What are you watching on the Criterion Channel?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Electric, Jan 2, 2020.

  1. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    This one tonight because Nicky, the stripper who helps George C. Scott find his daughter in Hardcore, clarified her name to him upon meeting in the peep booth with "Nicky... as in Mickey & Nicky? Did you see that movie? I wasn't in it." :cool:


    One of Cassavetes' (and Falk's) best performances.
     
    Last edited: Jan 17, 2020
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  2. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    Really enjoyed this:

    The Italian Job
    Directed by Peter Collinson • 1969 • United Kingdom
    Starring Michael Caine, Noël Coward, Benny Hill

    Michel Caine and Mini Coopers make a dynamite pairing in this turbocharged heist romp. Caine radiates debonair charm as the suave ex-con who—along with Noël Coward’s imprisoned crime boss—orchestrates a spectacular robbery of $4 million in gold bullion from the city of Turin. Boasting a rip-roaring climactic car chase, a killer soundtrack by Quincy Jones, and swinging sixties style to burn, THE ITALIAN JOB is one of the most irresistibly entertaining caper films ever made.

    [​IMG]
     
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  3. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    The director of Mikey & Nicky, Elaine May had an interesting conversation with director, Mike Nichols in 2006, talking about what we're doing now: discovering good movies and looking at them in unusual/ untraditional ways.

     
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  4. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    Finally got around to watching this. Nice blast to the British 80s. Laughed a lot. Thanks.

    [​IMG]
     
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  5. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    Sadly, that doesn't seem to be available on the Canadian Criterion.
     
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  6. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    Oh. Well, there are other streamers (didn't hear it from me!). :cool:

    [​IMG]

    Danny Kaye (born on this date in 1911) retrospective today. I may get on it at some point this weekend. Gotta be in the mood that level of shenanigans. :D

     
    Last edited: Jan 18, 2020
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  7. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    Being laid up with a tooth ailment (which has stymied my vacation a bit) is partially to blame for this Criterion Channel marathon (in case anyone wondered). Moving on to my top three Criterion faves (wish I had access to that infamous closet!). I have them on DVD and/or Blu-Ray but curious to see what they look like on the channel.

    #3 (And these are based purely on repeated viewings)

    Utamaro and his Five Women (1946, Kenji Mizoguchi)

    After the Second World War, the American administration that ran things in Japan took control of the movie industry and, at first, banned historical stories. The first to pass muster was Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1946 bio-pic “Utamaro and His Five Women". Set around 1800, the film tells the story of an artist—one of the greatest of all Japanese artists—who repudiated high-art traditions in favor of popular genres, which gave him leeway to depict characters, such as courtesans, who were disdained in the classical forms. There’s an element of autobiography in the film; there’s also a strong critique of the Japanese imperial values that were exalted in wartime propaganda. But there’s also another element of criticism that marked Mizoguchi’s entire career, and it’s signalled in the title: the utterly subordinate and strictly governed condition of women in Japanese society. Fusing the movie’s personal element with its analytical one, Mizoguchi attempts to resolve the apparent conflict of filming according to his own stringent artistic sensibility while documenting an essentially political question that he found deeply troubling. The movie, one of Mizoguchi’s best, has the power of a manifesto and the urgency of a self-justification.

    - Richard Brody, The New Yorker
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2020
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  8. Balthazar

    Balthazar Forum Resident

  9. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    What's the 3rd?
     
  10. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    North Pole
    Utamaro :)

    On to #2 (of my faves)) Rififi (1955, Jules Dassin)

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    Dassin on what his life was like just before he made the film and the project itself:

     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2020
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  11. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    My #1 CC title is also a favorite that hasn't been dislodged since I first rented a VHS version a seeming lifetime ago:


    Andrei Rublev (1966, Andrei Tarkovsky)

    It's a meditation of sorts on the world surrounding the 15th century Russian icon painter, Andrei Rublev, including the conditions under which he had to work, the ideas he and his contemporaries were grappling with and the legacy of Christian faith which informed that period and resulted from it. The latest CC edition (2018) and the channel have the original nearly 3 1/2 hour and the restored 183 minute versions of the film available. My preferred cut is the 205 minute version that made the first 1999 DVD transfer.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2020
  12. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    Did Tarkovsky ever make a bad film?
     
