Fish Tank (2009)

Any time we do a month like this, it’s always fun to see the different themes and similarities that connect many of the films, even though with Criterion month, there really isn’t much intention for the films to have anything in common. But one genre that has seemed to crop up quite a bit this year is the coming-of-age film, and in particular ones done by either first time or up-and-coming directors. Fish Tank is another film that falls into both these categories, which firmly established Andrea Arnold as a fresh new voice whose career so far appears to be as unpredictable as this film’s main character. Continue reading →

George Washington (2000)

I dare you to find a director with a weirder body of work than David Gordon Green. Not more diverse or worse, just weirder. Bursting onto the scene in the early ‘00s, Green looked like the heir apparent to Terrence Malick. The southern gothic settings and stoic narration of his early films had all the makings of the next great American auteur. Then Pineapple Express happened. Okay, maybe Green’s just trying to test the market. Make a film that can result in actual box office dollars instead of pinching pennies from arthouse cinemas. Then Your Highness happens. Okay, maybe he had such a fun time he wanted to give it one more go. Then The Sitter happened… He’s dead, Jim. So let’s bypass all the gloom and doom for now and go back to a simpler time. The time of Washington.

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Buena Vista Social Club (1999)

I’d planned on reviewing Lynne Ramsay’s 1999 drama Ratcatcher for today. Unfortunately, the film isn’t on streaming or any online rental service that I’m aware of, so I needed a backup. Why did I gravitate to Wim Wender’s 1999 music documentary Buena Vista Social Club? I don’t know. Maybe because it was convenient. Or maybe It was the island rhythms I could feel percolating from within. Let’s find out.

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Taste of Cherry (1997)

As we come into the home stretch of this year’s Criterion Month, we seem to have found ourselves in a patch of movies about traveling. We had a movie about people puttering about America, then one about traversing France, and now a film about driving around Iran. Taste of Cherry‘s little twist on the minimal road trip formula? It follows a man looking for someone who will burry him after he kills himself.

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Vagabond (1985)

It seems to me that homelessness is a topic that is never handled terribly well in most Hollywood movies. Usually, most vagrants in films are either objects of unenviable pity, or they seem to be these magical, miserly dudes that some hapless, better-looking protagonist forms an unusual bond with. But, like a majority of the films in the Criterion Collection, Vagabond is not a film born out of a Hollywood studio, nor a film that from what I can tell had much of a cross-over release in America. Fortunately, it provides a both empathetic and unromantic depiction of homelessness, while tapping into the idea that even if a person lives on the fringes of society, they still have the power to impact those living firmly within it. Continue reading →

Stranger Than Paradise (1984)

Not a lot of filmmakers can get away with making a feature-length film about nothing. You can call Stranger Than Paradise a film about “social misfits exploring the dark side of the american dream”. At least that’s what the writer/director Jim Jarmusch said about his film on his guest appearance on The Simpsons. Though I would argue Stranger Than Paradise is about nothing. Which I would also argue is what makes the film so great.

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