General Discussion The Criterion Channel Streaming Service (Official Thread) (1 Viewer)

[bujaki]

I watch non-Criterion stuff, particularly titles that are leaving at the end of the month. Great way to expand your knowledge of film. I would not think of canceling the service. It is as essential to me as TCM.

 

[Robert Crawford]

September’s List of Films:

The Criterion Channel’s September 2023 Lineup

This month’s programming dives into the sinister side of adolescence, the pleasures of the open road, and the best of period noir.

www.criterion.com

 

[Garysb]

The Criterion Channel’s October 2023 Lineup

This October, brace yourself for chills, thrills, and some of the most mind-bending, spine-tingling horror imaginable.

www.criterion.com

This October, brace yourself for chills, thrills, and some of the most mind-bending, spine-tingling horror imaginable. Step into a haunted house packed with the best of ’90s horror, art-house classics that do double duty as ideal midnight movies, and pre-Code nightmares that set the template for screen terror. But if you’re afraid of the dark, fear not: there’s also a selection of propulsive technothrillers, a new episode of Adventures in Moviegoing with James Gray, a spotlight on feisty forties star Linda Darnell, newly restored classics by Claire Denis and Robert Bresson streaming exclusively on the Criterion Channel, and so much more!


TOP STORIES

’90s Horror
The ’70s shocked you, the ’80s gored you . . . now the ’90s come in for the kill! Our latest Halloween spectacular celebrates an era that saw terror undergo unsettling new transformations. In the ’90s, horror movies got bigger budgets, became playfully self-aware, and even won some Oscars—but they’re just as nasty as what came before. Featuring cult heroes like John Carpenter (In the Mouth of Madness) and Abel Ferrara (The Addiction) plunging the dark depths of their uncompromising visions, established auteurs like Francis Ford Coppola (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) taking on the genre, and new voices like Ernest R. Dickerson (Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight) and Antonia Bird (Ravenous) offering fresh perspectives on familiar tropes, this selection curated by Clyde Folley offers a hair-raising tour through an oft-overlooked decade in horror that’s ripe for rediscovery.

FEATURING: Def by Temptation (1990), The Exorcist III (1990), Frankenhooker (1990), Body Parts (1991)*, The Rapture (1991), Dust Devil (1992)*, When a Stranger Calls Back (1993)*, In the Mouth of Madness (1994), The Addiction (1995), Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)*, Ravenous (1999); COMING NOVEMBER 1: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Body Snatchers (1993); COMING DECEMBER 1: Event Horizon (1997)



Technothrillers
Technothrillers fuse sleek, suspenseful genre pleasures with potent social commentary, posing provocative questions about the impact of technology on society in an era of corporate domination, omnipresent surveillance, and seemingly unstoppable innovation. Whether exploring the dark fringes of cyberspace, as in The Net and Demonlover, or more fantastically imagined technologies—from the killer animatronic cowboys of Westworld to the dream-hacking device of Paprika—these nightmare fantasies are science fiction at its most propulsive and entertaining, featuring stellar flesh-and-blood performances from the likes of Robert Redford, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tom Cruise.

FEATURING: The Andromeda Strain (1971)*, Westworld (1973), World on a Wire (1973), Brainstorm (1983), Videodrome (1983), Sneakers (1992)*, The Net (1995), Dark City (1998), New Rose Hotel (1998), eXistenZ (1999)*, Demonlover (2002), Minority Report (2002)*, Paprika (2006), Neptune Frost (2021)



Art-House Horror
Images of unforgettable terror and strange beauty exist side by side in these darkly imaginative works that fuse genre chills with formal innovation. Tapping into horror’s potential to manifest our subconscious fears, visionary directors like David Lynch (Eraserhead), Dario Argento (Suspiria), and Georges Franju (Eyes Without a Face) embrace the genre’s surreal side, inviting us on hallucinatory journeys into dreamlike dread. From cult classics (Carnival of Souls) and influential landmarks (Night of the Living Dead) to international shockers (Cure) and one-of-a-kind hybrids (The Lure), these films push the genre to its most out-there limits.

FEATURING: Häxan (1922), Vampyr (1932), Eyes Without a Face (1960), Jigoku (1960), Carnival of Souls (1962), Onibaba (1964), The Face of Another (1966), Hour of the Wolf (1968), Kuroneko (1968), Night of the Living Dead (1968), Spirits of the Dead (1968), Flesh for Frankenstein (1973), Sisters (1973), Blood for Dracula (1974), Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Eraserhead (1977), House (1977), Suspiria (1977), The Shout (1978), Arrebato (1979), The Brood (1979), Wolf’s Hole (1987), The Vanishing (1988), Cronos (1993), Cure (1997), Donnie Darko (2001), Trouble Every Day (2001), Antichrist (2009), The Lure (2015), Suicide by Sunlight (2019)



Starring Linda Darnell
Propelled to stardom while still a teenager, Linda Darnell wielded a feisty tempestuousness that lent her performances an extra edge. Starring opposite Tyrone Power in splashy costume spectacles like The Mark of Zorro and Blood and Sand, she soon proved equally effective as a snarling femme fatale in the noir gems Fallen Angel and Hangover Square and as a caustic wit in the sophisticated comedies Unfaithfully Yours and A Letter to Three Wives. Though the turmoil of her offscreen life took a toll on her career—culminating in her devastating early death at age forty-one in a house fire—Darnell left behind one of the most distinguished filmographies of the 1940s, delivering performances both tender and hard-edged for some of the era’s top auteurs.

