Criterion Month Day 13: Destroy All Monsters

Destroy All Monsters (1968)

Fourteen years after the original Godzilla, director Ishiro Honda, special-effects supervisor Eiji Tsuburaya, and composer Akira Ifukube reunited to potentially end the series. Sort of like the first Avengers, the idea here was pretty simple and very much scraping the bottom of the barrel: what if the characters from all those other movies teamed up to fight a bunch of forgettable aliens? That’s right, Destroy All Monsters is an 11-kaiju extravaganza, featuring everyone from Anguirus to ‘Zilla himself. But is it any good?

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Criterion Month Day 12: Belle de Jour

Belle de Jour (1967)

I’ve seen three Luis Buñuel films now; today’s film, which is about a rich lady who becomes a prostitute, the one with the rich people trapped in a mansion they can’t escape, and the one with the slicing of the eyeball (it is unclear whether or not the eyeball is rich). But considering Buñuel went on to write and direct a film called, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” it’s safe to assume the guy had some thoughts about rich people.

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Criterion Month Day 11: Weekend (1967)

Weekend (1967)

1967’s Weekend (or perhaps “Week End”) is Jean-Luc Godard throwing up his hands in frustration. The cacophony of cars honking horns outside his window have made it clear: all is lost, and things are going to have to get a lot worse before they can get better. I knew that was going to be the vibe going in, but I was hoping there’d be something more here – some insight into how things got so bad or a vision for how we all get through it – since these days I’m kind of feeling the same way. But actually what I came away from it with was a sense that I’m still pretty far from being a Marxist French misanthrope.

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Criterion Month Day 10: Daisies

Daisies (1966)

Sometimes, it’s worth giving a film a second chance and your full attention. My only previous experience with 1966’s Daisies was watching a snippet of it in a film history class back in college, I believe of the opening scene of the movie. The film starts off in such a strange, disorienting place that I wasn’t sure I liked the unhinged absurdity the film was going for. So I put off revisiting it for a long time, despite the fact that I’ve made a concerted effort to seek out important films by women filmmakers over the years. Well, turns out I just needed to watch the whole damn film, as its very particular, anything-goes nature takes a while to get used to, but once you do, it makes for one of the more singular films I can recall seeing. Continue reading →

Criterion Month Day 9: The Flight of the Phoenix

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

A group of men must band together in order to complete a job that will hopefully save their lives. It’s a simple premise that has gotten used plenty over the years in various films and one that is at the heart of 1965’s The Flight of the Phoenix. Somehow, this film was not a huge hit when it came out, despite the fact that it feels like a real crowd-pleaser and has an amazing cast (though the box office vitality of a bunch of character actors and an aging Jimmy Stewart may have proved faulty). It’s a little hard to believe also because it fits so nicely along “team of dudes” movies from this era like The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, or director Robert Aldrich’s next film, The Dirty Dozen. But maybe the film was too ahead of its time, as it also brings to mind the disaster movies of the 70s as well as one of that decade’s biggest hits, Jaws.

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Criterion Month Day 8: The Executioner

The Executioner (1963)

How does one make a great film while living under a fascist dictatorship? It’s not a question that Hollywood filmmakers are quite having to ask themselves yet, but it’s something that director Luis García Berlanga had to navigate during the majority of his career working in the Spanish film industry under Franco’s rule. The truly amazing thing is that The Executioner in many ways comments on Franco’s government, as its main character works for the state, doing its most unseemly business of carrying out the death penalty. Yet somehow, the film managed to weave its way around the censors while wringing some dark laughs out of the material and commenting on how society forces all of us into doing its dirty work. Continue reading →

Criterion Month Day 7: The Silence

The Silence (1963)

In my neck of the woods, we have a little thing called the “Seattle Freeze.” What this means is that when reacting to out-of-towners, Seattleites are often perceived as cold, detached, and emotionally distant. This phenomenon, if you choose to believe it, is said to have been inherited from Scandinavian settlers, who prefer small, close-knit circles as opposed to 200 friends.

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