Between this and Betty Blue, this has been the hardest stretch of Criterion Month so far, two movies I watched back-to-back with a combined runtime of 356 minutes. But at least Betty Blue looked nice, was funny at times, and straightforward. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (they got the ‘Unbearable’ part right) is a slow crawl through dense political machinations.
Director Jim Jarmusch has made a lot of movies that you could describe as being “of a place” and Down by Law is no exception. Here we get a miserable, film noir-inspired version of the Louisiana bayou country that Jarmusch conceived of before he even arrived to make this movie. The story begins in New Orleans and it’s portrayed as a moody, rundown, desolate, rotting carcass of a city, populated only by the damned and the pitiful. And then we go to jail. Shot in Jarmusch’s signature black and white, on the surface, Down by Law seems like it might as well have been called “abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” But, more than my now-missed posting deadline, there was something to this story about three misfits which inspired me to keep watching.
I love doing Criterion Month here at the blog. I get to watch so many different movies from so many different time periods and regions. I get to look cultured on Letterboxd and at parties (yeah, right, what parties?). But Criterion Month isn’t without its caveats.
After reviewing 2000’s Yi Yi and 1991’s A Brighter Summer Day, I seem to be working my way backward through Edward Yang’s brief filmography in leaps and bounds. He’s the type of filmmaker who I’ve had a hard time wanting to seek out outside of Criterion Month, just because they’re not exactly joyous affairs, but also are relatively watchable as far as observant character-driven films go. Anyways, I’m glad that Criterion Month has given me a vehicle to discover more of Yang’s films, as the way they reveal the layers of melancholy beneath modern urban life really gels with me, and this one in particular felt relatable in its story of childless adults in their 30s drifting through middle-class life. Continue reading
3 Women, beyond being an apt description of the number of women directors we’ve covered in nine years of Criterion Months, is a freaky deaky little movie Robert Altman made based on a dream he had while his wife was in the hospital. It was a forgotten gem for some time, having missed the VHS generation entirely and only become available on home video when Criterion released it on DVD in the mid-2000s. Since then it’s gone on to be a favorite of the Criterion Closet and got another huge bump when Shelley Duvall passed away about a year ago, as it contains one of her finest performances. But is it any good?
There’s nothing quite like a potent debut film that seemingly comes out of nowhere, filled with possibilities and creativity and passion, but lacking in polish and movie stars. Then there’s a whole other level where it’s a student film – the work of someone literally figuring things out on screen but having the clear talent to express themselves with precision. 1978’s Killer of Sheep is one of those films, as director Charles Burnett started shooting the film in 1972 and eventually submitted it at UCLA film school as his thesis film in 1977, not really getting a proper theatrical release until 2007, and didn’t get its deserved Criterion treatment until a couple of months ago. Continue reading
In 2023, UCLA conducted a study surveying 1,500 members of Gen Z about sex in the media. Forty-eight percent said that “sex and sexual content is not needed for the plot of most TV shows and movies,” with 51.5 percent wanting to see more content focused on friendships and platonic relationships. Man, what’s happened to sex in cinema?