FEATURING: The Mark of Zorro (1940), Star Dust (1940), Blood and Sand (1941), Fallen Angel (1945), Hangover Square (1945), My Darling Clementine (1946), Forever Amber (1947), Unfaithfully Yours (1948), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), No Way Out (1950)



Pre-Code Horror
Featuring a new introduction by critic Imogen Sara Smith
With their startlingly perverse themes, lurid psychosexual undertones, and often-grisly violence, the horror films made in the early 1930s before the enforcement of the Hollywood Production Code still have the power to shock. Unbound by any concessions to family-friendly morality and influenced by the heightened visual style of German expressionism, these sordid tales of mad scientists (Doctor X, Island of Lost Souls), sadomasochistic satanists (The Black Cat), twisted revenge (Murders in the Zoo, Freaks), and supernatural terror (Svengali, Thirteen Women) brought primal fear to the screen with a daring creativity and explicitness that wouldn’t be seen in Hollywood again for decades. Highlights include a pair of early Technicolor wonders by Michael Curtiz: Doctor X and Mystery of the Wax Museum.

FEATURING: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Svengali (1931), Doctor X (1932), Freaks (1932), Island of Lost Souls (1932), The Most Dangerous Game (1932), Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)*, The Old Dark House (1932), Thirteen Women (1932), Murders in the Zoo (1933), Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935)



James Gray’s Adventures in Moviegoing
In the latest edition of Adventures in Moviegoing, Queens-born filmmaker and famously delightful raconteur James Gray (Two Lovers, Armageddon Time) discusses his filmic education courtesy of New York’s vibrant repertory cinemas and the formative discoveries that shaped his uniquely intelligent approach to moviemaking. The films he has selected—including exemplars of elegant, emotionally layered storytelling like Alexander Korda’s That Hamilton Woman, Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, and Lina Wertmüller’s Seven Beauties—reflect the commitment to careful craftsmanship and complex moral inquiry that have helped make Gray one of the most thoughtful and sincere American directors working today.

FEATURING: Modern Times (1936), That Hamilton Woman (1941), Stromboli (1950), Rocco and His Brothers (1960), Tunes of Glory (1960), Toby Dammit (1968), Seven Beauties (1975)

EXCLUSIVE PREMIERES

Stonewalling
The latest from Beijing-based wife-and-husband directorial team Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka is a piercing, meticulously observed examination of contemporary Chinese youth starring their recurring leading lady, the brilliant Yao Honggui. She plays the twenty-year-old Lynn, a flight attendant in training whose path of upward mobility is derailed when she finds out she is pregnant. Indecisive and running out of time, Lynn tells her boyfriend she’s had an abortion and returns to her feuding parents and their failing clinic to try and figure out what’s next. Surveying the new norms of the gig economy, gray markets, MLMs, and hustling in modern-day, post-TikTok China, Stonewalling unfolds as a haunting character study and a socioeconomic thriller of the everyday.

REDISCOVERIES AND RESTORATIONS

Trouble Every Day
Claire Denis’s poetic take on the body-horror genre is an atmospheric reverie of blood and lust that lays bare the filmmaker’s core artistic concerns around power, desire, and delirium. Newlyweds Shane (a perfectly cast Vincent Gallo) and June (Tricia Vessey) arrive in Paris for their honeymoon. In the process of trying to find a cure for his strange, bloodthirsty disease, Shane stumbles upon the story of a doctor (Alex Descas) and his flesh-eating wife (Béatrice Dalle). Shimmering with haunting beauty—with seductive cinematography by Agnès Godard and an ethereal score by Tindersticks—Trouble Every Day is a mesmerizing blend of gore and sensuality that ranks among Denis’s supreme achievements.



The Devil, Probably
“My sickness is that I see clearly.” Robert Bresson’s most controversial film (the French government banned viewers under the age of eighteen from seeing it, believing it would incite a rash of youth suicides) follows the journey of alienated teenager Charles (Antoine Monnier) as he searches for meaning in everything from religion and radical politics to drugs and psychoanalysis. Ultimately, all that may be left is the embrace of death. Made when the director was nearing eighty, this despairing yet undeniably resonant post–May ’68 manifesto is his deeply personal vision of the modern world as a spiritual wasteland, complete with footage of environmental degradation and nuclear destruction. No less an authority than Richard Hell declared it “by far the most punk movie ever made.”

CRITERION COLLECTION EDITIONS

Flesh for Frankenstein (Paul Morrissey, 1973)
Criterion Collection Edition #27
Cult icon Udo Kier stars in Andy Warhol collaborator Paul Morrissey’s reimagining of Mary Shelley’s modern myth, a riot of kinky transgression that fuses its exploitation thrills with an ironic, postmodern reflexivity.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by Morrissey, Kier, and film historian Maurice Yacowar.



