Look, February isn’t generally considered an exciting month; how much can you expect? Me, I would have jazzed this one up a bit with, I don’t know, a collection of Boston crime flicks, but that’s me. The path Criterion took isn’t bad, though, so let’s get into it.
The top collection is Stunts. It’s got everything from Buster Keaton to John Woo – I would bet that the recent Hong Kong collections were part of the inspiration for this one. There’re also some cool new to the Channel movies – maybe this is where I finally see Bullitt. And to save you a check, yeah, the curator Buddy Joe Hooker did do stunts for at least one of the included movies, which I think is cool.
The second collection is a nice little bit of whiplash: Yearning. This is a beautifully melancholy group of films. I’m really happy to see queer films like My Own Private Idaho and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant in here. There’s some Douglas Sirk. Nothing in here makes me want to turn on the Channel at midnight on January 31st, but I do want to dig into some of the more recent releases to see what I’ve missed.
We then return to the world of genre with Gangsters, Gold Diggers, and Grifters. This collection is built around director Mervyn LeRoy; it’s got everything it promises (gold diggers in the form of the Busby Berkeley musical Gold Diggers of 1933). I have not seen any of his movies and Little Caesar is high on my list after watching the original Scarface.
Next up, some world cinema in the form of the Sudanese Film Group. This is mostly short films, with a single documentary feature. I say this a lot in these posts, but this is a corner of film I’d never encountered and I want to make a point of watching a lot of these. I was a bit confused about the shorts from the 1960s and 1970s, since the Sudanese Film Group itself was founded in 1989, but it looks like they were earlier works from the founders. Also, in 1989, the government installed by military coup suppressed the country’s cinema, which explains why none of the shorts were made after 1989.
The final significant collection is Celebrate Black History, to honor Black History Month. It’s sort of diffuse? Plenty of great movies, without maybe a unifying narrative. Which is fine, and it’s not like the Channel hasn’t been curating great POC collection after great POC collection.
The last collection is Wuthering Heights, for the sake of piggybacking on Emerald Fennell’s adaptation. Two movies, the 1939 William Wyler version and the 2011 Andrea Arnold version. The 1992 adaptation starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes is not present. Oh, man, and Luis Buñuel directed one in Mexico in 1954? Well, rights can be difficult.
OK, on to the miscellanea that doesn’t get a category of its own. Only one Exclusive Premiere this month but it’s Peter Hujar’s Day, which I was sad to have missed in 2025. The sole Rediscovery, Rude, looks great — 1995 Canadian crime drama with a ton of social commentary.
There’s something called the Oslo Trilogy about, um, “the complexities of intimacy, desire, gender, and modern relationships against the backdrop of contemporary Oslo.” There’s a Rohmer reference, which is enough to get my interest.
Let’s see… ah, the Yearning collection is in part built around a couple of new Blu-ray releases which also made it onto the Channel. The extras on All That Heaven Allows look good — an interview with Sirk himself might be a treat.
Then in the category I now think of as “director collections we didn’t like enough to make them a top line collection,” Héctor Babenco (Kiss of the Spider Woman) shows up. Hey, Brazilian-Argentinian! Look, the next time I see an Argentinian movie I dislike will be the first time, so although he seems more closely connected to Brazil than Argentina, I’m intrigued.
Yeah, decent month. Nothing that makes me insanely excited; lots of movies that make me happy to think about seeing.