Criterion Month Day 4: Journey to the Beginning of Time

Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955)

It’s another 4th of July and of course for the sixth year in a row I am the one reviewing a movie on this increasingly cursed holiday. As is the case most years, the movie I am reviewing is not terribly American, even though an edited and dubbed version was released in the U.S., while the film’s title does evoke the journey our Supreme Court justices apparently want to take our basic human rights on (hey-o!). Anyways, I was compelled to check out another one of Karel Zeman’s movies after reviewing the singular Fabulous Baron Munchausen a couple years ago. Though Journey to the Beginning of Time may not be quite as visually inventive as that film (but let’s be honest, few are), it still feels crucial in establishing Zeman’s output of dazzling feature films in the ’50s and ’60s while also presenting a refreshingly thoughtful take on effects-driven science fiction. Continue reading →

Criterion Month Day 3: Ikiru

Ikiru (1952)

I’ve almost seen all the BIG Kurosawa films at this point. I think the only two essentials I’m missing are Ran and High and Low. Though I did watch part of High and Low in a class once—I saw the Low part. My takeaway from the Kurosawa films I have seen is that Kurosawa is a filmmaker that tells stories about characters with a lot of grit. Nine times out of ten those characters are played by Toshiro Mifune. If you’re not familiar with Mifune he’s the ultimate badass. Sometimes he’s a Man with No Name-type samurai. Sometimes he’s an overburdened cop desperate for resolution. Sometimes he’s insane. The bigger the better. But Takashi Shimura in Kurosawa’s 1952 drama Ikiru is a different kind of character.

Continue reading →

Criterion Month Day 2: Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane (1941)

Likely due to outside factors, Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ first film, struggled at the box office when it was released in May of 1941. Couple those small audiences with a tepid critical response and even an Academy Award couldn’t stop the movie from fizzling away by the year’s end. More than a decade later, RKO sold its library to television and Citizen Kane started lighting up the small screen, encouraging enthusiastic reassessment. This time its success was undeniable: by 1958, Citizen Kane appeared on its first “greatest films ever made” list (losing the top spot to Battleship Potemkin) and has remained in such high esteem ever since. Notably, BFI’s once-a-decade Sight & Sound Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, arguably the most prestigious ranking of this sort since it is compiled exclusively by critics and directors, had Citizen Kane in the number one spot five decades in a row, from 1962-2002.

However, in 2012 Citizen Kane lost the top spot on both lists, being surpassed by Vertigo with the critics and both Tokyo Story and 2001: A Space Odyssey with directors. Rumor has it that Citizen Kane won’t regain its crown and might tumble even further when this year’s poll is released. Today, IMDb’s top 250 movies ranks Citizen Kane at only #94 and on Letterboxd’s list of films by user rating it appears at a dismal #915 with an average user rating of just 4.18 out of five. Has Citizen Kane‘s star fallen? Is it time to radically reevaluate it once again and expose those film snobs once and for all?

lol no

Continue reading →

Criterion Month Day 1: The Cameraman

The Cameraman (1928)

Welcome to another Criterion Month! It often feels like July is one of the less convenient months to incur this much writing on ourselves when July is the month of summer vacations and getting out in the sun and whatnot. This year, that’s the case to some extent, since we just got back from a destination wedding for Mildly Pleased contributor Matt Carstens, but hopefully have had enough recovery time to dive into another month of reviewing movies in the Criterion Collection. As is the case most years, we start our month in the silent era as well as the lone entry in The Collection from one of silent cinema’s true geniuses, Mr. Joseph Frank Keaton. Continue reading →

The Sixth Annual Criterion Month Draft

With July less than two weeks away, it’s about time we draft our picks for Criterion Month once again. This is the annual podcast where the three of us take turns picking what movies from the Criterion Collection we’d like to review on this blog over the course of next month. Most years there aren’t a ton of stolen picks, and sorry to disappoint you, that is once again the case this year. That said, we all had a lot of fun talking about revered movies we haven’t seen yet but are excited to talk about in 30(ish) days of somewhat rushed reviews that are published just in time before the stroke of midnight. Continue reading →

The Pick: My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Since it is wedding season, we’re taking a look at the biggest, fattest, Greekest one the movies have ever seen. John’s got some bones to pick with this light and breezy romantic comedy, while also marveling at the fact that it was an absolute monster hit back in 2002. Also, since this is the end of this admittedly short season, we take a look back at The Pick’s past with a quiz delving into the 58(ish) episodes we’ve recorded so far. Opa! Continue reading →

Colin’s Favorite Albums of May 2022

This month saw quite a few familiar faces returning with both highly anticipated and mildly anticipated albums alike. Some of the ones that fell more into the latter category I just haven’t had much time to dig into despite being Colin favorites, since they came out toward the end of the month (like Wilco’s Cruel Country or Craig Finn’s A Legacy of Rentals). Also, as much as I always look forward to a new Sharon Van Etten album, for whatever reason, her new We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong hasn’t quite been hitting with me. Maybe this is because much like I found with 2014’s excellent Are We There, her music is just a little hard to embrace during the sunnier parts of the year, even if this summer has already manifested just how much we’ve been going about this all wrong. Continue reading →