Blood for Dracula (Paul Morrissey, 1974)
Criterion Collection Edition #28
Underground maverick Paul Morrissey’s follow-up to Flesh for Frankenstein is another outrageously subversive, elegantly perverse reimagining of horror mythology starring the one and only Udo Kier as the infamous Transylvanian count.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by Morrissey, Kier, and film historian Maurice Yacowar.



La Llorona (Jayro Bustamante, 2019)
Criterion Collection Edition #1156
A former military dictator on trial for crimes against Guatemala’s Maya communities is haunted by a series of disturbing occurrences, seemingly brought on by an enigmatic new housekeeper, in this chilling fusion of folk horror and political commentary.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: An interview with director Jayro Bustamante and a documentary on the making of the film.



Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra, 1944)*
Criterion Collection Edition #1153
Cary Grant contends with a family of genteel maniacs in Frank Capra’s black comedy, a marvelous screwball meeting of the madcap and the macabre.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by author Charles Dennis and a radio adaptation starring Boris Karloff.

DIRECTOR SPOTLIGHT

A Trilogy by Huang Ji
These three films by Huang Ji—a fiercely independent voice in Chinese filmmaking—comprise a remarkable coming-of-age trilogy, charting both the personal journey of a young woman (played in all three by recurring star Yao Honggui) as well as the social transformation of China itself. Inspired by Huang’s own adolescence growing up in rural China, these films offer a clear-eyed, unadorned, and uncensored look at the experiences of one of the country’s most vulnerable demographics: young women without family support who must fight to survive in a rapidly changing economic landscape. Even as they navigate the most difficult of circumstances, Huang’s characters remain dignified and self-sufficient, their stories captured with penetrating social observation and a painterly visual style that she’s developed in collaboration with Ryuji Otsuka, who’s served as cinematographer on all three films and codirector and producer of two.

FEATURING: Egg and Stone (2012), The Foolish Bird (2017), Stonewalling (2022)



De Lo Mio
Featuring a new introduction by the filmmaker, part of Criterion’s Meet the Filmmakers series
Sibling bonds are both rekindled and tested when two high-spirited sisters raised in New York travel to the Dominican Republic to reunite with their estranged brother and clean out their grandparents’ old home. Diana Peralta’s achingly alive feature debut weaves a richly human story about cherishing the past while learning to let go.

HOLLYWOOD HITS

Phantom of the Paradise
The Phantom of the Opera gets an outrageous glam-rock reimagining courtesy of Brian De Palma at his most deliriously inspired.

NEW ADDITIONS TO PREVIOUS PROGRAMS

Premiering October 16 in High School Horror: Unfriended*
Ushering in a new era of horror for the social-media age, this innovative nightmare unfolds in real time on a teenager’s computer screen as she and her friends are stalked by an unseen avenger.



Now Playing in Gaslight Noir: The Lodger
Unsung noir master John Brahm brings his flair for stylishly moody chiaroscuro and gaslit Victorian atmosphere to this Jack the Ripper–inspired thriller, starring a quietly unnerving Laird Cregar.


ENCORES
Back by Popular Demand
Don’t miss these viewer favorites, returning to the Channel in October!

FEATURING: The Glass Key (1942), Laura (1944), Written on the Wind (1956)*, The Age of Innocence (1993)

 

[JPCinema]

FREAKS is now on Criterion Channel. It is the new 2K restoration that will be released later this month on blu ray. There are many of the extras available to watch from the upcoming blu ray.

 

[Sultanofcinema]

My son went to watch The Name Of The Rose the other night on Amazon Prime, even though he has the Blu-ray and told me the sex scene with Christian Slater had been completely edited from the print and he turned it off. I went to his house and he showed me the next evening and sure enough that entire scene was gone!.

 

[Capt D McMars]

My son went to watch The Name Of The Rose the other night on Amazon Prime, even though he has the Blu-ray and told me the sex scene with Christian Slater had been completely edited from the print and he turned it off. I went to his house and he showed me the next evening and sure enough that entire scene was gone!.

another reason for physical media, over streaming.

 

[JPCinema]

My son went to watch The Name Of The Rose the other night on Amazon Prime, even though he has the Blu-ray and told me the sex scene with Christian Slater had been completely edited from the print and he turned it off. I went to his house and he showed me the next evening and sure enough that entire scene was gone!.

The running time on Amazon is 3 minutes shorter than the blu ray.

 

[Garysb]

Criterion Channel November 2023

The Criterion Channel’s November 2023 Lineup

This November, learn the art of the con from some of cinema’s craftiest swindlers, or saddle up alongside some of the most complex and determined female characters in the history of the western.