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  13. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    Bad film? Sometimes I'd rather see one than a Tarkovsky flick. Dude had little humor, if any, in any of his film (imo). I do like giggling with Borishka, the bell caster, in Andrei Rublev when he considers the what would happen if after all the work they put into casting the massive thing that it didn't ring. But, save moments in Andrei Rublev, levity, which is crucial in comedy, is not a strong feature of his films. A weakness perhaps to some, perhaps not to others.

    But I am ready for a good comedy after the last three rather serious dramas. The channel doesn't initially seem to have a copious amount of them. The weak search feature doesn't help. Any recommendations? I'm going with Anna Magnani as her background in Italian Comedy really served her well in The Rose Tattoo, although it is another drama. She got an Oscar for it. Burt Lancaster isn't bad in it, either. One of myfavorites.

     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2020
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  14. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    I'm ready for a good comedy myself, but I think for tonight it'll have to be this, or one of the two Dassin films they have (no Rififi here):

    Nights of Cabiria
    Directed by Federico Fellini • 1957 • Italy
    Starring Giulietta Masina, François Périer

    Giulietta Masina won Best Actress at Cannes as the title character of one of Fellini’s most haunting films. Oscar winner for best foreign-language film, NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (LE NOTTI DI CABIRIA) is the tragic story of a naive prostitute searching for true love in the seediest sections of Rome.

    [​IMG]
     
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  15. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    Love Masina in La Strada. Glad to see that it's a favorite of John Sayles, too!


    Sayles probably went on for some time after. His commentary is always enriching. But I tell ya, if they ever let me in that closet I'd go straight for the Kurosawa box set (if they had a copy!). :D
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2020
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  16. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    Last edited: Jan 21, 2020
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  17. Downsampled

    Downsampled Senior Member

    Watched The Swimmer last night and it really threw me for a loop... but I find it lingering with me today, which is a quality I admire in a film. A really unusual, interesting (and eventually bleak) experience.
     
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  18. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    Yeah! That film either has, or should have, a cult following.
     
  19. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    Thanks for the post.

    I kept thinking throughout the movie, "Is this dude nuts?" Turns out he was. Or, at least he had certainly gone nuts. I didn't have much sympathy for him after a key scene which displayed his deep arrogance and presumption in an attempted... social trangression. He seemed stuck the Twilight Zone. Still he had to continue on his spiritual quest despite the obvious physical threat to his health. Psychologically, he was already gone. The filmmaker's attempt to elicit compassion failed on me; on a number of occasions, specifically at orchestral music swells alongside the bucolic countryside or the beauty of youth in close up I simply had to laugh out loud. A reviewer on YouTube said she wish she could play this film in her living room on a continual loop. I'd say that's exactly what Lancaster's character was doing all his life! At a certain point you gotta turn on lights. :)
     
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  20. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    Followed one Fellini with another. I bought the soundtrack CD years ago but have never seen the film until now

    Toby Dammit
    Directed by Federico Fellini • 1968 • Italy

    Federico Fellini's loose adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's 'Never Bet the Devil Your Head' stars Terence Stamp as an alcoholic actor who suffers from disturbing visions.

    [​IMG]
     
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  21. scotto

    scotto Senior Member

    Watched Foreign Correspondent last night. Have yet to decide on tonight's flick.
     
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  22. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    Still wishing they'll do an American Hitch retrospective soon. Wonder if The Ring is streaming. It's my favorite of the Hitchcock silents. And I still haven't watched The 39 Steps!
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2020
  23. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    Started watching a film from Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project:
    Mysterious Object at Noon

    Will report back.
     
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  24. eeglug

    eeglug Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, USA
    Anyone else having problems with the channel tonight? I'm getting a player error on both of my computers.
     
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  25. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

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    North Pole
    Did earlier. App would stall. Ok now.
     
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