Lost in Criterion

Apr 11 2025 646 ep. 76 mins 376

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 644: Pina

Apr 11 2025 116 mins

Wim Wenders had planned for years with German Neo-expressionist choreographer Pina Bausch to make a film of her work, but Wenders didn't know how he could do it justice. Then he saw U2 3D (2008) and knew that digital 3D was the technology he needed. Unfortunately, as technology caught up to Wenders' vision, Bausch passed away, and Pina (2011) morphed from just a document of her wor

Spine 643: The Man Who Knew Too Much

Apr 04 2025 118 mins

In the first 140 Spines of the Criterion Collection there were five Alfred Hitchcock films, leading us to believe we'd be seeing a lot more from him over the years, but it turns out The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) is the first Hitchcock we've watched for the podcast in just shy of a decade. This is the original The Man Who Knew Too Much, one of Alfred's first big breaks before mov

Spine 642: Naqoyqatsi

Mar 28 2025 125 mins

While the first two films in Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi Trilogy were built on filming in particularly locations, in Naqoyqatsi, the image itself becomes the location as editor and "digital cinematographer" Jon Kane takes us into the simulation that is modern life. Unfortunately, like the early unused setpiece footage from Koyaanisqatsi, the tech here has not aged well, though this time

Spine 641: Powaqqatsi

Mar 21 2025 107 mins

We continue through Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi Trilogy with 1988's Powaqqatsi. Reggio works with Phillip Glass again but they lost Ron Fricke for this one and his absence is felt, particularly in the editing. While the first film looked at what US industrialization has done to its own people, Powaqqatsi travels around the world to look at the effects of industrialization on postcolonia

Spine 640: Koyaanisqatsi

Mar 14 2025 112 mins

We start into Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi Trilogy this week with what many consider the strongest of the three films, mostly because Ron Fricke's cinematography and editing is masterful in it. Built from scenes of natural beauty and alienating industry with a phenomenal sountrack by Philip Glass, Koyaanisqatsi is a deeply effecting visual poem. Our dear friend Jonathan Hape (https://www

Spine 638: Following

Mar 07 2025 106 mins

Christopher Nolan's first feature, Following (1998) is a neo-noir with an achronological story structure. The man loves a neo-noir with an achronological story structure. Nolan describes the film as the pinnacle of what he could achieve in a low budget and just working with his friends. which is damning if true because it's just not very interesting.

Spine 637: Purple Noon

Feb 28 2025 108 mins

René Clément's 1960 adaptation of the 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, Purple Noon is seems to find the director and screenwriter Paul Gégauff trying to drain the homoeroticism out of the source material. Fortunately, cinematographer Henri Decaë and star Alain Delon (in his breakout role) knew how to add it back in through both Delon's fantastic facial acting and some of the

Spine 636: Heaven's Gate

Feb 21 2025 116 mins

After Micheal Cimino's The Deer Hunter won five Oscars, United Artists gave him carte blanche for his next film and he really went to town. As in he built and rebuilt at least one whole town, on stilts in a National Park so as not to damage the landscape. If only he'd waited 45 years he could have just bought Glacier National Park outright and really become his film's villains. Any

Spine 635: Weekend (1967)

Feb 14 2025 119 mins

Jean-Luc Godard's goodbye to cinema, at least for a time, Weekend (1967) is not just a condemnation of bourgeois values, but a stunning attack on automobile culture. Sure the messaging is scattershot at best, but there's little in the film that isn't memorable. And it's gotta be hands down the film with the largest salvaged car budget.

Spine 634: Arabian Nights

Feb 07 2025 120 mins

The last of Pasolini's Arabian Nights betrays a director who is steadily on his way to making Salò, and he would begin work on that magnum opus just after he finished Arabian Nights. Like the previous two films in this trilogy, Arabian Nights adapts a well known collection of stories with a heavy focus on the most erotic ones. Pat argues that unlike the others Arabian Nights feels