www.criterion.com

Back By Popular Demand
Nightmare Alley, Edmund Goulding, 1947

Panic in the Streets, Elia Kazan, 1950

The House on Telegraph Hill, Robert Wise, 1951

Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper, 1969

Streaming In November
21, Robert Luketic, 2008

Another Hayride, Matt Wolf, 2021

Ante mis ojos, Lina Rodriguez, 2018

Aquí y allá, Lina Rodriguez, 2019

Baby Face, Alfred E. Green, 1933

Back Street, John M. Stahl, 1932

Bayard & Me, 2017

The Beguiled, Don Siegel, 1971*

Belly, Hype Williams, 1998

Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club, Ivan Frank, 2008

Body Snatchers, Abel Ferrara, 1993

Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola, 1992

The Cheat, George Abbott, 1931

Chronicles of a Lying Spirit (by Kelly Gabron), Cauleen Smith, 1992

Cinépistolaire (Episode 2), Lina Rodriguez and Jorge Lozano, 2022

Convergences and Reunions, Lina Rodriguez, 2008

Daughter of the Dragon, Lloyd Corrigan, 1931

Design for Living, Ernst Lubitsch, 1933*

Diary of a Country Priest, Robert Bresson, 1951

Dishonored, Josef von Sternberg, 1931

The Divorcee, Robert Z. Leonard, 1930

Drylongso, Cauleen Smith, 1998

Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper, 1969

Egungun (Ancestor Can’t Find Me), Cauleen Smith, 2017

Einschnitte, Lina Rodriguez, 2010

Exile, Rithy Panh, 2016*

The Face of AIDS, Matt Wolf, 2016

Forty Guns, Samuel Fuller, 1957

The Furies, Anthony Mann, 1950*

The Grifters, Stephen Frears, 1990

La guerre est finie, Alain Resnais, 1966

Hell’s Angels, Howard Hughes, 1930*

High Anxiety, Mel Brooks, 1977

The House on Telegraph Hill, Robert Wise, 1951

A Human Certainty, Morgan Quaintance, 2021

I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard, Matt Wolf, 2012

I’m No Angel, Wesley Ruggles, 1933

Irradiated, Rithy Panh, 2020*

Johnny Guitar, Nicholas Ray, 1954

The Lady Eve, Preston Sturges, 1941

Lessons in Semaphore, Cauleen Smith, 2015

The Lusty Men, Nicholas Ray, 1952

Matchstick Men, Ridley Scott, 2003

The Missing Picture, Rithy Panh, 2013*

My Two Voices, Lina Rodriguez, 2022

Night Nurse, William A. Wellman, 1931

Nightmare Alley, Edmund Goulding, 1947

Nine Queens, Fabián Bielinsky, 2000

No Man of Her Own, Wesley Ruggles, 1932

Panic in the Streets, Elia Kazan, 1950

Protocol, Lina Rodriguez, 2011

The Quick and the Dead, Sam Raimi, 1995

Rancho Notorious, Fritz Lang, 1952

Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Matt Wolf, 2019

Remote Viewing, Cauleen Smith, 2011

Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki, Lam Nai-choi, 1991

Safe in Hell, William A. Wellman, 1931

Sam Now, Reed Harkness, 2022

Scarface, Howard Hawks, 1932

Señoritas, Lina Rodriguez, 2013

She Done Him Wrong, Lowell Sherman, 1933

So Much Tenderness, Lina Rodriguez, 2022*

Songs for Earth & Folk, Cauleen Smith, 2013

South, Morgan Quaintance, 2020

Spaceship Earth, Matt Wolf, 2020*

Station West, Sidney Lanfield, 1948

The Sting, George Roy Hill, 1973*

Suffolk, Cauleen Smith, 2021

Surviving You, Always, Morgan Quaintance, 2021

Teenage, Matt Wolf, 2013

This Is the Night, Frank Tuttle, 1932

This Time Tomorrow, Lina Rodriguez, 2016

Three on a Match, Mervyn LeRoy, 1932

Trash Humpers, Harmony Korine, 2009

Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, Matt Wolf, 2008

 

[olivia1]

Hi I download the app on AppleTV and couldn't find any title on 4K HDR do you know why is that ? They mention they do have titles. I contacted them but they never answered

 

[Robert Crawford]

Hi I download the app on AppleTV and couldn't find any title on 4K HDR do you know why is that ? They mention they do have titles. I contacted them but they never answered

They never made the switch to 4K. Furthermore, they never explained why they haven’t made the switch.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

The vast majority of what they offer on the service wouldn't have 4K/HDR masters anyway (and quite a bit look to actually be in SD), so they probably haven't prioritized offering that -- they were also quite slow to join the parade in releasing 4K discs as we all know... though IMHO most films they prioritize really don't need that treatment (vs simply new/restored transfers w/ better BD encodes... more like WAC releases) anyway...

I would say though that they could definitely use better encodes/bitrates even if they just keep going w/ 1080p, not 4K, and better audio in many cases.

I haven't complained about any of this myself... but that's partly because I'm generally satisfied (all things considered) and choosing to be more supportive of them given the current landscape (plus they do also offer some nice perks to regular/committed subscribers)...

_Man_

 

[Neil S. Bulk]

Maybe they can offer 5.1 audio where applicable at some point.

 

[dpippel]

The Criterion Channel currently has a Black Friday offer - get 25% off a one-year subscription ($74.99) using promo code "MOVIES":

The Criterion Channel

Become a Criterion Channel Subscriber! A movie lover’s dream, the Criterion Channel offers classics and discoveries from around the world, thematically programmed with special features, on a streaming service brought to you by the Criterion Collection. With constantly refreshed selections of...

www.criterionchannel.com

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

The Criterion Channel currently has a Black Friday offer - get 25% off a one-year subscription ($74.99) using promo code "MOVIES":

The Criterion Channel

Become a Criterion Channel Subscriber! A movie lover’s dream, the Criterion Channel offers classics and discoveries from around the world, thematically programmed with special features, on a streaming service brought to you by the Criterion Collection. With constantly refreshed selections of...

www.criterionchannel.com

That's an excellent deal. I'd definitely do that if I'm not already right in the middle of my paid, annual (charter member) subscription, heh -- that's like getting 2.5 years worth of charter member discount in one shot...

