A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

On our Criterion picks podcast, John challenged me to write our longest Criterion review yet of A Brighter Summer Day, since it appears to be the longest film we’ve reviewed for any Criterion Month so far. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to muster up that kind of insight after being a little exhausted spending nearly four hours finishing this film in time to review it. Still, there is a lot to unpack in this film that feels both very specific to its time and place and yet as universally human as you would want any coming-of-age film to be. But most importantly, it absolutely earns its nearly 4-hour running time, as I’m not sure that the emotional catharsis it provides at its conclusion would be quite as potent if it hadn’t spent that much time building up its world and characters. Continue reading →

My Brilliant Career (1979)

With some prominent actors, you do end up asking the question “where did they come from?” This was something I often wondered with Judy Davis, though I suppose the literal answer to this question was of course “Australia”. She’s the kind of character actress that has always seemed like a bit of an odd fit for American films, though also seemed to be respected for reasons that weren’t obvious to me. However, all of these questions became abundantly clear after watching My Brilliant Career, a coming-of-age tale that saw Davis giving an effortlessly brilliant, career-making performance. Ugh, that felt a little too close to Gene Shalit territory (sometimes Criterion Month feels longer than a month, my friends). Anyways, you could also say the film had a similar effect on the career of director Gillian Armstrong, another Aussie who has also had a long and interesting career that has often flirted with Hollywood.

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Mikey and Nicky (1976)

The 1970s tend to get romanticized among cinephiles (myself included) as this unprecedented time in mainstream American filmmaking, where this new generation of directors were freed from the traditional shackles of studio filmmaking to make something truly radical. While I think that is true in some sense, you do have to take into account that the film industry was still a business. So even though more unconventional dramas like Taxi Driver and Dog Day Afternoon were allowed a place in multiplexes alongside Airport and Earthquake, these maverick directors were still beholden their studios. I would say Elaine May was far from a typical New Hollywood director, but it seems that her tussles with the studio over the release of Mikey and Nicky seem pretty reflective of that era. Continue reading →