Lost in Criterion
946 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago - ★★★ - 42 ratingsThe Adam Glass and John Patrick Owatari-Dorgan, attempt the sisyphean task of watching every movie in the ever-growing Criterion Collection and talk about them. Want to support us? We’ll love you for it: www.Patreon.com/LostInCriterion
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Episodes
Spine 519: Close-up
October 21, 2022 17:54 - 1 hour - 82.2 MBAbbas Kiarostami's Close-up (1990) explores a real-life incident of celebrity impersonation in late '80s Iran through a mixture of documentary, recreation, and the director guiding the narrative as events still unfold. Because of that last element, exactly what mix of reality and fiction exists is up for debate, and in the end, much of what really happened only happened because of Kiarostami's influence. But beyond all the questions of manipulation, there's also a picture of class relations ...
Spine 517: By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume Two, Program 6
October 14, 2022 13:58 - 1 hour - 106 MBOur experiment of walking through Stan Brakhage, An Anthology Volume Two at a reasonable pace comes to an end this week. After our rush through Volume One years ago we had liked Brakhage, and now after spending so much more time with him, well...we definitely still love his work, but here's hoping it's another few years before Criterion puts out Volume Three. This week we cover films from the last years of Brakhage's life, including what he was working on when he passed away. And we finally...
Spine 517: By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume Two, Program 5
October 07, 2022 16:03 - 1 hour - 85.5 MBThis week's selection of Stan Brakhage films has works from 1982, 1992, and 1994, all multi-media, mixing many of the Brakhage "genres": painted frames, manipulated photographic images, layering. We also get another with a soundtrack from Rick Corrigan, and one with probably the most on-screen (and almost legible!) text of any Brakhage film at all.
Spine 517: By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume Two, Program 4
September 30, 2022 19:20 - 1 hour - 103 MBBy Brakhage Volume Two Program 4 is totally dedicated to Stan Brakhage's 1989-90 four film cycle Visions in Meditation. Inspired by Gertrude Stein's Stanzas in Meditation, the films take us on a journey into a meditative state, working better as a complete work than as four individual pieces. This is the only complete cycle of Brakhage's work in the Criterion sets, despite other films drawn from cycles being included in Volume Two.
Spine 517: By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume Two, Program 3
September 26, 2022 17:41 - 1 hour - 96.7 MBWe continue our journey through By Brakhage, An Anthology Volume Two with a collection of works from 1972-1982 including the remix-y mashup of violence that is Murder Psalm and a few others that are less intense than that.
Spine 517: By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume Two, Program 3
September 26, 2022 17:41 - 1 hour - 96.7 MBWe continue our journey through By Brakhage, An Anthology Volume Two with a collection of works from 1972-1982 including the remix-y mashup of violence that is Murder Psalm and a few others that are less intense than that.
Spine 517: By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume Two, Program 2
September 17, 2022 15:12 - 1 hour - 72.4 MBFor By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume One many years ago we tried to do the whole set in a single episode like we were trying to get the new world record for getting through the Louvre the fastest. These are art films, so for Volume Two we're taking our time to appreciate them and dedicating an individual episode to each of the six "Programs" that Criterion breaks the set down into. This is episode two, covering Program 2 including Stan Brakhage's Scenes from Under Childhood, Section One (19...
Spine 517: By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume Two, Program 1
September 09, 2022 14:00 - 1 hour - 104 MBMany years ago Criterion served us up By Brakhage: An Anthology collecting a nice cross section, or so we thought, of the works of experimental American filmmaker Stan Brakhage. We're back with Volume Two and a much wider cross section of the man's work, including styles of piece completely missing from Volume One. Back then we tried to talk about 26 Brakhage films in a single episode. It was a foolish thing to attempt. This time we're swinging the pendulum the other way and taking the set ...