But definitely no complaints whatsoever here, especially since they keep sending those stackable, non-expiring, coupon codes I get to use during their semi-annual, 50%-off flash sales...

_Man_

 

[Garysb]

DECEMBER 2023 Schedule

This December, take your pick from the cinematic gifts under our tree! We’ve got a spotlight on indie queen Parker Posey, major retrospectives dedicated to the towering artists Yasujiro Ozu and Ousmane Sembène, offbeat portraits of the animal kingdom’s collisions with its human neighbors by Mark Lewis, and a delightfully downbeat selection of holiday noir. Tuck into seasonal comfort fare both soufflé-light (MGM Musicals) and meaty-macabre (Hitchcock for the Holidays), served with a pair of Barbara Stanwyck classics. There’s so much more to unwrap, including the grand epics Lawrence of Arabia and La roue, the rediscovered cult favorite The Cassandra Cat, and Wong Kar Wai’s lyrical martial-arts biopic The Grandmaster.
If you haven’t signed up yet, head to CriterionChannel.com and get a 7-day free trial.
* indicates programming available only in the U.S.

TOP STORIES​

Starring Parker Posey​

All hail the indie queen! Ever since she burst onto the scene in the early 1990s, Parker Posey has captivated audiences with her offbeat magnetism, deadpan comic timing, and effortless cool in hip, offbeat gems like Party Girl, The House of Yes, Henry Fool, and Clockwatchers. Even as her star rose and Hollywood called, Posey has remained true to her independent roots, balancing forays into the mainstream with memorable performances for adventurous filmmakers on her same idiosyncratic wavelength.

FEATURES: Party Girl (1995), The Daytrippers (1996), SubUrbia (1996), Clockwatchers (1997), Henry Fool (1997), The House of Yes (1997)*, The Anniversary Party (2001), Josie and the Pussycats (2001)*, Personal Velocity (2002), Fay Grim (2006), Broken English (2007), Ned Rifle (2014)

SHORTS: Opera No. 1 (1994), Iris (1994), The Sisters of Mercy (2004)

Holiday Noir​

Welcome to the dark, spiritual void at the heart of the holiday season—at least for the characters in these gritty crime dramas. Contrasting December’s festive trimmings with lurid tales of murder, desperation, and existential dread, these hard-boiled baubles—including the offbeat time-travel noir Repeat Performance, the breathless couple-on-the run romance They Live by Night, and the lean, brutal New York B movie Blast of Silence—cast a dangerously seductive shadow over the season.

FEATURING: Lady in the Lake (1946), Repeat Performance (1947), I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (1948), They Live by Night (1948), Backfire (1950), Roadblock (1951), Blast of Silence (1961)*

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu​

Featuring In Search of Ozu, an original documentary about Ozu’s late work by Daniel Raim​

Yasujiro Ozu was Japanese cinema’s great poet of everyday life, and, 120 years after his birth, he remains one of the most significant film artists who ever lived. From the late 1920s to the early ’60s, Ozu explored the rhythms and tensions of a country trying to reconcile modern and traditional values, especially as played out in relations between the generations. Though he is best known for his 1953 masterpiece Tokyo Story, Ozu began his career in the silent era in a looser mode, with comedies like I Was Born, But . . . and gangster movies like Dragnet Girl. He then gradually mastered the domestic drama during the war years and afterward, employing both humor, as in Good Morning, and distilled drama, as in Late Spring, before the final blossoming of his art in such late color triumphs as An Autumn Afternoon. With its instantly recognizable hallmarks—static shots, often from the vantage point of someone sitting low on a tatami mat; patient pacing; moments of transcendence represented by the isolated beauty of everyday objects—Ozu’s rigorous style has influenced filmmakers as various as Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Claire Denis, and Paul Schrader.

FEATURING: I Graduated, But . . . (1929), A Straightforward Boy (1929), I Flunked, But . . . (1930), That Night’s Wife (1930), Walk Cheerfully (1930), The Lady and the Beard (1931), Tokyo Chorus (1931), I Was Born, But . . . (1932), Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? (1932), Dragnet Girl (1933), Passing Fancy (1933), Woman of Tokyo (1933), A Mother Should Be Loved (1934), A Story of Floating Weeds (1934), An Inn in Tokyo (1935), The Only Son (1936), What Did the Lady Forget? (1937), Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941), There Was a Father (1942), Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947), A Hen in the Wind (1948), Late Spring (1949), The Munekata Sisters (1950), Early Summer (1951), The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice (1952), Tokyo Story (1953), Early Spring (1956), Tokyo Twilight (1957), Equinox Flower (1958), Floating Weeds (1959), Good Morning (1959), Late Autumn (1960), The End of Summer (1961), An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

Hitchcock for the Holidays​

Merry Hitch-mas to all! For five decades, Alfred Hitchcock explored our innermost anxieties, desires, and obsessions in his diabolically constructed thrillers, which redefined the mechanics of screen terror through meticulous editing, voyeuristic camera work, and unforgettable set pieces. In endlessly studied and imitated masterpieces like Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, and Vertigo as well as singular stylistic experiments like Lifeboat, Rope, and Marnie, the Master of Suspense tapped into the peculiar pleasures of fear like no filmmaker before or since.

