Sean Lemme

I started blogging as a way to lazily pass my high school senior project and somehow I've kept doing it for more than half my life

Criterion Month Day 15: Le Samouraï

Le Samouraï (1967)

Who, when, and how is it decided whether or not to translate the title of a film? Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru means “To Live,” and I think knowing that helps a viewer understand its message, even if it’s not particularly hard to figure out. But then there are movies like Le Samouraï, where leaving the title untranslated gives you an additional insight into the movie ahead of time, namely that this is a French film. Maybe it’s simply a copyright thing, as there are probably a dozen movies called “The Samurai,” but there’s only one of this. And it deserves to be memorable and easy to talk about.
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Criterion Month Day 11: 8½

8½ (1963)

Frederico Fellini’s 8½ is, and this is explicitly stated, a selfish film. I use that word instead of the more common “personal” because I think personal movies tend to be more generous. This is a filmmaker hashing out his own problems publicly and honestly, leaving behind plenty of scraps from which the audience is free to pick up anything that resonates with them. But that is secondary to the director’s reckoning with his own frustrations.
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Criterion Month Day 10: Jules and Jim

Jules and Jim (1962)

A week ago we celebrated our Independence Day, which is always a good reason to reflect on one of our most sacred American values: freedom. Like many of us here, I believe that people should have the freedom to be who they want and do what they want, but I acknowledge absolute freedom is an impossibility. Logistically, it’s immediately obvious that giving one person that platonic ideal of liberty would inherently limit someone else’s; I cannot be free to eat all the hamburgers if you want to eat hamburgers too. But even beyond that, you have to admit that we are born into bondage: we have no say in our skin color, our abilities or susceptibilities, who our parents are, where we’re born, or even the times we live in. From the very beginning, we must compromise.
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Criterion Month Day 7: Paths of Glory

Paths of Glory (1957)

Is there another director who has made as many powerfully antiwar movies as Stanley Kubrick? Paths of Glory joins Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket (and to some extent Spartacus and Barry Lyndon) in the Kubrickian canon of films that fight back against the idea that war can be noble, justified, or heroic. Even the picture’s title is a bitterly ironic reference to Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” And for all that, Paths of Glory was brushed aside in 1957, failing to garner even a single Academy Award nomination, in part due to the popularity of The Bridge on the River Kwai.
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Criterion Month Day 6: Rififi

Rififi (1955)

I can’t imagine writing a heist movie. Really, any sort of movie that is more plot-driven than character-based sounds hard to do, but the heist might be the hardest in this style. Because with a heist, you know the stakes: Clive Owen is going to rob that bank, George Clooney and Brad Pitt are going to rob that casino, Vin Diesl and Paul Walker are going to rob that Brazilian crime lord. Therefore it’s entirely how they do it that keeps you invested in the picture. That requires genuine cleverness, because if our characters are too good or their solutions too far-fetched, it drains all suspense away and you end up with… I don’t know, Armored?
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Make a Hawk a Dove, Stop a War with Love

Wonder Woman

Can one person change the world? In a universe with super heroes, at least, the answer should definitely be yes. But it is often the case that movies only focus on showing their stars stopping street-level crime and exaggerated, world-ending plots from their archenemies. So the Avengers close the Chitauri wormhole, Ant-Man kills Yellowjacket, Batman watches hopefully as two ferries don’t blow up… And for the regular people, life goes on. Most of the time, instead of saving the world heroes just preserve the status quo. Which is why Wonder Woman is such a welcome reminder of why these stories are supposed to be inspiring in the first place.
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The First Mildly Pleased Criterion Draft

An event is coming! Another event is coming! Summer is here and we all know what that means: Blockbuster movies. 2017 has more franchise and sequel flicks coming out than any other year in history, so we thought we’d celebrate that absolute glut of cinema by actually celebrating the highest achievers in the medium. So, this July, be on the lookout for 30 reviews of 30 films by 29 directors from the Criterion Collection. We’re so excited about the foreign, silent, and black and white films that will be dropping on you that we even had to do a draft so we could each claim the reviews we wanted to do. Check out the podcast, the tentative schedule is after the break.

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