It seems that each year we do Criterion Month, there’s always one movie that I end up picking that I have the least amount of context for going in. Fantastic Planet is probably that movie this year, as I really had very little prior knowledge of what the film was about or what birthed its brand of strange animation; I mostly just knew it was French and had giant blue alien guys in it. After watching it, the film does still feel kind of strange and foreign to me, but at the same time, there is plenty in both the film’s visual style and its allegorical sci-fi story for me to latch onto and wrap my tiny humanoid brain around. Continue reading →

After I watched John Frankenheimer’s Seconds for my last review, I really wanted to write something. After I watched Pink Flamingos, I wanted to film something. NOT like anything in this film. Oh god no! What appealed to me wasn’t the shit eating or the singing asshole, but the camaraderie between John Waters and his cast, lovingly referred to as the “Dreamlanders”.

Early John Waters’ films remind me of when I was high school making films. Again, I want to reiterate we did NOT make films like this. But there’s a kind of “on-the-fly” to John Waters’ early work. As if he and all his Dreamlanders didn’t necessarily know what it was to make an actual film, they just shot what they thought was funny, or filthy. And even after fifty years, Pink Flamingos still feels fun and still feels filthy.

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Last Criterion Month, I reviewed The Emigrants, a surprising Best Picture nominee that I believe was the longest movie we’ve ever reviewed during one of these months. Well, that record is swiftly being broken by the film’s sequel (or perhaps more of the second part of one epic story) which clocks in at a hefty 202 minutes. I, of course, wish I’d had a little more time between my last review to fully digest this film before reviewing it. But, that’s rarely the way these things work, and I just finished up watching the movie (took me a few sittings). Not sure if that puts me in the best mindset to tackle this epic tale of Swedish immigrants settling down in America in the mid-19th century, but it’s hard to deny that the film leaves you with plenty to chew on. Continue reading →

I decided to take on three martial arts movies this Criterion Month without realizing I’d also be reviewing them all in a row. Needless to say, I’ve seen a lot of people get cut up with swords over the past week. I already filled you in on the first Zatoichi movie, let me tell you now about the other two.

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Last year, Sean dived into The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a musical I remember loving but it’s just been a little too long since I’ve seen for me to remember all the specifics of why. Still, I imagine a lot of the reasons were similar to why I had a wonderful time watching Jaques Demy’s follow-up to that film, The Young Girls of Rochefort. Much like Umbrellas, this film is extremely colorful, filled with lots of music, illuminates the mundane, and takes place in a French city that is decidedly not Paris. That said, there is a more traditional Hollywood optimism in The Young Girls of Rochefort‘s approach to the movie musical, which makes it all the more beguiling why it has never been super beloved outside of France. Continue reading →

My favorite dramatic show of all time is The Twilight Zone. The chic black and white style, the nightmarish sci-fi, and rich social commentary. The theme song is even my ringtone! Scares the hell out of me every time. So of course I loved John Frankenheimer’s 1966 sci-fi horror cult classic Seconds. The only thing I’m trying to wrap my head around is how did this movie happen?

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