Spine 516: Stagecoach
September 02, 2022 16:58 - 1 hour - 94.2 MBThis week we're joined by Adam Spieckermann to talk the stunt work, beautiful setting, and class politics of John Ford's Stagecoach (1939), the star-making role for John Wayne.
Spine 515: The Fugitive Kind
August 26, 2022 18:16 - 1 hour - 86.3 MBSomehow The Fugitive Kind (1960) is our first Sidney Lumet film for the proper podcast despite having done three Sidney Lumet films for our Patreon bonus episodes. Based on a Tennessee Williams play (in turn based on the Orpheus myth), we spend most of this episode trying to put our fingers on what doesn't quite work about it.
Spine 514: Ride with the Devil
August 19, 2022 16:50 - 1 hour - 91.6 MBI don't know if we ultimately got what Ang Lee wanted us to get out of Ride with the Devil (1999) but we still got something. An interesting, though perhaps too neo-liberal, look at how young men turn to (and from) extremism in extreme times. Still, it's a pretty movie with Jeffrey Wright and Jewel turning in phenomenal performances.
Spine 513: Summer Hours
August 12, 2022 16:00 - 1 hour - 91.3 MBOlivier Assayas' look at what we inherit from our parents was sponsored by the Paris Musee D'orsay for their 20th anniversary and from that partnership came a movie with a satisfyingly over-ambitious art direction in any modern film we've seen.
Spine 512: Vivre sa Vie
August 05, 2022 18:08 - 1 hour - 99.1 MBLike much of the early work of Jean-Luc Godard (and the rest of the young directors of the French New Wave), Vivre sa Vie (1962) wears its American influences on its sleeves. Perhaps better than our experiences with other pre-1968 Godard work, we can see the seeds of the more explicitly Marxist ideology that will bubble up in his work later in the decade. And that's probably not the only way this is prototypical Godard.
Spine 511: Colossal Youth
July 29, 2022 17:33 - 1 hour - 88.7 MBThis week we finish up the Pedro Costa boxset Letters from Fontainhas with Colossal Youth which is a beautiful and affecting piece of art, despite the fact that we are still left a bit suspicious of Costa's politics.
Spine 510: In Vanda’s Room
July 22, 2022 18:13 - 1 hour - 88.9 MBWe continue through the Letters from Fontainhas boxset this week. The story goes that one of the co-stars of Pedro Costa's Ossos, Vanda Duarte, invited Costa to see what her life was really like, and Costa decided to strip the artifice of film down to its essentials or something and make a "docufiction" film about Vanda and Fontainhas with just his subjects, himself, and a handheld DV camera.
Spine 509: Ossos
July 15, 2022 16:13 - 1 hour - 87.7 MBWe start a box set from director Pedro Costa this week. "Letters from Fontainhas" contains three of Costa's films set in the impoverished Lisbon neighborhood of Fontainhas. Ossos (1997) is our first, and the closest to a traditional film. While "closest" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, the others move from outright narrative fiction to something more accurately labeled "docufiction" or even "ethnofiction", a fictionalized ethnography. We'll talk more about that aspect in the rest of...
Spine 507: Bigger than Life
July 08, 2022 20:11 - 1 hour - 98.5 MBLast week we had a long conversation about the nature of ennui today and this week Nicholas Ray swings in with a movie from 1956 reminding us that middle class ideals lead to fascism. I love it when the Criterion Collection gives us unmarked ideological sets.
Spine 506: Dillinger is Dead
July 01, 2022 16:40 - 1 hour - 83.9 MBMarco Ferreri's 1969 film Dillinger is Dead takes a look out how being a victim of alienation under capitalism makes committing oppressive violence feel like liberation. Or at least I hope so, because otherwise it's a bad movie.
Spine 505: Make Way for Tomorrow
June 24, 2022 15:39 - 1 hour - 81.6 MBMake Way for Tomorrow is one of the most subtly political films we've seen, particularly from America. Leo McCarey's masterpiece tells the story of an older couple forced apart by economic forces, having lost their income and their home in a world were their children cannot financially or emotionally care for them. It stands as a beautifully made depressing drama, but it shines as an example of the state of things and the need for change as the New Deal and, particularly, Social Security wer...