FEATURING: Downhill (1927), The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), Champagne (1928), Blackmail (1929), Murder! (1930), Rich and Strange (1931), The Skin Game (1931), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), Sabotage (1936), Young and Innocent (1937), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Saboteur (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Lifeboat (1944), Rope (1948), Rear Window (1954), The Trouble with Harry (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958), The Birds (1963)*, Marnie (1964)*, Torn Curtain (1966)

MGM Musicals​

Featuring a new introduction by critic Michael Koresky​

In the heyday of the golden-age Hollywood musical, one studio reigned supreme: MGM, the dream factory from which emanated gloriously tune-filled enchantments, bigger than life and in blazing Technicolor. The roster of legendary names say it all, with innovative artists such as Vincente Minnelli, Stanley Donen, and Busby Berkeley directing stars like Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Cyd Charisse in some of their most unforgettable performances. Overflowing with transcendent moments of movie magic—from a tuxedoed Garland’s rendition of “Get Happy” in Summer Stock to Astaire tapping up a storm in The Band Wagon to Kelly strapping on roller skates in It’s Always Fair Weather—these song-and-dance wonders are paragons of craftsmanship and razzle-dazzle entertainment that, in their ingenuity and sheer exuberance, have arguably never been surpassed.

FEATURING: Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940), For Me and My Gal (1942), The Harvey Girls (1946), The Pirate (1948), Summer Stock (1950), An American in Paris (1951), The Band Wagon (1953), Brigadoon (1954)*, It’s Always Fair Weather (1955)

Directed by Ousmane Sembène​

Featuring the documentary Sembène: The Making of African Cinema​

“If Africans do not tell their own stories, Africa will soon disappear,” declared Ousmane Sembène, the Senegalese cinematic revolutionary whose career-long project to illuminate the lives of the marginalized made him the continent’s most influential and widely acclaimed director. A manual laborer turned union activist turned acclaimed writer turned filmmaker, Sembène saw cinema as the ultimate vehicle for his searing social critiques, delivering caustic indictments of colonialism, ruling-class corruption, religion, and the patriarchy in landmark works like Black Girl (recently named one of the greatest films of all time in Sight and Sound magazine’s poll), Mandabi, and Xala. Blending elements of social realism, expressionism, satire, folklore, and the West African griot tradition, his radical, empathetic films created a new cinematic language of resistance.

FEATURES: Black Girl (1966), Mandabi (1968), Emitaï (1971), Xala (1975), Ceddo (1977), Guelwaar (1992)

SHORTS: Borom sarret (1963), Niaye (1964), Tauw (1970)

STREAMING PREMIERES​

Human Flowers of Flesh​

In her spellbinding, immersive second feature, director Helena Wittmann invites us to relinquish control and join her on a Mediterranean voyage unlike any other. After a stirring encounter with the French Foreign Legion, Ida (Dogtooth’s Angeliki Papoulia), sets sail with her own corps of five men, none of whom speak the same language, to trace the route of this fabled troop. Their voyage will take them from Marseille to Corsica and finally to Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria, the historical headquarters of the Legion. Along the way, boundaries blur, life at sea produces a special kind of mutual understanding, and a legionnaire of yore makes an about-face.

REDISCOVERIES AND RESTORATIONS​

The Cassandra Cat​

In this modern-day fairy tale and rediscovered Czech New Wave cult classic, an ordinary Bohemian village is visited by a magician (Jan Werich), his beautiful assistant (Emília Vásáryová), and a magic cat with the power to reveal people in colors that indicate their true natures: yellow for the unfaithful, purple for liars, red for lovers like Robert (Vlastimil Brodský), a bighearted schoolteacher whose independence of thought places him at odds with the town’s conservative authorities. When the cat reveals the villagers as they really are and the town descends into whimsical chaos, humorless school principal Karel (Jiří Sovák) vows to hunt down the feline and put an end to its anarchic reign. Ahead of its time in experimenting with stylized color and extended political metaphor, The Cassandra Cat is director Vojtěch Jasný’s triumphant excursion into fantasy as a mirror of real-life social divisions and hypocrisies.

Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring​

Claude Berri’s masterful, multipart adaptation of The Water of the Hills, the two-volume novel by Marcel Pagnol, is one of the towering achievements of the French cinema. Spanning three generations in the lives of two rural families, these twin tragedies weave an absorbing, slow-burn epic of greed, deception, and revenge amid the Provence countryside, where the sun-dappled bucolic beauty belies dark motivations. Featuring unforgettable performances from Yves Montand, Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil, and Emmanuelle Béart, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring harken back to the rich, humanist tradition of French film at its finest.

Morvern Callar*​

Lynne Ramsay’s intoxicating study of grief and transformation stars a magnetic Samantha Morton as the eponymous enigma, a young woman who embarks on an audacious, freewheeling quest to find freedom after a terrible tragedy on Christmas day, traveling from grim small-town Scotland to sun-splashed southern Spain. With dark humor, punk swagger, and a soundtrack that skips from Can to Aphex Twin to the Velvet Underground, this otherworldly existential odyssey only grows more mysterious as it builds to its heart-stopping finale.

