The Criterion Collection

[Karmasux96]

Originally Posted by Samantha

Saw Paris, Texas when it was originally released in theatres. I was making my buy list yesterday & it is in my top 3. Problem is, I kept putting so many films in my cart, I was nearing $200. I'm going to make some cuts, but am interested in other's thoughts on Nashville, Devil's Backbone, Cronos, Rififi, Seconds, All that Jazz, Picnic at Hanging Rock. Money-wise, I'd like to keep it close to $100 if possible. Any thoughts, opinions, other suggested buys? Thanks.

If you have the means and are willing to wait, Picnic at Hanging Rock is showing on TCM on 7/17.

[shadedpain4]

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

I'm getting ready to make my order in the B&N sale and I'm having a hard time choosing between Phoenix or Clouds of Sils Maria at this time. Looking for recommendations from anyone who wants to chime in.
Normally it would be a no-brainer for me as I absolutely love Juliette Binoche. Unfortunately Kristen Stewart is my least favorite actress currently in the business (I know many others feel differently but that's my opinion ). Phoenix looks like exactly the type of movie I'd like but it would be a blind buy.
I'll probably end up buying both anyway.

I love both films. Phoenix is the safer blind buy, Clouds is the more rewatchable film, at least in my opinion.

[monorail91]

Originally Posted by llj

Finished Blue is the Warmest Color. [...] I did have to turn down the volume a bit though. I live in a condo and it was 1:00am in the morning, and the walls between units aren't exactly the best at containing sound in one area...

100% accurate.

Originally Posted by Zen_Amako

But will alcohol and Criterions be a good combination?

Absolutely! A couple years ago I had Vodka Blushes along with the Rosemary's Baby gang! https://www.instagram.com/p/uHYn-vjeAE/

[Ausjdm]

Originally Posted by Zen_Amako

I'm sorry to hear that. I would always stop by that store when I was in DC for the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Fortunately, they are opening a new B&N near me in Loudoun County. Apparently this store will be one of four in the country to serve alcohol. But will alcohol and Criterions be a good combination?

Sweet man that's a good deal I'll definitely check it out.
Good to see a fellow d/m/v area Criterion fan here!

[Rodney-2187]

Originally Posted by olivianewtonyawn

Personally, alcohol and Criterions are a great combination. One of my favorite things to do is craft a themed cocktail to go along with the film I am watching on a given night. Examples include the "Jules et Gin" and "The Big Chiller". I suppose if Blue Velvet ever makes it into the collection, I would have to figure out some way to work PBR into a shandy of some sort. Shudder.

I always have Scotch with Blade Runner.

[jw007]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

You should urge Criterion to release the other Kontroll film The rights are probably available now. It will be quite the hit here, with so many people enjoying noir/neo-noir films. It also has a great soundtrack, though with a harder industrial edge.

Great atmosphere in the old Budapest metro

[Show spoiler]

Kontroll Movie trailer - YouTube

Neo - A Familiar face (Control) - YouTube

Pro-B

Believe it or not, I ended up watching this film a few years ago based on a recommendation made in this forum's thread, possibly by you pro-bassoonist. I recall it was a really entertaining movie, a tad amateur in overall production/directing, but def. fun, albeit "dark", violent and morbid. If this title received the blu-ray treatment, I might purchase it. It probably would be a big hit with the Criterion crowd though.

Next week's October announcements will prob. include some horror films, if not at least one, so wouldn't it be a surprise if this was one of those announced?

[Polaroid]

Treating myself to The Neon Demon tonight I am excited but a bit worried it may be a bit style over substance... but will see!

Also got Solaris Monday, can NOT wait!

[cakefactory]

Originally Posted by Polaroid

Treating myself to The Neon Demon tonight I am excited but a bit worried it may be a bit style over substance... but will see!

The style IS a big part of the substance, you should approach it that way. The two aren't mutually exclusive. It certainly has a ton of subtext (particularly predatory relationships between women), but if you go in expecting it to be plot or dialogue driven you will be disappointed. It's just not aiming for that.

