As amusingly bizarre as Colin’s conclusion to this year’s Criterion Month was, I thought the occasion deserved even more fanfare. You see, this marks five years of Criterion Months, since we started this tradition way back in 2017. That was uniquely the only time we did two Criterion Months in a year, as we followed that up with another one for that year’s Shocktober. We could afford to do those sorts of things those days, because life was so simple. Back then, we streamed Criterion movies on Hulu and TCM’s FilmStruck and had even more incentive to do this because the Barnes and Noble John worked at was still open. Things sure have changed a lot since then.

We’ve collectively reviewed 182 movies (I refuse to include Cyberspace Jam), let’s break them down.

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So after reviewing movies of various lengths and ambitions this year, I’m bringing it home with a review of a movie that is decidedly small. Kelly Reichardt has made a singular career out of crafting these very intimate, contemplative films that rarely have a ton of conflict or innate drama. Of the films of hers I’ve seen, Old Joy seems like the purest distillation of this, as there’s not a ton that happens (even for the indie road movie genre), but then again, nothing really needs to. Like much of Reichardt’s oeuvre, the film’s unassuming nature is like a warm bath compared to the overstimulated nature of today’s media, or should I say it’s like a dip in a hot spring? Continue reading →

When people decry the state of modern filmmaking, I think they must consider the case of Terrence Malick. The famously private writer-director made his debut with Badlands in 1973, an indie film financed mostly by people outside the industry. Five years later, he followed that up with the gorgeous Days of Heaven, which had a difficult production and lengthy post-production. That was enough to leave him struggling to get a picture off the ground for two decades, until he finally released The Thin Red Line in 1998. It took him another eight years to do The New World, then six more for The Tree of Life. So five movies in nearly 40 years.

But something changed in the 2010s: To the Wonder came out just a year after The Tree of Life and Malick managed to make three more movies (plus an IMAX experience) before the end of the decade. Back in the day, his films were huge events for cinephiles like me, now sometimes I don’t even hear about them at all when they come out (the fuck was Song to Song?). For whatever reason, one of our least bankable directors became his most prolific during perhaps the most commercial era in cinema’s history. I leave it to you to decide if giving Malick access to so many ways to make and distribute movies enabled an auteur to finally thrive or took some of the shine off of him.

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