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 235: The Leopard
April 28, 2017 14:03 - 1 hour"We were the leopards, the lions, those who take our place will be jackals, hyenas and the whole lot of us - leopards, lions, jackals and sheep - will continue to think ourselves the salt of the earth."
Spine 234: The Tin Drum
April 21, 2017 15:51 - 1 hourYesterday was Hitler's birthday, so here's a film with a complicated relationship to Nazis? On the one hand Volker Schlondorff's The Tin Drum (1979) does show some of the horrors of living under Nazi occupation in Gdańsk-- I've just now learned that Danzig is the German name for the city, and it seems inappropriate to use it here, Gdansk is the Polish name -- and it briefly embodies the aftermath of the Holocaust in one scarred character (who was only recently re-added to the film for thi...
Stray Dog
April 14, 2017 17:48 - 1 hour - 46.6 MBToshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura star under Akira Kurosawa in a police procedural examining post-WW2 Japan and it is everything it should be.
Spine 233: Stray Dog
April 14, 2017 17:48 - 1 hourToshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura are two of the greatest actors of the 20th century. It happens that they also frequently collaborated with one another and with some of the greatest film directors to come out of mid-century Japan. As such, it seems they may be the actors who most often appear in the Criterion Collection as well, though it's hard to track that information without it becoming a whole new obsession. They costar in Stray Dog under the helm of Criterion standard Akira Kurosaw...
A Story of Floating Leaves and Floating Leaves: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu
April 07, 2017 13:31 - 58 minutes - 40 MBOzu comes back to A Story of Floating Leaves after 25 years and remakes it in color with sound as Floating Leaves and they are both wonderful.
Spine 232: A Story of Floating Leaves and Floating Leaves: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu
April 07, 2017 13:31 - 58 minutesWe return to the Yasujiro Ozu well with a double feature, or as Pat corrects me, a one and a half feature. Ozu made the silent black-and-white A Story of Floating Leaves in 1934 then during a break in his production schedule after finishing Good Morning early in 1959 he remade it as Floating Leaves in color and with sound. Fascinating to see a great artist approach the same basic material a quarter-century apart.
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
March 31, 2017 19:05 - 1 hour - 42.4 MBIn the face of Nazi power Lang gets much more explicitly anti-Nazi.
Spine 231: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
March 31, 2017 19:05 - 1 hourThere are only three Fritz Lang films in the Collection -- discounting his delightful appearance as himself in Godard's Contempt -- and these appearances are fairly spread out. We last saw from him with Spine 30 and will next see him at Spine 649. But for now we have Spine 231, his 1933 follow up and sort of sequel to M (as Otto Wernicke plays the same detective in both): The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. M had an interesting background in that Nazis tried to shut it down during pre-production ...
3 Women
March 24, 2017 22:43 - 53 minutes - 37 MBRobert Altman's 3 Women would be a weird phrase if you didn't know it was a movie.
Spine 230: 3 Women
March 24, 2017 22:43 - 53 minutesRobert Altman has had a long and varied career and Pat and I have only been familiar with his commercial highlights: M.A.S.H., Popeye -- plus for some reason I've seen Gosford Park and A Prairie Home Companion. None of them in the Collection though Altman does make quite a showing. His first film that Criterion presents to us is 3 Women from 1977, a surreal and dreamlike drama of identity theft, which is appropriate since apparently Altman was inspired to make the film from a dream that he...
Scenes from a Marriage
March 17, 2017 19:30 - 58 minutes - 40.3 MBBergman's Scenes from a Marriage is so devastating and uplifting, like a marriage.
Spine 229: Scenes from a Marriage
March 17, 2017 19:30 - 58 minutesScenes from a Marriage started life as a 6-part miniseries on Swedish television one episode per week from April 11 to May 16, 1973, and it is best experienced in that pacing: watch an episode then let each scene sink in before you move on. Six weeks may be too much time, but six nights may be just as good. Plumbing the depths of a relationship so perfectly its no surprise that an international release was sought, but director Ingmar Bergman found trouble convincing foreign television broadc...
Salvatore Giuliano
March 11, 2017 06:19 - 49 minutes - 34 MBA neo-realist docu-drama that plays a bit like an old History Channel special.
Spine 228: Salvatore Giuliano
March 11, 2017 06:19 - 49 minutesWith Salvatore Giuliano (1962) Francesco Rosi strove not just to make a biopic of the famed Sicilian outlaw, but to make a neo-realist docu-drama. Pat calls it a proto-History Channel special, and there's strong comparisons, but Rosi's film goes beyond that low bar. One because the film is simply so expertly shot, but also because unlike, say, Ancient Aliens, Rosi sought to only include the facts as he could verify them, ultimately, then, interrogating the official story and making a highly ...
Le Corbeau
March 04, 2017 06:00 - 57 minutes - 39.5 MBIt takes a special talent to piss off the liberals, the conservatives, the church, the Nazis, and the Resistance with a single film, but Clouzot is a special talent.
