First Criterion lineup post on the new platform, how exciting! I had hoped to celebrate with, I don’t know, a new collection of movies about New England holidays? But alas, this month is still not the month. It’s fine, it’s still a solid lineup.
First up is Hotels on Film, which is a very clever idea for a collection and doubly so in that it’s a season when a lot of people travel. Solid list of movies, tending a bit to the dark side. The Palm Beach Story is really funny, though, as one might expect from Sturges. And while I’m not the first person to lament the lack of The Grand Budapest Hotel, I am sure there are good reasons.
Starring Julianne Moore is a great choice. I have in fact seen most of these, although Maggie’s Plan is new to me. She’s great in Maps of the Stars, which is not a bad way to remind yourself that Cronenberg is far more than the body horror guy, and if you haven’t seen Far from Heaven please take this chance to do so. You don’t have to watch any Douglas Sirk first although it can’t hurt.
For our classic collection of the month, we have Queersighted: Sick & Dirty. I really hope the conversation the blurb mentions is filmed and available, although the book sounds pretty good – queer-coded movies from the golden age? Neat. This might finally be the trigger that gets me to watch A Star is Born (1954, and once I watch one I’ll want to watch all the other versions. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is also on my list.
And then a superb directorial collection, Wong Kar Wai’s Cinema. This is great; the only missing movie is Ashes of Time. While I’ve seen or own most of these, I will absolutely take the chance to catch My Blueberry Nights, despite middling reviews. If you are not a Wong Kar Wai fan, start with either Chungking Express, a breezy easy crime film of sorts, or just watch In the Mood for Love and enjoy the best movie of the 21st century.
Oh, and of course his epic TV series Blossoms Shanghai also shows up in November. Despite the current scandal, which is difficult for me to evaluate except that Wong’s always had a reputation for being a very difficult filmmaker, I’m excited about digging into it.
Onward. Black Debutantes: First Features by Black Women Directors pairs nicely with last month’s focus on Black directors in the early days of Hollywood. I noticed that the earliest movie in this collection is from 1972, which says a lot. I gotta get around to Daughters of the Dust now that I’ve watched Zora Neale Hurston’s field footage of a Gullah church.
And then at the end of the main section, another treasure: a Joachim Trier collection. Only three movies and I’ve seen one of them (Oslo, August 31st) but it was great and I hope to find time for at least one of the other two. This is very speculative, but I wonder if this signals that Sentimental Value, his newest movie, will premiere on the Channel in the next couple of months?
Once again I’m a bit puzzled as to why Trier’s three movies are a highly billed collection while, as I move on to Director Spotlights, Todd Haynes winds up down here with his own three movie collection. I’ve seen all of these (and recommended one already in this post) so I’ll just say they’re all worth your while.
Med Hondo is newish to me although I’ve heard of Soleil Ô. Poking around, all three of these sound cool. The musical in particular. The Ringo Lam mini-collection interests me for the Grady Hendrix intro, and in a world with more hours in the day I’d probably take it as an excuse to go deep on the HK action director I know the least about. The Jessie Maple collection is a pairing with the Black Debutantes collection and hey look it’s a basketball movie I’ve never heard of, so let’s add Twice as Nice to the watchlist!
And, finally, this Bi Gan guy with his “labyrinthine, dreamlike narratives” sounds quite interesting. I’ve been watching more contemporary Chinese film lately. Incredibly long tracking shots are my jam. One of my Letterboxd mutuals said “I got a strong feeling of kinship between Bi Gan and Aki Kaurismäki watching this” and that’s all you have to say to get my interest.
OK, now we’re down to the restorations, new Criterion releases, and discoveries. Just the stuff that really caught my eye:
- Insignificance is not the best Roeg, I hear, but the 50s pop culture intellectual theme is my kind of thing.
- Faithless took me a little tiny bit of effort to understand, in part because the blurb is missing the word “by” in the phrase “directed by.” So I have provided the link. I am very much interested in more insight into how Liv Ullman – the director – approached Ingmar Bergman’s quasi-autobiographical script about infidelity and the creative process.
- Meeting with Pol Pot is relevant to my interests.
- Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is the old craftsman pushing his own cinematic understanding, trying new things, working with the best actor of my generation.
- Tokyo Pop is way down in the list of music films – it’s not a documentary, though, it’s a weird little 80s pop romance that happens to be the debut film of an American director who fell in love with a Japanese man while working on a movie together. Not autobiographical, but it echoes. Also there’s a bit of pro wrestling in it. It’s not great, it’s fascinating.