Lost in Criterion

The Adam Glass and John Patrick Owatari-Dorgan attempt the sisyphean task of watching every movie in the ever-growing Criterion Collection. Want to support us? We’ll love you for it: www.Patreon.com/LostInCriterion

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29 episodes
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Avg 1 hr 54 min
English

Episodes 29

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#706
June 6 · 2 hr 1 min
Spine 693: La Vie de Boheme
We fell in love with Aki Kaurismäki when we first watched Le Havre (2011, Spine 619), and are very excited to talk about the original film in which André Wilms plays Marcel Marx, another tale of immigrant rights but this one an ode to a Paris that no longer exists, a bohemian lifestyle that is increasingly impossible under capitalism. Oh and speaking of being an artist under capitalism, we also talk about Martin Scorsese's recent announcement that he's using AI for storyboarding, a thing he is obviously not actually doing so I hope the money is worth it.
#705
May 29 · 1 hr 52 min
Spine 692: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) is a very fun movie and an overstuffed Criterion release. But perhaps a comedy of such epic proportions (and aspect ratios) needs an epically sized release.
#704
May 22 · 1 hr 45 min
Spine 691: Thief
Having finished the World Cinema boxset, we had resigned ourselves that we would have to go back to doing some acrobatics to read Marxism into the films for awhile again, but little did we expect that Michael Mann's Thief (1981) isn't just a stylish heist film but is also (and moreso) a rumination on the exploitation of labor and rent seeking. There's power in a union, but there's also apparently power in burning everything down just to show your boss who has control.
#703
May 15 · 1 hr 59 min
Spine 690: The Housemaid
The first World Cinema Boxset draws to a close with Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid (1960), a film whose influence you can clearly see in many modern South Korean directors' work, from Bong Joon-ho to Park Chan-wook. A sort of domestic horror film punctuated with a moral message ending that left us floored for the audacity of its presentation, The Housemaid is maybe the best movie in a boxset of bangers, a thing I think I've said about each film in the set at this point. We also take some time to reflect on the set as a whole, its weird collection of sponsors, and how we very much want more of this from Criterion.
#702
May 8 · 1 hr 54 min
Spine 689: Trances
This week the World Cinema Project boxset changes pace a bit with Trances, Ahmed El Maanouni's 1981 documentary on Moroccan avant-garde band Nass El Ghiwane. But it doesn't change pace too much, as this Nass El Ghiwane's music is firmly anti-colonial and the band members' interviews deliver overt Marxist messaging in much the same way as the previous four films of the set have been.
#701
May 1 · 1 hr 48 min
Spine 688: Dry Summer
It's becoming increasingly obvious that the World Cinema Project is Martin Scorsese's plot to smuggle openly Marxist films into the Criterion Collection, and Metin Erksan's Dry Summer (1963) continues the trend. Erksan imagines a world where one rich man can enclose those common goods that sustain life, where one man's greed can choke his community and his own family. Surely not a world that could exist outside of film.
#700
April 24 · 1 hr 40 min
Spine 687: A River Called Titas
Halfway through the World Cinema Project Vol. 1 boxset and the hits keep coming. This week it's all about the trauma of separation: familial and economic, but also in light of the Partition of India and Bangladeshi independence. Ritwik Ghatak's A River Called Titas (1973) is an intimidating work, lengthy and meandering like the titular river. Its also beautiful and dynamic, tragic and melodramatic. Its a full package brimming over, and a highlight in a boxset that's only highlights.
#699
April 17 · 1 hr 26 min
Spine 686: Redes
We continue through the World Cinema Project Vol 1 boxset with a 1936 film from Mexico, though with a rather international production crew, that presages Italian neorealism probably. Redes is among the more openly Marxist films the Criterion Collection has shown us, though I have a feeling that's going to be true for a lot of what we see from the World Cinema Project. It began life as a documentary about a fishing community near Veracruz sponsored by Mexico's Secretariat of Public Education, but collaborators Fred Zinnemann (co-directing), Emilio Gómez Muriel (co-directing), Paul Strand (cinematography), the non-professional cast performing their daily lives, and a myriad of others behind and in front of the camera grew it into a semi-documentary tale organizing against the oppression of capitalism.
#698
April 10 · 2 hr
Spine 685: Touki bouki
This week we start the first Martin Scorcese's World Cinema Project boxset, a growing sub-collection - currently at 5 volumes - containing films from regions under-represented from the broader Criterion Collection. Or unrepresented at all elsewise. Volume 1, for instance, contains our first two Criterion films made in Africa by African directors. Our first film is one of them comes from Senegal, Touki bouki (1973) directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty. If you must find analogues it's sort of Easy Rider via Jean Cocteau, but the film is one of the most unique we've experienced.

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