Spine 504: Hunger
June 17, 2022 18:42 - 1 hour - 80 MBDirector Steve McQueen's feature debut, Hunger is a historical drama about the mistreatment of IRA political prisoners by the British government, particularly centered on Bobby Sands' part in the 1981 hunger strike that led to his death. McQueen and his cast all insist this movie is meant to be apolitical and show that wrong was done on both sides. If that is true, this brilliant film failed its makers' intentions.
Spine 503: Lola Montes
June 10, 2022 20:15 - 1 hour - 90.1 MBOur fourth and currently final Max Ophuls movie in the Collection is his final film, a historic romance that takes a lot of liberties and is maybe kinda about taking liberties? Capitalist patriarchy is a circus in Lola Montes.
Spine 502: Revanche
June 03, 2022 16:09 - 1 hour - 84 MBGötz Spielmann's 2008 film Revanche feints at being a crime drama, and has a title suggesting it's a revenge thriller, but settles into being a study on loss and grief.
Spine 501: Paris, Texas
May 27, 2022 18:29 - 1 hour - 93.3 MBAfter we watched Wings of Desire a few months ago we were greatly anticipating another Wim Wenders film and Paris, Texas (1984) does not disappoint. The term "modern western" is usually applied to cowboyish action films, but I think it's fitting here for a story of the southwest US that doubles as a parable on the lack of community and connection when living in places built for cars not people.
Germany Year Zero
May 20, 2022 14:47 - 1 hour - 86.2 MBWe finish up the Roberto Rossellini War Trilogy boxset with our least favorite of the bunch. Germany Year Zero (1948) is a deeply impactful film, but it also gets us thinking about the nature of Rossellini's commitment to "realism".
Spine 499: Germany Year Zero
May 20, 2022 14:47 - 1 hour - 86.2 MBWe finish up the Roberto Rossellini War Trilogy boxset with our least favorite of the bunch. Germany Year Zero (1948) is a deeply impactful film, but it also gets us thinking about the nature of Rossellini's commitment to "realism".
Spine 498: Paisan
May 13, 2022 13:00 - 1 hour - 104 MBWe continue through the Roberto Rossellini War Trilogy boxset with 1946's episodic Paisan. This week we get six separate stories with various amounts of tragic endings and the lasting reminder that Italy would like America to be its friend now.
Spine 497: Rome, Open City
May 07, 2022 21:18 - 1 hour - 97.7 MBThis week we kick off Robert Rossellini's War Trilogy, a boxset of the Italian director's films from the end of World War 2 and the beginning of the Neo-realist movement. First up is Rome, Open City, a movie that codifies Rossellini's neo-realist style out of necessity instead of ideology. This episode is a bit late because the laptop I have recorded Lost in Criterion since 2013 on died. RIP the macbook I promised myself I would keep for a full decade in order to justify the cost. You almos...
Spine 496: Che
April 29, 2022 20:51 - 1 hour - 94.4 MBSteven Soderbergh's Che (2008) is surprisingly pro-Che (and unsurprisingly anti-Castro) telling the story of the revolutionary's rise in Cuba and fall in Bolivia. Most of the bonus features on the Criterion dvd though are dedicated to the fact that this epic film is shot on a RED digital camera and isn't that neat?
Spine 495: The Golden Age of Television - Part 3
April 22, 2022 20:47 - 1 hour - 108 MBWe finish up the Golden Age of Television boxset with two Playhouse 90 episodes both directed by John Frankenheimer, who averaged directing about one live television broadcast every other week during his early career. This week it's The Comedian, Rod Serling's stinging look at a caustic comedian, and Days of Wine and Roses, a melodramatic very special episode in association with Alcoholic's Anonymous.
