What are you watching on the Criterion Channel?

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

  1. Don P.

    Don P. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Upstate NY
    I have watched it before, however this time it was with Jon Lee Anderson’s audio commentary.

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    Che
    Criterion Collection Edition #496

    Far from a conventional biopic, Steven Soderbergh’s film about Che Guevara is a fascinating exploration of the revolutionary as icon. Daring in its refusal to make the socialist leader into an easy martyr or hero, CHE paints a vivid, naturalistic portrait of the man himself (Benicio Del Toro, in a stunning, Cannes-award-winning performance), from his overthrow of the Batista dictatorship to his 1964 United Nations trip to the end of his short life. Composed of two parts, the first a kaleidoscopic view of the Cuban Revolution and the second an all-action dramatization of Che’s failed campaign in Bolivia, CHE is Soderbergh’s most epic vision.
     
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  2. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    A great film - all 4-1/2 hours!
     
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  3. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    This requires patience.

    Céline and Julie Go Boating
    Directed by Jacques Rivette • 1974 • France
    Starring Juliet Berto, Dominique Labourier, Bulle Ogier

    “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” meets the freewheeling invention of French New Wave gamesman Jacques Rivette in this giddy surrealist fantasia. When magician Céline (Juliet Berto) meets librarian Julie (Dominique Labourier), it’s not long before they are launched through the looking glass and straight into a labyrinthine comic adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder mystery as, all the while, the line between illusion and reality grows ever fainter.

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  4. Don P.

    Don P. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Upstate NY
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    The Eyes of Orson Welles
    Directed by Mark Cousins • 2018 • United Kingdom
    Starring Mark Cousins, Jack Klaff, Beatrice Welles

    Visionary cinema historian Mark Cousins (THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY) charts the unknown territory of the imagination of one of the twentieth century’s most revolutionary artists. Granted unprecedented access to hundreds of sketches, drawings, and paintings by Orson Welles—tantalizing, never-before-seen glimpses into the filmmaker’s rich inner life—Cousins sheds new light on the experiences, dreams, desires, and obsessions that fueled his creativity and inspired his masterpieces. Playful, profound, and as daringly iconoclastic as its subject, THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES is a one-of-a-kind work of visual archaeology, a fresh way of looking at a cinematic giant whose singular worldview—fiercely humanist, defiantly antiauthoritarian—resonates now more urgently than ever.
     
  5. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    This could be amazing!
     
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  6. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    Criterion has lifted the paywall on a selection of Black films in response to the current protests. One of them was recently uploaded on The Tube as well. In it a Black hustler, baited by the filmmakers, recounts stories from his life that work like the give and take of a prostitute and a client. And as a viewer - by the end of the film it's hard not feel like the ultimate trick.

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    I started to write that The Portrait of Jason is a 1967 documentary by Shirley Clarke that would probably not be made in the same manner today. But considering the current moment of exploting truth for profit (of several kinds) perhaps it's just the right film for now.

     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2020
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  7. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    I’ve been dabbling in the Saul Bass films. Somehow I had never seen “Ocean’s 11”. The montage of Saul’s opening credits and the brief interview are worth the time.
     
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  8. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    Love Part 1. But I recall Part 2 being far less compelling. Perhaps a rewatch is in order.
     
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  9. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    That was amazing!
     
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  10. all24bits

    all24bits Mature Adult

    Location:
    USA
    Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
    Rififi
    Fail Safe
    The Out of Towners
    Betty Blue Director's Cut
    The Anderson Tapes
    Un Flic

    I'm pretty picky about what I watch on Criterion....I'm pretty mainstream.
     
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  11. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    Wow!

    Invention for Destruction

    Directed by Karel Zeman • 1958 • Czechoslovakia
    Starring Lubor Tokoš, Arnošt Navrátil, František Šlégr

    This eye-popping escapade revolves around a scientist and his doomsday machine—and the pirates who will stop at nothing to gain possession of it. Freely adapting the fiction of Jules Verne, and inspired by Victorian line engravings, Karel Zeman surrounds his actors with animated scenery of breathtaking intricacy and complexity, constructing an impossibly vivid proto-steampunk world. Released abroad at the turn of the 1960s, INVENTION FOR DESTRUCTION went on to become one of the most internationally successful Czechoslovak films of all time.

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  12. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    I didn't think Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion was that mainstream. Creepy and well made, yes.
     
  13. all24bits

    all24bits Mature Adult

    Location:
    USA
    It's a pretty well known safe movie choice.
     
  14. j.barleycorn

    j.barleycorn Forum Resident

    Location:
    MN, USA
    Subscribed today to the channel. First up tonight was Shampoo, which I love and hadn’t seen for ages and expires on 6/30. Looked ok, not great but don’t know what their source print is.

    Had some issues activating service thru Roku but eventually got it going. I’m really excited. Wished I’d signed up a couple months back. Easily 25 films I would like to see before the June expiry but won’t have time.
     
