Collected Criterion Reviews: September 2013
Closely Watched Trains (1966) d. Jiří Menzel (9/1/13)
Movie Review
Closely Watched Trains (1966)
d. Jiří Menzel
Criterion Collection #131
Closely Watched Trains reminded me of a Truffaut film crossed with an early/mid period Woody Allen film. In other words it is delightful. Closely Watched Trains takes place in occupied Czech Republic during World War II. Milos Hrma is a sexually frustrated assistant station agent at the local train station. He is buddies with the wily dispatcher Hubicka, and they are both under the thumb of crotchedy Station Master Lanska.
Milos begins a relationship with the fetching young Conductor(ess?) Masa, but when he suffers an embarrassing set back in the boudoir he tries to take his own life. I know, it sounds heavy, but everything is done with a light touch and there is plenty of humor.
Closely Watched Trains is a testament to the existence of a Czech sense humor, which puts them one up on the Germans. Does anyone have a recommendation for a German language comedy? Anyone? No?
Persona (1966) d. Ingmar Bergman (9/3/13)
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| Bibi Andersson in Persona (1966) d. Ingmar Bergman |
Movie Review
Persona (1966)
d. Ingmar Bergman
Criterion Collection #701
Uploaded to Hulu Plus Criterion Collection Channel on August 31st, 2013.
Criterion Collection release March 25th, 2014
ANNOUNCED AS CRITERION COLLECTION TITLE 12/16/13
So I guess Criterion Collection is sitting on the rights to all these classic movies, because this is yet another film that was just uploaded into the Criterion Collection (onto?) Channel on Hulu Plus last week, but is not a part of the Criterion Collection or a special Eclipse DVD collection. Criterion's penchant for uploading films that are total classics but not part of the Collection itself is really rattling my original mission statement to watch "all the films in the Criterion Collection." Persona is not in the Criterion Collection but I would feel foolish not writing about it, because Persona is maybe Bergman's best film... certainly the director's own favorite, and a movie that I found deeply compelling.
The Ellis History of Film text book has this to say about Bergman, "As a film artist Begman tends to appeal most directly and strongly to those who aren't interested primarily in film art but regard film from the vantage point of the other arts, especially literature and drama."
The plot of Persona is sparse: Liv Ullmann is a famous Actress who is struck dumb during a performance, and refuses to speak thereafter. Bibi Andersson is the nurse assigned to take care of her at the beach house of Ullmann's treating physician. While at the beach house, Andersson takes Ullmann into her confidence, only to feel betrayed when she reads a letter written by Ullmann to her Doctor describing Andersson as a specimen worthy of study. Afterwards, the idyllic retreat turns into a twisted psychological torture session as Andersson seeks revenge. Also she bangs Ullmann's husband.
The most common interpretation of Persona is that it is a kind of Modernist horror film where the monster is the protagonist. That is how I took Persona- both the first time I saw it and then this time. In his book Images, Bergman wrote that Persona and Cries and Whispers were his two favorite works. I also think they are the two best of his movies. Really haunting and sticky resonating imagery.
