Lost in Criterion

Nov 01 2024 622 ep. 74 mins 48

Lost in Criterion Podcast artwork

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

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Spine 620: La promesse

Nov 01 2024 88 mins

Our introduction to the films of Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, La promesse (1996) is, like last week's Le Havre, a story of African migrants in Europe. But where Aki Kaurismäki took a more magical approach, the Dardenne's hew much closer to the intense realism of, say, Ken Loach. The brothers' history in documentary perhaps make it even more intense than what Loac

Spine 619: Le Havre

Oct 29 2024 77 mins

Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre (2011) is a hard movie to categorize. It's the dramatic tale of solidarity and sanctuary, of a community setting aside petty differences to protect a vulnerable migrant. But it's not social realism; It's more magical than that. Some critics call it fairy tale-esque, Pat calls it a children's story, none of them to dismiss it. The moral here is one of a ki

Spine 618: Gray's Anatomy

Oct 18 2024 81 mins

Steven Soderbergh's film adaptation of Spalding Gray's monologue about avoiding an eye surgery, Gray's Anatomy (1996) girds Gray's George Carlin-esque delivery in some dynamic visuals and inter-cuts them with stark black and white testimonials of people recounting there own terrible eye injuries. Perhaps not for the squeamish, but it's still an engaging story. I don't comment on it

Spine 617: And Everything is Going Fine

Oct 11 2024 102 mins

Many documentaries are introductions to their topics, assuming the audience has limited or even no knowledge of the subject. Steven Soderbergh's 2010 documentary about his late friend monologuist Spalding Gray, And Everything is Going Fine, is not. Soderbergh himself says it's for people who are already familiar with Gray. Since this is our introduction to him, it's a bit of a rock

Spine 616: Shallow Grave

Oct 04 2024 103 mins

Add Danny Boyle to the long list of British directors who claim their work is apolitical, seemingly only to distance themselves from Ken Loach and Mike Leigh. But it doesn't take the death of the author to find a political read of his brutal debut feature Shallow Grave (1994), a film about the corrupting influence of money on relationships, about how greed inherently leads to viole

Spine 615: The Gold Rush

Sep 27 2024 102 mins

In 1925 Charlie Chaplin released the highest grossing silent film of all time, The Gold Rush, a tale of desperate men fighting the harsh elements to chase the American Dream: getting rich through extractive capitalism. Chaplin is certainly capable of political film (see The Great Dictator or Modern Times) but also the Tramp is a political character, an impoverished victim of capita

Spine 614: Summer with Monika

Sep 20 2024 104 mins

Ingmar Bergman's Summer with Monika (1953) was very popular in the US, due in large part to distributor Kroger Babb's cutting over half an hour and adding a lot of nudity to it. Criterion doesn't give us Babb's cut, but I guess they gotta save something for the bluray upgrade. It's an interesting enough early Bergman, with the director moving through his 30s and seemingly finally f

Spine 613: Summer Interlude

Sep 13 2024 95 mins

Our earliest Ingmar Bergman film yet, Summer Interlude (1951) is a story of young love and internalized trauma. It also may be one of the earliest films we've seen where a manipulative groomer's actions are actually shown to be bad? In any case, it's Bergman before he's really BERGMAN, but well on his way to it; taking steps to assemble the troupe on both sides of the camera that w

Spine 612: Certified Copy

Sep 06 2024 103 mins

Abbas Kiarostami is a man who understands the intimacy of a conversation in the front seat of a car. While Taste of Cherry (1997), which we watch way back at Spine 45 is the pinnacle of that truth, Certified Copy (2010) has plenty of driving and talking before it settles into sight seeing and talking. To keep things interesting, Certified Copy is a sort of surrealist drama, with th

Spine 611: Being John Malkovich

Aug 30 2024 116 mins

Charlie Kaufman's screenwriting and Spike Jonze's directorial debuts, Being John Malkovich is a delightfully weird story of identity. Lotte (Cameron Diaz)'s storyline is particularly compelling, with Lotte experiencing gender euphoria as Malkovich, whereas our other main characters want to use Malkovich for patriarchal power, through fame or immortality. Unfortunately less compelli