Spine 495: The Golden Age of Television - Part 2
April 15, 2022 15:23 - 1 hour - 102 MBWe continue through The Golden Age of Television boxset with the three teleplays from disc 2: the perfectly comedic and tragic Bang the Drum Slowly, the ambitious and poignant Requiem for a Heavyweight, and the why-is-this-in-the-set A Wind from the South.
Spine 495: The Golden Age of Television - Part 1
April 08, 2022 19:06 - 1 hour - 74.7 MBThis week we start a boxset of teleplays from various 1950s live dramatic anthology series. Criterion here is releasing a PBS retrospective from the early 80s showcasing the teleplays that mostly hadn't been seen since then, and really weren't publicly available until Criterion's release. We'll be taking this set over the course of three weeks, focusing on each separate disc in the box. Criterion front-loaded the set with three bangers straight out of the gate. Adam S. joins us to talk about...
Downhill Racer
April 01, 2022 19:58 - 1 hour - 80.4 MBMichael Ritchie's directorial debut is one of the greatest sports films to ever come out of Hollywood, second only to Ritchie's later Bad News Bears.
Spine 494: Downhill Racer
April 01, 2022 19:57 - 1 hour - 80.4 MBMichael Ritchie's directorial debut is one of the greatest sports films to ever come out of Hollywood, second only to Ritchie's later Bad News Bears.
Spine 493: Gomorrah
March 25, 2022 17:52 - 1 hour - 89.6 MBA spiritual successor to the works of Francesco Rosi, in content if not style, Matteo Garrone's 2008 film Gomorrah takes a look at the modern state of organized crime in Naples. Filmed on location in the real life places the portrayed crimes take place, and with non-professional actors who would go on to serve prison time for their involvement in real life crimes, Gomorrah shows us the all-too-common story of those ground up and left behind by capitalism.
Gomorrah
March 25, 2022 17:52 - 1 hour - 89.6 MBA spiritual successor to the works of Francesco Rosi, in content if not style, Matteo Garone's 2008 film Gomorrah takes a look at the modern state of organized crime in Naples. Filmed on location in the real life places the portrayed crimes take place, and with non-professional actors who would go on to serve prison time for their involvement in real life crimes, Gomorrah shows us the all-too-common story of those ground up and left behind by capitalism.
A Christmas Tale
March 18, 2022 18:03 - 1 hour - 95.6 MBArnaud Desplechin's 2008 A Christmas Tale wears its influences on its sleeve and meshes them into a cohesive whole, but perhaps an overly-full whole. There's a lot going on here, and clearly the version we're seeing was meant to have even more going on.
Spine 492: A Christmas Tale
March 18, 2022 17:58 - 1 hour - 95.6 MBArnaud Desplechin's 2008 A Christmas Tale wears its influences on its sleeve and meshes them into a cohesive whole, but perhaps an overly-full whole. There's a lot going on here, and clearly the version we're seeing was meant to have even more going on.
Z
March 11, 2022 18:04 - 1 hour - 100 MBWe loved the last Costa-Gavras film we saw, and we love this one. Z (1969) is a story pulled from the headlines of the director’s homeland of Greece that takes a hard look at police alignment with far-right politics and the disastrous results oh letting that power go unchecked.
Spine 491: Z
March 11, 2022 18:03 - 1 hour - 100 MBWe loved the last Costa-Gavras film we saw, and we love this one. Z (1969) is a story pulled from the headlines of the director’s homeland of Greece that takes a hard look at police alignment with far-right politics and the disastrous results oh letting that power go unchecked.
Wings of Desire
March 04, 2022 20:29 - 1 hour - 85.4 MBWim Wenders Wings of Desire is one of the most arthousey arthouse films we've seen since our last Jean Cocteau, but this one has Peter Falk and is thus much more accessible.