The Vanishing (1988) d. George Sluizer (9/4/13)
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| Raymond Lemorne as played by Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu Movie Review The Vanishing (1988) d. George Sluizer Spine #133 There is nothing as sweet as a one hit wonder. To think that an Artist could labor lifetime in their chosen field or fields and have their memory reduced to a single work in the collective consciousness of posterity. And yet, most Artists never even have that one "hit," so cruel is the marketplace for art products and so short is the memory of critics and scholars. The Vanishing is the one hit for director George Sluzier. He had an entire career, with films made in Europe and America, but this is his legacy. The Vanishing is maybe not the scariest movie in the world, but it is among the creepiest. The description typically is "Obsessed man searches for wife who disappears from French rest stop." But the film itself depicts the viewpoint of the distraught husbands AND the kidnapper. Thus, it is quite clear almost from the jump who the kidnapper is. Instead, the focus of the film turns towards the inevitable meet up between kidnapper and husband. The kidnapper is memorably played as a straight bourgeois sociopath by Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu- his sly mannerisms and quiet self confidence inspired a chill in me as I recalled clients who had shared similar characteristics. It's hard to understand how I could have missed this film before now. So glad I got to see it, and you should to. DO NOT watch the American remake because it fucking sucks- they change the ending from sad to happy which is just monstrous. Boy (1969) d. Nagisa Oshima (9/6/13) Movie Review Boy (1969) d. Nagisa Oshima Streaming on Hulu Plus in Criterion Collection section, not Criterion Collection or Eclipse title. (Not Available on Amazon) Boy directed by Japanese maverick Nagisa Oshima, went up on Hulu Plus streaming last week in the Criterion Collection section. It's not actually a Criterion Collection release, nor is it part of an Eclipse DVD set. But it is a classic Japanese film by the most interesting Japanese director I've seen beside Seijun Suzuki. It's akin to a 60s Gus Van Sant film, focusing on a nuclear family of con artists who work there way from city to city pulling fake car accident scams. The Ellis History of Film has high praise for Oshima which I would echo, "Using narrative structures and techniques reminiscent of the French Jean-Luc Godard, Oshima is yet profoundly Japanese in his sensibility." Boy was the most watchable Japanese film I've yet seen- it was like seeing a parallel universe of indie film making. Oshima uses all the Godardian tricks, but he tells a compelling, tragic story rooted in human emotion and ideas about family. It was previously unavailable on streaming or DVD I believe (based on its absence on Amazon.com) so this is a big score for Criterion Collection on Hulu Plus, and hopefully it signifies a proper Criterion Collection release. Oshima has some legitimate Criterion Collection/Hulu Plus hits. In the Realm of the Senses is the number one popular streaming title within the collection (because it has sex in it?) and Double Suicide has a really low Spine number. And there are six others- but Boy is new. The Ruling Class (1972) d. Peter Medak (9/6/13) Movie Review The Ruling Class (1972) d. Peter Medak Criterion Collection #132 The Ruling Class is so strange that it is hard to even describe properly. It's clearly "from the 70s," it's British... Peter O'Toole plays the main character, there are elements of both musicals and horror films but the objective of The Ruling Class is clearly satirizing the landed aristocracy of England circa the late 1960s early 1970s. So.... if you go in for 70s era class conscious satire with elements of music and horror The Ruling Class will almost certainly appeal to you. On the other hand, if you are a normal American who doesn't give a f*** about the UK let alone the UK in the 1970s, The Ruling Class will leave you scratching your head. The strange mix of elements reminds me of little else besides the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The accompanying Criterion Collection write up is correct in calling Peter O'Toole's performance a :"tour de force." I gather from Ian Christie's article on The Ruling Class found on the Criterion Collection website that there is a whole bunch of stuff going on inside of The Ruling Class that I just don't have the background to appreciate. My knowledge of 70s British culture is limited to the "rise of punk," "Monty Python," and sociologists of the Birmingham school and their pioneering studies of youth sub-cultures. (1) The Christie article references the "theatricality" of The Ruling Class and I can see that. You could also call it "campy." Either way it is a particular stylistic chracteristic of The Ruling Class that is kind of make or break in terms of a subjective appreciation of the film. In other words, you either love it or hate it. NOTES (1) I don't think I've ever referenced the Birmingham School but when I was in college I did a thesis