Lawrence of Arabia​

One of the screen’s grandest epics, David Lean’s monumental Oscar winner recounts the true-life experiences of T. E. Lawrence, better known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia. A young, idealistic British officer in World War I, Lawrence (Peter O’Toole, in a career-defining performance) is assigned to the camp of Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), an Arab leader in a revolt against the Turks. In a series of brilliant tactical maneuvers, Lawrence leads fifty of Feisal’s men in a tortured three-week crossing of the Nefud Desert to attack the strategic Turkish-held port of Aqaba. Setting an engrossing, complex exploration of war, colonialism, and masculinity against stunning desert landscapes, Lawrence of Arabia remains a paragon of cinematic spectacle.

La roue​

An epic masterwork of the silent era, Abel Gance’s La roue (“The Wheel”) has in recent years been restored to its complete original form: a four-part, nearly seven-hour melodrama that reaches the heights of Greek tragedy. Séverin-Mars stars as Sisif, a humble railwayman who secretly adopts an infant orphaned in a train disaster. Over the years, Sisif lets Norma (Ivy Close) believe she is his biological daughter, even as he falls in love with the young woman. He soon shares this “curse” with his biological son, Elie (Gabriel de Gravone), who becomes smitten by Norma when he learns of his sister’s true origins. Sisif and Elie are forced to reconcile their forbidden desires; meanwhile, Norma endures a loveless marriage to the wealthy Jacques de Hersan (Pierre Magnier). Powered by Gance’s pioneering filmic and editing techniques, as well as Arthur Honegger’s original score, La roue stands as one of the most ambitious achievements in the history of cinema.

CRITERION COLLECTION EDITIONS​

The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice (Yasujiro Ozu, 1952)​

Criterion Collection Edition #989​

This ineffably lovely domestic saga, made by Yasujiro Ozu at the height of his mastery, is a sublimely piercing portrait of a marriage coming quietly undone.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A video essay by film scholar David Bordwell and a documentary by Daniel Raim on Ozu’s longtime collaboration with screenwriter Kogo Noda.

An Autumn Afternoon (Yasujiro Ozu, 1962)​

Criterion Collection Edition #446​

The last film by Yasujiro Ozu was also his final masterpiece, a gently heartbreaking story about a man’s dignified resignation to life’s shifting currents and society’s modernization.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by film scholar David Bordwell and excerpts from a 1978 television program featuring critics Michel Ciment and Georges Perec.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Terry Gilliam, 1988)​

Criterion Collection Edition #1166​

The fabled Baron Munchausen embarks on an outlandish quest that takes him from faraway lands to the moon to the belly of a sea monster and beyond in Terry Gilliam’s dazzling fantasy.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by Gilliam and screenwriter Charles McKeown, a documentary on the making of the film, a video essay by critic and filmmaker David Cairns, deleted scenes, and more.

Blast of Silence* (Allen Baron, 1961)​

Criterion Collection Edition #428​

Swift, brutal, and blackhearted, Allen Baron’s New York City noir follows a hit man on assignment in Manhattan during Christmastime with mechanical precision, as well as an eye and ear for the oddball details of urban life.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A documentary on the making of the film.

AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS​

Basquiat​

Julian Schnabel brings the all-too-brief life and incandescent world of Jean-Michel Basquiat to the screen with this dreamily stylized tribute from one creative phenom to another.

The Mountains Are a Dream That Call To Me​

A mesmerizing sensory odyssey unfolds against Nepal’s awe-inspiring mountain landscapes when a young Nepali man encounters an older Australian woman coping with grief, causing him to change course and discover his homeland in a new light.

Requiem for a Dream​

Darren Aronofsky’s harrowing tale of addiction unfolds as a hallucinatory stream of jagged, jittery nightmare visuals so visceral that you can feel the cold sweats.

ACTOR SPOTLIGHT​

A Barbara Stanwyck Christmas​

Make it a classic Christmas with this twofer of holiday favorites starring golden-age Hollywood’s most versatile and always pitch-perfect leading lady. With her characteristic blend of grit and tenderness, the radiant Barbara Stanwyck will melt your heart twice: first as a jewel thief who finds an unexpected home for the holidays with Fred MacMurray in Mitchell Leisen’s swooningly romantic Remember the Night, and then as a newspaper reporter whose made-up story becomes a real-life Gary Cooper in Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe.

FEATURING: Remember the Night (1940), Meet John Doe (1941)*

TRUE STORIES​

Mark Lewis’s Unnatural Histories​

Mark Lewis makes nature films like you’ve never seen before. In their strangeness, all the sublimity, absurdity, and incomprehensibility of the animal world—especially where it intersects with human society—comes into fascinating and wryly humorous focus. It’s little wonder that Werner Herzog is a big fan. Whether chronicling the ecological folly that unleashed a plague of biblical proportions upon Australia (Cane Toads: An Unnatural History) or the frequently strange relationships between people and fowl (The Natural History of the Chicken), these films reveal as much about the mysteries of the animal kingdom as they do about the endless oddities of human nature.

