The Leopard (1963)

One of the many trends I’ve noticed as we do Criterion Month each year is that not only have these months deepened my knowledge of film history, but it has also done the same for the history of some of the countries whose films we’ve covered. More specifically, there have been a number of period pieces I’ve had to review that have covered turbulent eras in their country of origin that I previously had little knowledge of. I’m thinking of the clashing between leftists and fascists of ’60s Greece in Z, the pre-economic boom, post-World War II years of Taiwan in A Brighter Summer Day, and the Algerian rebellion against the French government covered in The Battle of Algiers. Well, you can now add The Leopard to that list, a film that depicts a period in Italian history known as the Risorgimento, which saw the unification of different smaller states that would eventually make up what we now know as Italy. Continue reading →

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Back when I drafted Hiroshima mon amour, I remember joking about how pretentious the French New Wave’s left bank group must have been, given their reputation for considering right bank directors like François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard “too commercial.” But now that I’ve seen movies from a couple left bank directors (and read Colin’s many reviews) I’m realizing I actually had it backwards. I think the left bank was poking fun at the right bank for taking cinema too seriously. It’s less that one side was more intellectual than the other, and more that the left bank filmmakers were willing to play looser and get more experimental. So in the case of a movie like Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, we get a film that seriously tackles existentialism and feminism, but isn’t afraid to get goofy with it sometimes.

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The Housemaid (1960)

I’d never heard of The Housemaid before I chose it for Criterion Month. For some reason, i’s hard for me to believe that were Korean movies before the 2000s. Korean Cinema had such a boom with the rise of directors like Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook, and Kim Jee-woon ( to name a few) that its overshadowed a lot of pre-21st Century Korean cinema. Yet if it wasn’t for films like The Housemaid, that 2000s boom may not have been possible. In fact, Bong Joon-ho even said The Housemaid was a big influence on Parasite.

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Journey To Italy (1954)

As you explore the outer edges of the Criterion galaxy as we do each year, you often are reminded of what a momentous movement the French New Wave was to the cinema world. Not just because there are so many French New Wave films in the Criterion Collection (and by extension the classic and arthouse cinema cannon), but also because there are so many important films that were either influenced by or ended up influencing the French New Wave. Today’s film falls into the latter category, as it wasn’t a huge hit in Italy or internationally when it came out, but it was championed by the critics at Cahiers Du Cinema that would soon start directing movies of their own. It also must be a film that had at least somewhat of an impact on Italian cinema, since it’s hard not to think of Antonioni’s L’Avventura while watching the couple at the heart of this story aimlessly search for meaning against the backdrop of coastal Italy. Continue reading →

La Strada (1954)

I got some shit to say about this one…. Better get ready…

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Gozilla (1954)

The Criterion Collection made a big deal out of spine #1,000 by releasing their biggest box set yet: Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, a collection of the first 15 Godzilla movies. (The title refers to the period of Emperor Shōwa’s reign.) The set comes in an oversized hardcover book filled with dozens of beautiful illustrations and essays that make it equally at home as a display piece on the mantle or a coffee table book. I’m proud to own it and show it off… but I do have one dark secret: I’m not sure I deserve to own such a exquisite prize. You see, before this month, the only Showa-Era movie I’d seen is the first King Kong vs. Godzilla. And now that I’ve finally watched the original Gozilla, I don’t foresee see myself checking out the other 13 movies any time soon. That’s not great, because if I was just going to watch the first one, Criterion already released that forever ago. Let me try to explain why my eyes are bigger than my stomach when it comes to kaiju movies.

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