Spine 227: Le Corbeau
March 04, 2017 06:00 - 57 minutesIt takes a special talent to piss off the liberals, the conservatives, the church, the Nazis, and the Resistance, but Henri-Georges Clouzot is a special talent. Of course, holding a mirror up to German-occupied France during the war is a pretty easy way to garner that reaction. Clouzot did just that in Le Corbeau, his 1943 proto-noir. And aside from getting everyone mad at him, he also made it with Continental Films, the sole authorized movie production house in Nazi-occupied France, which g...
Spine 226: Onibaba
February 25, 2017 16:03 - 58 minutesOk, so Pat doesn't like scary movies, but the Japanese horror films we've seen so far have been something else entirely. Kwaidan, for instance, was a more a collection of folk tales that happened to have ghosts involved. Similarly, Kaneto Shindo's 1964 film Onibaba isn't much of a horror film, though it's not exactly a folk tale, either. More of the story of the "true" inspiration that became the folk tale of the "Demon hag", though Pat takes some umbrage with translating "baba" as "hag" b...
Tunes of Glory
February 17, 2017 14:36 - 59 minutes - 40.6 MBNeame and Guinness make some of my favorite films.
Spine 225: Tunes of Glory
February 17, 2017 14:36 - 59 minutesI knew nothing about Tunes of Glory before watching it except that Ronald Neame directed it and Alec Guinness stars as a Scotsman. Since all the Neame films we've seen so far have been delightfully fun and Guiness heavily made up is good for a laugh or a cringe, I'll be honest I was expecting this 1960 film to be a bit of a lark. It is not. It is so not. And it is wonderful.
Pickup on South Street
February 10, 2017 20:47 - 1 hour - 45.4 MBA beautifully shot film. A poorly written film.
Spice 224: Pickup on South Street
February 10, 2017 20:47 - 1 hourSam Fuller is a pulpy director, but that's not a problem when it's fun. The issue with Pickup on South Street isn't even necessarily that it isn't fun, I suppose. The problem is that his 1953 "spy" film is just poorly written with character motivation poorly defined and the characters themselves not defined much better. Fuller wrote it himself, so I can't let him off the hook here, but it's still a beautifully shot film and he's responsible for that aspect as well.
Maitresse
February 03, 2017 20:05 - 1 hour - 46.1 MBBarbet Schroeder's BDSM love story is better than it has any right to be.
Spice 223: Maitresse
February 03, 2017 20:05 - 1 hourThe last time we heard from Barbet Schroeder was in his documentary General Idi Amin Dada about a clearly insane man which allowed us to talk about exploitation in documentaries which gets even more interesting when you can't be sure if it's the director or the subject exploiting the other more. The very next film he worked on may lead to similar concerns of exploitation if it weren't for the concept of informed consent and the fairly clear facts that everything is above board and everyone...
Diary of a Country Priest
January 27, 2017 20:22 - 57 minutes - 39.4 MBSometimes you get stomach cancer and don't make a life-changing decision to build a park.
Spine 222: Diary of a Country Priest
January 27, 2017 20:22 - 57 minutesGoing through the Criterion Collection by Spine number often leaves us with some interesting thematic pairs that are just disconnected enough to seem accidental: the earliest that comes to mind is the racist undertones of #32 Oliver Twist and #33 Nanook of the North. Likewise last week's Ikiru and this week's film both deal with men dying of stomach cancer. They take vastly different paths. Robert Bresson writes and directs Diary of a Country Priest (1951), a fairly heavy film, that may ha...
Spine 221: Ikiru
January 20, 2017 20:59 - 1 hourWhen confronted with mortality, a man decides to change his life. In the West these stories (A Christmas Carol, It's a Wonderful Life) are usually framed around Christmas for the inherent symbolism of the holiday in particular and winter in general. With Ikiru (1952) Akira Kurosawa makes the best version of this type of story without any over religion, just humanity. It's quite probably his best film, though we've probably said that before.
Naked Lunch
January 13, 2017 21:08 - 1 hour - 42.7 MBCronenberg adapts Burroughs. He doesn't so much adapt Naked Lunch.
Spine 220: Naked Lunch
January 13, 2017 21:08 - 1 hourWe start this week's episode with 15 minutes about linguistics, so have fun with that. Naked Lunch is a "transgressive" and "unfilmable" novel written by William S. Burroughs in 1959. So unfilmable, in fact, that when David Cronenberg decided to make a movie in 1991 it became less of an adaptation of the specific book and more of a meta-adaptation (or, as Pat argues when we finally start talking about the movie, an uber-meta-adaptation) of Burroughs life and creative process. It's messy an...
La Strada
January 06, 2017 20:39 - 1 hour - 45.4 MBWhen you start to believe that Fellini is honest when he says that all his films are autobiographical you understand that this is an admission of guilt.
Spine 219: La Strada
January 06, 2017 20:39 - 1 hourWhen you start to believe that Fellini is honest when he says that all his films are autobiographical you understand that this is an admission of guilt.
