Love & Basketball (2000)

Love & Basketball is one of those Criterion movies that you always love to see enter the Collection, since it is a bit more of a crowd-pleaser, if a very well-made one. It’s also the type of Criterion movie that we rarely review during these months since our fairly mainstream tastes mean we’ve probably seen something like a Love & Basketball. While I’m not sure there’s anything revolutionary about this movie, it’s impressive in that it manages to inhabit a few different genres and pretty much nails all of them. This is a romantic movie that is pretty romantic, a sports movie that’s often insightful and thrilling, and a coming-of-age movie that evokes those bittersweet emotions of finding your way in the world. You would think it would’ve immediately established director Gina Prince-Bythewood as a new reliable force in studio filmmaking, but of course, that’s never an easy path for a young woman in Hollywood. Continue reading →

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)

For a second, while watching Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, I thought we were heading back to Breaker Morant and military legal drama territory. However, it’s just one of the opening scenes that takes place at a military tribunal, while the rest of the film concerns the events leading up to that tribunal. Still, it does sound like it’s in similar territory as this other recently reviewed film, as it also depicts what happens to men on different sides of a war when influenced by their own allegiances and the muddy morals of wartime, and it even shares an actor in Jack Thompson. Continue reading →

Polyester (1981)

With John covering Pink Flamingos a few days in addition to my earlier review of Multiple Maniacs as well as one of his key influencers, we’ve now covered a decent amount of John Waters during our Criterion Months. He’s an unlikely candidate for a director with multiple films in the Collection, since the Criterion Collection doesn’t tend to favor comedy or shlock all that much. Still, Waters’ renegade spirit and the way he turned trash and filth into extremely entertaining cinema absolutely deserves to be enshrined and appreciated, and I suppose we’ll see if Criterion continues to do more of his films, as there are still plenty to go around from his more mainstream, big studio era. Polyester is in many ways the bridge between that latter era and his earlier, low-budget movies made with the Dreamlanders, and offers a nice mix of what was great about both eras of his career. Continue reading →

Fantastic Planet (1973)

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 →

The New Land (1972)

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 →

The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)

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 →