Lost in Criterion

In which we talk about bridges.

Alex Cox went to Sandinista Nicaragua to film a biography of an 18th century American colonialist while the US was pretending to take the Iran-Contra scandal seriously. No wonder American critics hated the movie.

Despite my false belief that Last Tango in Paris is in the Criterion Collection, The Last Emperor proves to be our last Bernardo Bertolucci movie for the foreseeable future. The tale of Puyi, crowned emperor of China at the age of 3, just before a half century of political revolution, and eventually dying of old age while working as a gardener at the Beijing Botanical Gardens. Bertolucci and the Chinese government may have different views of what that life trajectory means.

Over the years it's become rather apparent that a lot of folks do not appreciate our opinions on Godard. Like Fellini we will not let our awareness of the issue lead us to change.

We finish off the Agnès Varda boxset with a talk on the short films packaged as bonus features: L'opéra-mouffe (1958), Du côté de la côte (1958), and the short narrative film contained within Cleo from 5 to 7, Les fiancés du pont Mac Donald.

We couldn't be happier than to have guest Adam Spieckermann bring his insight to our discussion of Agnès Varda's Le Bonheur, a brightly colored relationship horror film.

Varda once claimed that before she made La Pointe Courte she had never even seen another movie which is a hilariously transparent lie and I love her for it.

Some of the best tragedy narratives indict a whole society for creating the system and the path that keep the tragic character imprisoned in his journey toward loss. There's a bit of that in This Sporting Life but the tragedy is focused on the main character's inability to court the woman he can't stop harassing, herself an even starker victim of the local political and economic system.

Miss Julie

Who amongst us hasn't decided to solve a problem maybe without talking to anyone actually affected by the problem or even understanding what the problem is, so you just ended up doing something that adds to the problem in a different way?

An experiment in what constitutes a movie finds James Taylor and Dennis Wilson partnered in a cross country race that resolves (or doesn't) sometime after the last reel burns up.

Little baby Mifune looking like he was always 35.

The story of some sad circus performers.

Another week, another adaptation of a stream-of-consciousness novel about a perpetually drunk man, this time Fassbinder’s epic mini-series adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz. Taking place (and originally written) in Germany between the wars, it’s got some lessons for us.

La Dia de los Gringos.