FEATURING: Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (1988), Rat (1998), Animalicious (1999), The Natural History of the Chicken (2000), Cane Toads: The Conquest (2010)

Hitchcock/Truffaut​

Based on the original recordings of the 1962 meeting between Alfred Hitchcock and French New Wave upstart François Truffaut, this engaging documentary delves into the Master of Suspense’s one-of-a-kind craft.

SHORT FILMS​

Artists on Artists: 12 Short Films Presented by This Long Century​

As an ever-expanding online archive, This Long Century has published hundreds of unmediated personal reflections from artists, filmmakers, and writers over the past fifteen years. This eclectic selection of films by a small group of past This Long Century contributors—including Kelly Reichardt, Albert Serra, Deborah Stratman, and Tuan Andrew Nguyen—foregrounds the long tradition of artists depicting other artists in their work. Through portraits, tributes, and personal responses, these short works by some of today’s most fascinating filmmakers—some of which have never before been shown outside of a gallery or museum setting—create richly inspired feedback loops, offering unique insight into both their creators and subjects.

FEATURING: Anne Truitt, Working (2009), Cuba Libre (2013), Prisoner’s Cinema (2013), Antoine/Milena (2015), The Foundation (2015), We Were Lost in Our Country (2019), Bronx, New York, November 2019 (2021), Cal State Long Beach, CA, January 2020 (2021), Dear Chantal (2021), For the Time Being (2021), Nadine Nortier (2022)

Holiday Shorts​

A stocking stuffer of holiday shorts captures both the magic of the season and the melancholy of what can be the loneliest time of year. From a cozy stop-motion treasure (A Christmas Dream) to striking early works by renowned auteurs like Lynne Ramsay (Gasman), these by turns festive, funny, and poignant films are proof that sometimes small gifts are the best of all.

FEATURING: A Christmas Dream (1945), Otemba (1988), Gasman (1998), Bad Night for the Blues (2010), Lady of the Night (2017), Wren Boys (2017), A New Year (2018), Melting Snow (2021)

Keeping Time​

This ecstatic audiovisual kaleidoscope chronicles the legacy of legendary Los Angeles jazz ensemble the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, paying homage to the musicians who pass on the magic and the communities that nourish them.

Under the Heavens​

The fates of two women become forever intertwined in this powerful tale of immigrant survival and human connection.

NEW ADDITIONS TO PREVIOUS PROGRAMS​

Premiering December 1 in ’90s Horror: Event Horizon*​

In this extravagantly designed interstellar nightmare, a rescue mission searches for a missing spaceship at the outer limits of our solar system, where it’s pulled into a wormhole of pure terror.

Premiering December 1 in World of Wong Kar Wai: The Grandmaster*​

Wong Kar Wai brings his swooningly romantic sensibility to the martial-arts genre with this sumptuously stylized epic about the legendary fighter Ip Man.

Premiering December 1 in Con Games: House of Games​

A therapist is drawn into the seductive world of con artists by a duplicitous cardsharp in David Mamet’s sly, merciless thriller.

Premiering December 1 in Afrofuturism: The Burial of Kojo​

A profusion of dazzling magical-realist images grace this bewitching Afrofuturist fable told through the eyes of a young Ghanaian girl.

ENCORES​

Back by Popular Demand​

Don’t miss these viewer favorites, returning to the Channel in December!

FEATURING: Bell, Book and Candle (1958), Little Murders (1971), The Panic in Needle Park (1971), The Last Detail (1973), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), Margaret (2011)

 

[Robert Crawford]

Shame on Criterion Channel for showing a censored version of The French Connection. Guessing this was Disney’s doing, the bums. https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/criterions-french-connection-censorship/#:~:text=Earlier today HE commenter Benjamin,version of this 1971 classic.

I wonder if William Friedkin knows about this. I'm sure he'd have something to say about it.

https://twitter.com/williamfriedkin?lang=en

@Peter Apruzzese @Neil S. Bulk To my surprise, during last night's "Ask Eddie" episode, Eddie Muller talked about that censored cut of "The French Connection". According to him, he was told by a good source that William Friedkin himself was the person responsible for that cut which he did prior to his death. Eddie doesn't name his source, but if true then that shouldn't be surprising considering Friedkin constant re-working of his films. Another example being "The Exorcist". Later today, I will add a YouTube link to Eddie Muller's "Ask Eddie" episode and will note the timestamp when he talks about it.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Just after the 27-minute mark are TCM's Eddie Muller's comments about Friedkin and The French Connection censored cut.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Thanks. Bizarre that he would make the cut so ugly, though. Almost like he wanted to call attention to it.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

FWIW, just received another $10 GC from being a regular TCC subscriber (apparently to go w/ their current 30%-off holiday sale... although the GC probably doesn't expire and likely can be saved/stacked later as usual).

Seems like they're trending toward offering $30-40/year(!) total in promo GCs (across 3x each year) for regular subscribers, if they keep this up...

Thanks much, Criterion! Definitely loving it!

_Man_

 

[dpippel]

Thanks much, Criterion! Definitely loving it!

Same here! And what makes it even better is that, so far, all of these coupons have been stackable. Criterion rocks.