on punk/straight edge culture and I think a lot of that stuff really seeped into my brain: Birmingham School refers to the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), which operated as a research center at the University of Birmingham (UK) between 1964 and 1988. The Birmingham School represents a decisive moment in the creation of the intellectual and institutional project of cultural studies, as well as a “cultural turn” in sociology. The substantive focus of the Birmingham School was popular culture as explored through the concepts of ideology and hegemony. Indeed, the work of CCCS contributed to the legitimization of popular culture as a field of academic inquiry. Among the substantive topics of research undertaken by CCCS were the mass media, youth subcultures, education, gender, race, and the authoritarian state. The media were of special significance insofar as the texts of popular culture in the contemporary world are forged within their framework. CCCS was founded in 1964 as a postgraduate center by Richard Hoggart and developed further under the leadership of Stuart Hall. It is during the period of Hall's directorship (1968–79) that one can first speak of the formation of an identifiable and distinct domain called cultural studies. A Man Escaped (1956) d. Robert Bresson (9/7/13) Movie Review A Man Escaped (1956) d. Robert Bresson Criterion Collection #650 Criterion Collection edition released March 26th, 2013 Man it has been a boundary blurring few days in terms of this Criterion Collection project, what with the Criterion Collection uploading all these non-Collection titles to the Hulu Plus channel. I even found one film, the recently released Hitler comedy To Be Or Not To Be, that is uploaded to Hulu Plus but not listed as such on the website, a kind of hidden new release. The labyrinth gets deeper and deeper. I don't want to even talk about the fact that they seem to have uploaded all 26 "Zatochi the Blind Swordsman" films at once. I get anxious just thinking about the prospect of watching those Zatochi films. I also think it is the proper time to abandon the conceit that I'm only watching three films a week. Who am I kidding with that? Summer is over anyways, so it's not like I have some need to pretend that I'm out on vacation enjoying myself somewhere, as was the case for the last eight August's in a row. Let's get real. Robert Bresson is interesting because he is the French filmmaker that Truffaut first cited in support of his theory of Auteur cinema. A Man Escaped (1956) was based on a real incident involving the imprisonment of a member of the resistance and his escape from a Gestapo prison in the France of 1943. the film is only indirectly about the war and occupation, however; directly, as with so many of Bresson's films, it is about a human being in isolation, physical as well as spiritual in this case. The inner experience of the protagonist is refined to a pure, concentrated, intense expression. (1) A Man Escaped is actually the first of the six Bresson films within the Criterion Collection. I enjoyed the solid rigor of the prison escape plot. Throughout the entire film you do not see a single thing that the characters do not, giving A Man Escaped a near theatrical feel. This is good for developing narrative tension, but bad in terms of mise en scene and just general watchability. Notes (1) This paragraph is a paraphrase/citation from Ellis History of Film, page 297. High and Low (1963) d. Akira Kurosawa (9/9/13)
Movie Review High and Low (1963) d. Akira Kurosawa Criterion Collection #24 High and Low is Kurosawa's take on the police procedural, with source material from Ed McBain's King's Ransom novel from his "19th Precinct" series. You can tell the difference between a police procedural and a film noir often because the police procedural deals with actual police doing actual police work to solve an actual crime, and film noir typically features private detectives sorta kinda trying to figure out a situation where a crime may or not have actually been committed OR accused of committing a crime themselves. But of course, like everything Kurosawa did from the early 1950s to mid 1960s it was a fucking classic of the genre. It's the first non-Samurai Kurosawa picture I've seen. Based on his imdb filmography it looks like he did a bunch of non Samurai titles before he really started churning out the hits. There are many features that make High and Low a compulsively watchable title: 1. Directed by Akira Kurosawa 2. Starring Toshiro Mifune as wealthy Industrialist and women's shoe manufacturer(!) Kingo Gordo (that's Mr. Gordo to you, friend.) 