Le Cercle Rouge
December 30, 2016 21:12 - 49 minutes - 34.1 MBJean-Pierre Melville makes iconic striking gangster films that make no sense.
Spine 218: Le Cercle Rouge
December 30, 2016 21:12 - 49 minutesJean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge (1970) opens with a nonsensical and overwrought (and fabricated) quote from the Buddha. It sets a tone for the entire film. Nothing really makes sense, everyone makes decisions against their barely established character and motivations are at best unclear. But it does let us reflect on all the other gangster films we've watched that we loved or hated! Good times!
Cobra
December 23, 2016 07:15 - 1 hour - 48.8 MBCobra is a terrible movie, but in quality and morality.
Holiday Special 5: Cobra
December 23, 2016 07:15 - 1 hourIt's that time of year again! The time where we gather close to loved ones and, at least in the northern hemisphere, try to stay warm through the darkness. Whatever your position on this planet, though, assuming you count time by the Gregorian calendar it's also the time of looking back at what has passed and hoping in what may come. Or hoping against what you fear may come. 2016 has been...complicated. 2017 isn't going to be much easier. But we can strive to make it better. We finish thi...
Tokyo Story
December 16, 2016 21:38 - 1 hour - 43.4 MBOzu's classic Tokyo Story is a realistic window into the lives of a post-WW2 Japanese family.
Spine 217: Tokyo Story
December 16, 2016 21:38 - 1 hourYasujiro Ozu's 1953 drama Tokyo Story is principally about the slow march toward the future. Things change, and the sooner you accept that, the better. That's not to say that Ozu doesn't think one should hold on to the past, but just don't be controlled by it.
The Rules of the Game
December 09, 2016 21:14 - 59 minutes - 40.7 MBThe greatest anti-war film of all time is disguised as a bedroom farce.
Spine 216: The Rules of the Game
December 09, 2016 21:14 - 59 minutesJean Renoir made one of the greatest anti-war movies ever with 1937's The Grand Illusion, a war film that is actually an anti-war film designed to showcase that all men are truly brothers, that everyone's essentially the same no matter that country they may hail from. Renoir had seen the writing on the wall and new that war was coming. Having lived through World War I, Renoir was desperate to avoid another one. War came. The Rules of the Game (1939) is a second, and much more subtle attem...
Knife in the Water
December 02, 2016 19:09 - 1 hour - 46.3 MBRoman Polanski maybe doesn't understand people?
Spine 215: Knife in the Water
December 02, 2016 19:09 - 1 hourWe've seen Roman Polanski before in a cameo in the bonkers Blood for Dracula, but this is our first encounter with him directing. Appropriate, then, that this is his first full length film. Knife in the Water was released in 1962 while Poland was still rather Communist which makes the content of the film perhaps a bit surprising. That doesn't make it good.
The Devil and Daniel Webster
November 26, 2016 11:56 - 1 hour - 47 MBLet freedom ring. Save our soul.
Spine 214: The Devil and Daniel Webster
November 26, 2016 11:56 - 1 hourThe Devil and Daniel Webster makes a feint at confronting something deep and true about America's past and then quickly ignores that hurtful truth for a hopeful cry of "a man shall own his own soul" and "Don't let this country go to the devil." The truth is that the US has always been in step with the Devil. Stephen Vincent Benet knew that when he wrote the story, and when he adapted it for William Deterle's 1941 film. But by the same turn, as evident by Webster's speech to the Jury -- a j...
Richard III
November 18, 2016 21:31 - 58 minutes - 39.9 MBA power-hungry outsider with distinct physical features and speech patterns raises to power only to imprison his political enemies and start a war.
Spine 213: Richard III
November 18, 2016 21:31 - 58 minutesLaurence Olivier plays a power-hungry outsider with a distinct physical feature and speech patterns whose ascension to power allows him to imprison his political enemies and ultimately leads to war. There are no parallels. Just kidding. Olivier based his portrayal of the title character in Richard III (1955) on Hitler, as he'd done when he first played the role in this Shakespearean play on stage in 1944. Surely there are no new lessons to be learnt from this. Olivier also directs and ad...
Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie
November 12, 2016 01:38 - 53 minutes - 36.6 MBVilgot Sjoman's only other entry in the Collection is a television documentary about someone else.
Spine 212: Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie
November 12, 2016 01:38 - 53 minutesIn 1963 a fresh-faced Vilgot Sjoman asked Ingmar Bergman if he could watch his process, then Sveriges Television asked Sjoman if they could tag along. Of course Bergman only half said yes. The documentary is mostly true to life, and fascinating in that regard, though it's also a bit fake, with some sequences not exactly showing what they claim and at least one interview wholly reshot after Bergman didn't like the results.
The Silence
November 04, 2016 22:21 - 58 minutes - 39.9 MBA little boy wonders a hotel and meets some little people so this is like a cross between The Shining and Time Bandits probably