Criterion Month Day 27: La Haine

La Haine (1995)

From Boyz N The Hood to Trainspotting to Fight Club to gangsta rap to grunge to nü metal, for whatever reason, the ’90s were a decade where angry young men were well-represented in pop culture. For this reason, the subject matter of La Haine did have a bit going against it for me, since it felt overexplored in this particular era. However, as I keep finding out throughout this Criterion Month, there are many different ways to tell a familiar story. La Haine manages to sidestep feeling overly familiar because it is so particular to its time (the 1990s) and place (the working-class suburbs of Paris), which combined with an arresting black and white-inflected visual style manages to do these angry young men justice. Continue reading →

Criterion Month Day 26: Exotica

Exotica (1994)

What is Canadian cinema? I mean, outside of “the King of Venereal Horror” David Cronenberg (who’s been covered on this site 11 times). James Cameron is a Canuck, though he’s spent his whole career making flicks in the U.S. of A. Denis Villeneuve, though now more associated with Hollywood, started his career directing films in his native Quebec. Then there are people I sort of, kind of, don’t actually know, like Guy Maddin and François Girard (both with films in the Criterion Collection), and of course today’s filmmaker, “the King of Emotional Alienation” (my newly coined nickname for him), Atom Egoyan.

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Criterion Month Day 25: Executioners

Executioners (1993)

Merely seven months after their first adventure, the heroic trio of Maggie Cheung, Anita Mui, and Michelle Yeoh return Executioners. And if you thought things were bleak before, let me tell you, this one starts with a bang! Nuclear war has poisoned the world and the survivors are forced to grovel at the feet of anyone who can provide clean water. Hong Kong’s president (Kwan Shan) is desperately trying to keep the government on top while a masked, disfigured maniac (Anthony Wong) pulls the strings from the shadows. This is a world that needs heroes more than ever before, so where are they?

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Criterion Month Day 24: My Own Private Idaho

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

It is to my great surprise that I am once again reviewing a movie where the third act twist is our traveling heroes stumble upon a house occupied by a lone Italian woman who one of them instantly falls for. Yes, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho is, like Down By Law, a story about an unusual friendship, but more than that it’s an unique gay road movie set all over the Pacific Northwest. And more than that, it’s an unlikely, loose take on Shakespeare’s three-play Henriad. So Midnight Cowboy meets Chimes at Midnight? Sign me up!

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Criterion Month Day 22: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)

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.

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Criterion Month Day 21: Down By Law

Down by Law (1986)

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.

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