3. Set in contemporary Yokohama- exotic locale for a Japanese film. 4. Adorably police work by 50s Japanese Cops, who apparently have so little to do that they can muster the entire police force to work on a single kidnapping case. As a bonus, the Hulu Plus version includes an actual extra from the DVD- an interview with Actor Tsutomu Yamazaki (plays the kidnapper/villain). I know I've said this before, but I'm very hesitant to take the current heaven-sent situation with Crtierion Collection/Hulu Plus for granted. As I write this Hulu is taking offers on being SOLD. This New York Times article from last month clearly suggests that the current way of Hulu is at risk, and Criterion Collection already left one streaming provider (Netflix) because it was unhappy with the direction of the service. My feeling is that the Criterion Collection could disappear from Hulu overnight, essentially, if certain events occur, like if Hulu is sold to a major media conglomerate, for example. So while these review may seem a trifle obsessive, they are completed with the thought that nothing lasts forever. Subtracting the films out of the first 25 Criterion Collection titles that I've seen before beginning this project, there are only two unseen titles left- A Night To Remember- which I'm going to have to pay for, and Salo/120 Days of Sodom, which I'm going to have to purchase or borrow. I'm not recommending it, but if you were going to sample one twenty minute portion of High and Low I would check out the last 20 minutes- particularly the scenes set in the 60s heroin underworld of Yokohama- priceless/amazing stuff. To Be or Not to Be (1942) d. Ernest Lubitsch (9/9/13)
Movie Review To Be Or Not To Be (1942) d. Ernest Lubitsch Criterion Collection #670 Criterion Collection edition released on August 27th, 2013 Here is another strange title- not listed as being available on Hulu Plus on the Criterion Collection product page, but none the less available for viewing the same day (if not before?) the new release. To Be Or Not To Be is not listed in the recently added tab when you navigate the Criterion Collection on Hulu Plus, so I don't know if it has been up for a long time or if it just hasn't been featured as a recent addition yet. It's actually a been a couple days since they've uploaded a new title, perhaps because this marks of the end of their 101 Days of Summer promotion where they uploaded a new title every day for 101 days. To Boe Or Not To Be is what you call a "Hitler comedy" a group of perhaps four or five films (maybe six if you count Downfall as a comedy;) that deal with Hitler as a comic figure. You've got the Great Dictator, of course. The Producers. And, To Be Or Not To Be, which falls under the category of "too soon." Directed by the long tenured German filmmaker Ernest Lubitsch, To Be Or Not To Be starred Jack Benny and Carole Lombard as actors who are also members of the Polish resistance. They get involved in a "screw ball comedy" style plot that features much innuendo, costume changes and displays of verbal wit by Jack Benny. Like many Criterion Collection titles, To Be Or Not To Be is both better and worse then it sounds. To Be Or Not To Be is better then it sounds because the direction and performances are first rate. To Be or Not to Be is worse then it sounds because Hitler does not really go well with the screwball comedy genre- he's more of a subject for satire (see The Great Dictator.) Rashomon (1950) d. Akira Kurosawa (9/11/22) Movie Review Rashomon (1950) d. Akira Kurosawa Criterion Collection #138 With 26 films included, Akira Kurosawa, by himself, makes up close to 5% of the entire Criterion Collection (3.8 percent.) So what I want to know is that when the Criterion Collection writes that Kurosawa is "arguably the most celebrated Japanese film maker of all time." Who are the competitors that they are thinking about? Suzuki? Ozu? Inagaki? I would say that any "argument" on the subject of "Who is the most celebrated Japanese film maker of all time?" would last about as long as it would take all the participants to say "Kurosawa!" at the exact same time. Unfortunately I'm not a huge fan so watching all these Kurosawa movies is a bit of an endurance test. At least Rashomon clocks in at less then two hours. Criterion Collection saw fit to upload the Robert Altman interview that serves as the introduction on the DVD, and I found his opinion most useful. Altman notes that in Rashomon, Kurosawa was the first director to shoot the sun/sky- a technique Altman himself immediately utilized in his own work after seeing Rashomon for the first time. Rashomon is most well known for the unusual narrative technique: telling the same story from the perspective of four different witnesses. The only thing they agree on is the central fact of the film: the death of "the man" Masayuki Mori after the bandit (Toshiro Mifune in not one of his greatest performances) rapes his wife Machiko Kyo. Each witness, including the dead man via a medium, tells a different version of the same events. This narrative form was impressive in 1950, and it continues to impress today. After watching Rashomon I went to a movie theater and watched the new Wolverine film, and it was like going from a museum where you see a master piece to a Thomas Keller, painter of light, kiosk at the mall. They are both paintings, but one is art and the other mere commerce. I mention Wolverine because that film is set entirely in Japan, so one might at least expect some referencing to the Japanese film tradition. If they did- I didn't catch it- Wolverine might as well have been set in the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco for all the location mattered. The