[Polaroid]

Originally Posted by cakefactory

The style IS a big part of the substance, you should approach it that way. The two aren't mutually exclusive. It certainly has a ton of subtext (particularly predatory relationships between women), but if you go in expecting it to be plot or dialogue driven you will be disappointed. It's just not aiming for that.

You always see people using style over substance as bad thing and I guess I got in the habit of thinking it, especially with the amount aid about this film - but yeah there is nothing wrong with a film being very stylised an beautiful, even if it does distract from the narrative - if done well it can work I guess. We'll see!

I fell in love with the films trailer and the theme of the film - other thing I'm worrying about are the performances, hopefully they wont be too forced :X

Tbh, I'm kinda worried what others in the screening will think, when people laugh at inappropriate scenes or start talking it ruins the mood and atmosphere and puts me off. I end up hating a film because of the experience - but after seeing the same film on my own I love it.

I wish people would be more respectful in a cinema.

[Rodney-2187]

Originally Posted by Polaroid

Treating myself to The Neon Demon tonight I am excited but a bit worried it may be a bit style over substance... but will see!

Also got Solaris Monday, can NOT wait!

Sometime you have so much style that it becomes substance.

[Polaroid]

Originally Posted by rodneyfaile

Sometime you have so much style that it becomes substance.

Ah true, I think I am worrying for nothing, I'm letting reviewers twist my thoughts nooooooooooooo.

[cakefactory]

Originally Posted by Polaroid

You always see people using style over substance as bad thing and I guess I got in the habit of thinking it, especially with the amount aid about this film - but yeah there is nothing wrong with a film being very stylised an beautiful, even if it does distract from the narrative - if done well it can work I guess. We'll see!

I fell in love with the films trailer and the theme of the film - other thing I'm worrying about are the performances, hopefully they wont be too forced :X

The performances are rather strangely stylized. Some of them, particularly Ellie Fanning, are intentionally FLAT, which is kind of the opposite of forced. Keanu Reeves and especially Jena Malone I think should impress anyone, though. I enjoyed Abby Lee quite a bit, but part of that is just so much good will from watching Mad Max Fury Road 8 times (and she's one of the most colorful characters there).

The other thing you might want to be aware of is that it does get very shocking at points, so if you're not used to films that contain explicit material you might want to have your guard up! I hesitate to recommend it to most of my friends. One of my female friends who doesn't watch that many movies utterly loved it, though she's definitely seen a couple Argento/Fulci movies in her day.

EDIT: Combined two comments:

Originally Posted by Polaroid

Ah true, I think I am worrying for nothing, I'm letting reviewers twist my thoughts nooooooooooooo.

There are a lot of terrible reviews of it out there, and a lot of them missed the point in a huge way. I would suggest reading some of the articles on Birth.Movies.Death after you see it - they have a few writers on staff who LOVED it. Here's a great comment I saw on that site today. Don't read it till after you see it, but it's a wonderful interpretation that made me finally understand a few of the scenes in the film that I initially thought had no point.

[Show spoiler]There's a really interesting quality to Jesse's purported innocence as it's played through the first half of the movie, and the question of exactly what happened to her parents hangs over the entire thing, tied in as it is with the story she tells of her mother telling her she was dangerous. Is this the source of funds for her move to Los Angeles? Did she kill her parents for their money? Does her ultimate fate then form part of a cycle, an endless consumption in pursuit of a form of stasis?

And then there's the way she leads Dean on, even once she's told him just how young she is, especially when played against her relationship with Ruby, one over which she has much less control even as she half-hints at her sexual past. That Dean hangs around still, trying to play out that part of Jesse's romantic champion when she sees him as barely even a stepping-stone falls right into the movie's inherent disdain for men: every male character is a jerk of some sort, reaching an apogee in Hank's outright dismissal of the young women seeking refuge in his motel as anything other than an outlet for his primal urges towards sex and violence. Yet there's something within Jesse, some power she's seemingly acquired in her transformation in that mirrored construct, which allows her to anticipate and thwart his brutish desires as easily as she cast Dean's sappy advances aside.