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  15. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    I'm not a huge Fassbinder fan, but this is great.

    Veronika Voss
    Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1982 • Germany
    Starring Rosel Zech, Hilmar Thate, Cornelia Froboess

    A once-beloved Third Reich–era starlet, Veronika Voss (Rosel Zech) lives in obscurity in postwar Munich. Struggling for survival and haunted by past glories, she encounters sportswriter Robert Krohn (Hilmar Thate) in a rain-swept park and intrigues him with her mysterious beauty. As their unlikely relationship develops, Robert comes to discover the dark secrets that brought about the decline of Veronika’s career. Based on the true story of a World War II Ufa star, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s VERONIKA VOSS is wicked satire disguised as a 1950s melodrama.

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  16. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    Apparently well known in its time, but not to me. I still wouldn't use the word 'safe' to describe it.

    Awards
    The film was highly regarded in its own time, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and both the FIPRESCI Prize and the Grand Prize at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival. Also it won the Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture from the Mystery Writers of America.

    Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion - Wikipedia
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2020
  17. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    The Milky Way

    Directed by Luis Buñuel • 1969 • France
    Starring Paul Frankeur, Laurent Terzieff, Bernard Verley

    The first of what Luis Buñuel later proclaimed a trilogy (along with THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE and THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY) about “the search for truth,” THE MILKY WAY daringly deconstructs contemporary and traditional views on Catholicism with ribald, rambunctious surreality. Two French beggars, present-day pilgrims en route to Spain’s holy city of Santiago de Compostela, serve as Buñuel’s narrators for an anticlerical history of heresy, told with absurdity and filled with images that rank among Buñuel’s most memorable (stigmatic children, crucified nuns) and hilarious (Jesus considering a good shave). A diabolically entertaining look at the mysteries of fanaticism, THE MILKY WAY remains a hotly debated work from cinema’s greatest skeptic.

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  18. all24bits

    all24bits Mature Adult

    Location:
    USA
    I also forgot I saw In Cold Blood for the first time. The print looked fantastic, like it could have been shot yesterday (or at least in the 70s).
     
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  19. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    Oops, wrong image. Here's the correct one:

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  20. PhilJol

    PhilJol Forum Resident

    You must watch his Kaili Blues too
     
  21. Jerry

    Jerry Grateful Gort Staff

    Location:
    New England
    Burden of Dreams. Now I have to watch Fitzcarraldo again!
     
  22. hybrid_77

    hybrid_77 Forum Resident

    Location:
    New England
    Chantal Ackerman's News From Home from 1976. Filmed in Lower Manhattan after she had moved there. She reads letters from her mother over the footage. The color footage of the city is beautiful. NYC before it was transformed into what it is now.
     
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  23. Electric

    Electric The Medium is the Massage Thread Starter

    Robinson Crusoe
    Directed by Luis Buñuel • 1954 • United States, Mexico
    Starring Dan O’Herlihy

    Master director Luis Buñuel’s first color film (and first of only two he made in English) is a fascinating, unjustly neglected adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s classic survival novel. His take on the story—in which the eponymous shipwreck survivor (an Oscar-nominated Dan O’Herlihy) faces both physical and psychological peril while stranded for decades on a desert island—succeeds equally as a gripping adventure saga and as a subtly subversive, typically Buñuelian deconstruction of traditional notions of civilization, religion, and man’s place in the universe.

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  24. Don P.

    Don P. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Upstate NY
    This is a rewatch and is a rather remarkable film.

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    Daughters of the Dust
    Directed by Julie Dash • 1991 • United States
    Starring Cora Lee Day, Alva Rogers, Barbara O. Jones

    Julie Dash’s rapturous vision of black womanhood and vanishing ways of life in the turn-of-the-century South was the first film directed by an African American woman to receive a wide release. In 1902, a multigenerational family in the Gullah community on the Sea Islands off of South Carolina—former West African slaves who carried on many of their ancestors’ Yoruba traditions—struggle to maintain their cultural heritage and folklore while contemplating a migration to the mainland, even further from their roots. Awash in gorgeously poetic, sun-dappled images at once dreamlike and precise, DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST forges a radical new visual language rooted in black femininity and the rituals of Gullah culture.
     
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  25. j.barleycorn

    j.barleycorn Forum Resident

    Location:
    MN, USA
    Tonight.....Dead Reckoning w/ Bogart & Elizabeth Scott. Had never seen it. Very enjoyable. There’s a number of noir films available thru month end I need to see.

    Only had the channel for a week. Watched original Oceans 11 from 1960 last Friday. Hadn’t seen that in decades. And a bit of trivia, in an early scene one of the crew, but not the name talent goes into a store and in the corner of the shot is the same Zenith tube table radio that my wife bought for me about 20 years ago. I was floored when I saw it.
     
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