Last Wave (1977) d. Peter Weir (9/13/13) Movie Review The Last Wave (1977) d. Peter Weir Criterion Collection #142 Boasting both a killer 80s synth sound track and an engaging plot concerning the efforts by an Australian lawyer (Richard Chamberlin) to defend a group of urban Aborigines accused of manslaughtering one of their own, The Last Wave shouldn't require much a pitch to watch in that it is a) not a silent film b) not a black and white film c) is in English and d) has a conventional criminal trial plot crossed with a supernatural/aboriginal hook to keep things interesting. This is the second Australian Criterion Collection title I've encountered- the other is Walkabout- and I've previously seen though not written about Picnic At Hanging Rock- which is also by Peter Weir, the director of the Last Wave. Walkabout is directed by Nicholas Roeg. Picnic at Hanging Rock was released in 1975 and catapulted Weir to international prominence, and so The Last Wave has the feel of a film that was meant to reach the widest possible audience for a film with Australian themes. The sound track is particularly notable for the synth heavy vibe. The Last Wave is no chore to watch and it makes an enjoyable evening view. Grand Illusion (1937) d. Jean Renoir (9/14/13)
Movie Review Grand Illusion (1937) d. Jean Renoir Criterion Collection #1 In Los Angeles for the weekend, as I often am these days, plotting my escape from the disaster of my San Diego based social life, I have access to my friends Criterion DVD collection, which includes Criterion Collection #1, Jean Renoir's masterpiece Grand Illusion. I've seen Grand Illusion at least twice, but never had access to the Criterion Collection edition, so I wanted to give it a spin. Because I've seen Grand Illusion multiple times, I had no compunction about watching it with the audio commentary track turned on. Here, the excellent commentary is provided by film historian Peter Cowie. Perhaps it is because the film itself is so interesting, but I found Cowie's commentary particularly illuminating, especially his comments about famous Director/Actor/Enfant Terrible Erich von Stroheim, who plays the indelible Captain von Rauffenstein. It is impossible to forget Stroheim's performance, and his performance is even more remarkable that it happened almost two decades after he was cast out of Hollywood for turning in seven and a half hour epic films (the original cut of Greed was seven hours plus) in complete opposition to what was becoming the Hollywood recipe for a feature film. Grand Illusion is a prison escape movie, set during World War I, but released on the eve of World War II. Renoir's vision has a warmth that put him out of favor in the era of the Nouvelle Vague/New Wave, but his mastery of the art form, which Cowie points out in intimate detail, eliminates any kind of serious crticism about the "softness" of Grand Illusion. Renoir was a master craftsman but his artistic vision sought to unify, not divide. It was this trait which put him out of favor with the literati in the 60s and 70s, but when Criterion Collection picks your movie as their number one title, it means you are all the way back and watching Grand Illusion for the first or tenth time it is easy to see why he is regarded as a master by The Ballad of Narayama (1952) d. Keisuke Kinoshita (9/14/13)
Movie Review The Ballad of Narayama (1958) d. Keisuke Kinoshita Criterion Collection #645 Fun little picture about the ancient Japanese practice of abandoning one's elderly parents to die in the wilderness, The Ballad of Narayama is known equally for its distinctive visual presentation, influenced directly by the conventions of Japanese theater, and its utterly depressing subject matter. When you combine the subject matter with the pan-Japanese cinema tradition of holding shots for minutes at a time, you get a movie that feels much, much, much longer then the 90 minute run time would leave you to believe. The Ballad of Narayama is shot entirely on sound stages, with a breathtaking use of lighting and color to create a visual atmosphere that would feel contemporary today. On the other hand, nothing could be LESS contemporary then the subject matter. I don't shy away from dark films, but watching a 90 minute picture about a family making a conscious decision to abandon their elderly mother to be eaten by birds takes you to a really, really, really dark place, and I'm not sure why anyone would really want to watch this movie. Salò or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975) d. Pier Paolo Pasolini (9/15/13) Salò or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975) d. Pier Paolo Pasolini Criterion Collection #17 Movies don't get edgier then this. Pier Paolo Pasolini's version of Marquis de Sade 120 Days of Sodom is a tough watch, though if you are familiar with the book you can imagine myriad ways it could have been worse. The "plot" of 120 Days of Sodom is minimal in the book: A group of four decadent/depraved Libertines kidnaps a host of young boys and girls and wall themselves up with four elderly courtesans, some large dicked enforcers, and their own daughters who they marry as "wives."