The most violence, both sexual and physical, Jesse experiences comes at the hands of the women she has sought to befriend, use and subsequently reject, specifically Ruby, who experiences the most intimate rejection: instead of slinking away as Dean does, she turns to revenge once her sexual appetites are slaked in that epic scene of mortuary masturbation, and through all of this she exercises powers conferred upon her through the markings on her body and a further epic act of menstruation, and it's at this point it becomes apparent that The Neon Demon is truly Ruby's movie, a story of a woman who preys on the women she enables in this world, but one who enjoys a commensurate level of abstraction from it that allows her to shrug off its disappointments and live in each moment with no fear of the future. As the mountain lion invading Jesse's motel room represents wild forces of chaos she has invited into her life, the stuffed and mounted leopard in Ruby's home shows that she has conquered and arrested chaos in a way the nigh-on indistinguishable blonde girls can't through their ceaseless pursuit of cosmetic stasis.

It seems a lot of people bounce straight off Refn's use of metaphors made literal in The Neon Demon, but the power of those metaphors remains and opens up all this thematic material that's so rewarding to explore, even if some of it seems self-contradictory.

-Driveby Commentor

[Rodney-2187]

Originally Posted by Polaroid

Tbh, I'm kinda worried what others in the screening will think, when people laugh at inappropriate scenes or start talking it ruins the mood and atmosphere and puts me off. I end up hating a film because of the experience - but after seeing the same film on my own I love it.

I wish people would be more respectful in a cinema.

Life is too short to spend it worrying about the opinions of people who aren't important to you.

[Polaroid]

Originally Posted by cakefactory

The performances are rather strangely stylized. Some of them, particularly Ellie Fanning, are intentionally FLAT, which is kind of the opposite of forced. Keanu Reeves and especially Jena Malone I think should impress anyone, though. I enjoyed Abby Lee quite a bit, but part of that is just so much good will from watching Mad Max Fury Road 8 times (and she's one of the most colorful characters there).

The other thing you might want to be aware of is that it does get very shocking at points, so if you're not used to films that contain explicit material you might want to have your guard up! I hesitate to recommend it to most of my friends. One of my female friends who doesn't watch that many movies utterly loved it, though she's definitely seen a couple Argento/Fulci movies in her day.

EDIT: Combined two comments:



There are a lot of terrible reviews of it out there, and a lot of them missed the point in a huge way. I would suggest reading some of the articles on Birth.Movies.Death after you see it - they have a few writers on staff who LOVED it. Here's a great comment I saw on that site today. Don't read it till after you see it, but it's a wonderful interpretation that made me finally understand a few of the scenes in the film that I initially thought had no point.

[Show spoiler]There's a really interesting quality to Jesse's purported innocence as it's played through the first half of the movie, and the question of exactly what happened to her parents hangs over the entire thing, tied in as it is with the story she tells of her mother telling her she was dangerous. Is this the source of funds for her move to Los Angeles? Did she kill her parents for their money? Does her ultimate fate then form part of a cycle, an endless consumption in pursuit of a form of stasis?

And then there's the way she leads Dean on, even once she's told him just how young she is, especially when played against her relationship with Ruby, one over which she has much less control even as she half-hints at her sexual past. That Dean hangs around still, trying to play out that part of Jesse's romantic champion when she sees him as barely even a stepping-stone falls right into the movie's inherent disdain for men: every male character is a jerk of some sort, reaching an apogee in Hank's outright dismissal of the young women seeking refuge in his motel as anything other than an outlet for his primal urges towards sex and violence. Yet there's something within Jesse, some power she's seemingly acquired in her transformation in that mirrored construct, which allows her to anticipate and thwart his brutish desires as easily as she cast Dean's sappy advances aside.

The most violence, both sexual and physical, Jesse experiences comes at the hands of the women she has sought to befriend, use and subsequently reject, specifically Ruby, who experiences the most intimate rejection: instead of slinking away as Dean does, she turns to revenge once her sexual appetites are slaked in that epic scene of mortuary masturbation, and through all of this she exercises powers conferred upon her through the markings on her body and a further epic act of menstruation, and it's at this point it becomes apparent that The Neon Demon is truly Ruby's movie, a story of a woman who preys on the women she enables in this world, but one who enjoys a commensurate level of abstraction from it that allows her to shrug off its disappointments and live in each moment with no fear of the future. As the mountain lion invading Jesse's motel room represents wild forces of chaos she has invited into her life, the stuffed and mounted leopard in Ruby's home shows that she has conquered and arrested chaos in a way the nigh-on indistinguishable blonde girls can't through their ceaseless pursuit of cosmetic stasis.