Spine 490: Wings of Desire
March 04, 2022 20:29 - 1 hour - 85.4 MBWim Wenders Wings of Desire is one of the most arthousey arthouse films we've seen since our last Jean Cocteau, but this one has Peter Falk and is thus much more accessible.
Spine 489: Mira Nair Fiction Shorts
February 25, 2022 20:43 - 1 hour - 94.3 MBWe finish up the "And Seven Short Films" included on the Monsoon Wedding release with the four fiction shorts included: The Day the Mercedes Became a Hat (1993), her section of the 11'09'01 anthology (2002), Migration (2007), and How Can it Be? (2008). They are an interesting mix of Nair's work made under a variety of political impetuses.
Mira Nair Fiction Shorts
February 25, 2022 20:43 - 1 hour - 94.3 MBWe finish up the "And Seven Short Films" included on the Monsoon Wedding release with the four fiction shorts included: The Day the Mercedes Became a Hat (1993), her section of the 11'09'01 anthology (2002), Migration (2007), and How Can it Be? (2008). They are an interesting mix of Nair's work made under a variety of political impetuses.
Spine 489: Mina Nair Documentary Shorts
February 18, 2022 19:40 - 1 hour - 80.2 MBAccording to the cover, the title of Criterion Spine 489 is Monsoon Wedding and Seven Short Films, and we're being extra completionist by dedicating two episodes for covering the Seven Short Films. This week it's the three documentary shorts: So Far from India (1983), India Cabaret (1985), and The Laughing Club of India (2002).
Mira Nair Documentary Shorts
February 18, 2022 19:40 - 1 hour - 80.2 MBAccording to the cover, the title of Criterion Spine 489 is Monsoon Wedding and Seven Short Films, and we're being extra completionist by dedicating two episodes for covering the Seven Short Films. This week it's the three documentary shorts: So Far from India (1983), India Cabaret (1985), and The Laughing Club of India (2002).
Spine 489: Monsoon Wedding
February 11, 2022 21:39 - 1 hour - 89.1 MBMira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding is a fantastic look at family at a few crossroads in an India at a few national crossroads of its own. And as if the movie itself weren’t enough, the Criterion Collection packs this release with seven other shorter pieces from Nair, which we’ll be covering in the coming weeks.
Monsoon Wedding
February 11, 2022 21:39 - 1 hour - 89.1 MBMira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding is a fantastic look at family at a few crossroads in an India at a few national crossroads of its own. And as if the movie itself weren’t enough, the Criterion Collection packs this release with seven other shorter pieces from Nair, which we’ll be covering in the coming weeks.
Spine 488: Howard’s End
February 04, 2022 18:38 - 1 hour - 94.2 MBJames Ivory’s adaptation o the E. M. Forster novel, Howard’s End is a star-studded, period-accurate recreation of a Britain in transition from patriarchal colonialism to kindler, gentler, female-inclusive neoliberal colonialism. It actually doesn’t deal with the colonialism all that directly, but we still see the failings of the new order in regards to class equality, how a even a little power can corrupt and how charity isn’t justice.
Howard's End
February 04, 2022 18:38 - 1 hour - 94.2 MBJames Ivory’s adaptation o the E. M. Forster novel, Howard’s End is a star-studded, period-accurate recreation of a Britain in transition from patriarchal colonialism to kindler, gentler, female-inclusive neoliberal colonialism. It actually doesn’t deal with the colonialism all that directly, but we still see the failings of the new order in regards to class equality, how a even a little power can corrupt and how charity isn’t justice.
That Hamilton Woman
January 28, 2022 20:12 - 1 hour - 77.4 MBAlexander Korda’s 1941 biopic of Emma Hamilton and her love affair with Horatio Nelson doubles as an attempt to convince the US to enter World War 2. Korda almost faced a Congressional inquiry for this act of propaganda, but Pearl Harbor happened five days before he was to appear. As far as pro-war propaganda goes, this is possibly the worst we’ve encountered in the Collection, which would explain why it’s Winston Churchill’s favorite movie.