor https://anchor.fm/criterionproject Follow our twitter at https://twitter.com/criterionpod Follow Con...