It seems a lot of people bounce straight off Refn's use of metaphors made literal in The Neon Demon, but the power of those metaphors remains and opens up all this thematic material that's so rewarding to explore, even if some of it seems self-contradictory.

-Driveby Commentor

Have you just met me :P?

My choice of films for a romantic night in would include Sweet Movie, Visitor Q and Salo.

(Still waiting for Ray to come over.)



Besides I've watched Bjork eat her self an her husband as sushi, I have seen it all (pun unintended) in cinema.

-

Thanks for the reading matter though I suppose the film is just getting wrong audience maybe...

[ShellOilJunior]

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

I'm getting ready to make my order in the B&N sale and I'm having a hard time choosing between Phoenix or Clouds of Sils Maria at this time. Looking for recommendations from anyone who wants to chime in.
Normally it would be a no-brainer for me as I absolutely love Juliette Binoche. Unfortunately Kristen Stewart is my least favorite actress currently in the business (I know many others feel differently but that's my opinion ). Phoenix looks like exactly the type of movie I'd like but it would be a blind buy.
I'll probably end up buying both anyway.

Clouds is terrific. I wouldn't worry about Stewart. She has tons of scenes with Binoche and keeps pace with her every step of the way. I thought she was quite good.

[Samantha]

Originally Posted by Karmasux96

If you have the means and are willing to wait, Picnic at Hanging Rock is showing on TCM on 7/17.

Thanks for the info. But is Picnic worth owning? I haven't seen it so wondering if it would be a film I would watch more than once. I'm finding that a lot of my collection ends up being one offs. I'm not just referring to the Criterion films I already own, but because like most of us on this site, we own larger than average collections of films, and even though I watch movies at home a lot, there's only so much time I can devote to watching films. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has a stack of films I have yet to watch.

[Polaroid]

Originally Posted by Samantha

Thanks for the info. But is Picnic worth owning? I haven't seen it so wondering if it would be a film I would watch more than once. I'm finding that a lot of my collection ends up being one offs. I'm not just referring to the Criterion films I already own, but because like most of us on this site, we own larger than average collections of films, and even though I watch movies at home a lot, there's only so much time I can devote to watching films. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has a stack of films I have yet to watch.

BUY IT.

I found the replay value incredible, you get so lost in the film and its mysteries.

[shadedpain4]

Originally Posted by rodneyfaile

Life is too short to spend it worrying about the opinions of people who aren't important to you.

Life is too short to consider any people unimportant.

[olivianewtonyawn]

I saw Neon Demon at an advanced screener, so the audience was maybe not your typical movie audience. That said, a few people could not contain themselves during certain parts. Best things that someone yelled out during the show:

"No! No! No!" and
"Why is this happening?!"

I would not recommend the film to just anyone looking to have a good time at the movies... but I found it to be really beautiful and the performances, in particular Jena Malone's, to be excellent.

To bring this back around to Criterion, I posit this question: True or False, a Winding Refn film making it into the collection is inevitable. And give your reasoning.

[shadedpain4]

Originally Posted by olivianewtonyawn

I saw Neon Demon at an advanced screener, so the audience was maybe not your typical movie audience. That said, a few people could not contain themselves during certain parts. Best things that someone yelled out during the show:

"No! No! No!" and
"Why is this happening?!"

I would not recommend the film to just anyone looking to have a good time at the movies... but I found it to be really beautiful and the performances, in particular Jena Malone's, to be excellent.

To bring this back around to Criterion, I posit this question: True or False, a Winding Refn film making it into the collection is inevitable. And give your reasoning.

That's awesome. I really liked the movie, and can imagine when those comments were made.

I don't know about inevitable, but it would be nice. Valhalla Rising still doesn't have a US blu right?