During the day the courtesans tell erotic stories from their lives, and the libertines inflict all manner of humiliation and degradation on their captives, giving birth in the book to what we today call "Sado Masochism," or the infliction of physical and mental anguish in the service of sexual gratification. As the book makes perfectly clear, time and time again, 120 Days of Sodom is a critique of the totality of the enlightenment/rational world view, and it firmly makes the case that enlightenment itself is a sham and has terrible, anarchic implications. Over three centuries later, De Sade couldn't have been more right, and the evidence of the validity of his critique is supported by a hundred years of Continental philosophers (Foucault, Nietzsche, Adorno, etc.) Pasolini similarly made the movie version as a protest against the consumer-fascist culture that he hated and it is his disgust for consumerist society that permeates Salo. Pasolini set his version in 1944, in the Northern Italian Fascist puppet state centered on the city of Salo. During the film you can hear the Allied bombers putting a slow but decisive end to their world, but that is the only intrusion of the outside world into the narrative. Although the subject matter is "pornographic" Pasolini uses theatrically inspired distancing techniques to drain any kind of eroticism from the film. As Catherine Breilliat argues in one of the three accompanying documentaries, Salo is actually an anti-pornographic film in that it employs the opposite visual technique of most pornography: Rather then excluding context to focus on sex organs and sexual pleasure, Pasolini always shoots sexually themed material with long shots and a steady camera, forcing the context onto the viewer. Salo is one of several Italian films of the 70s- another is The Night Porter, that sought to re-contextualize the asethetics and themes of Nazism/Fascism. I believe the point of this critique was to emphasis that Naszism/Fascism was not some kind of aberrant behavior but rather a culmination of intellectual themes that were developed in the so-called Enlightenment, and that the mid 20th century success of Fascism/Nazi ideology points to the failure of that Enlightenment, and is evidence in support of the claim that modernity is a failed project. The Cranes Are Flying (1957) d. Mikhail Kalatozov (9/16/13) Movie Review The Cranes Are Flying (1957) d. Mikhail Kalatozov Criterion Collection #146 Is there some alternate universe where a substantial number of people give a fuck about Russian film from the 1950s? I've never met a single person who could kick knowledge about Russian cinema outside of Eisenstein, and that knowledge is typically limited to his silent work. I don't ever remember seeing a vintage Russian film screening at repertory theater in any of the cities I've lived in. The Cranes Are Flying is the first classic of the post-Stalinist era, when the Soviet Union briefly relaxed for just a god damn second and let Artists experiment with themes that would have been samzidat under the prior regime. The Cranes Are Flying was instantly recognized as having classic status and being the start of a new era in Soviet film. It won the Palme d'Or at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, for one. It's also very watchable- clocking in at just over an hour and a half, with a war time setting that gives you some action with the melodramatic plot concerning separated lovers Veronika and Boris. Spoiler alert: It ends tragically. The most stand out qualitiy of The Cranes Are Flying is the cinematography by Sergei Urusevsky. Urusevsky creates drama and rhythm by his progressive use of hand held cameras- this in the early 1950s that he's doing this. There are several moments of genuine emotional impact that are profoundly heightened by the editing. Second to the cinematography is the performance of Tatyana Samojlova as Veronika. Her unconventional (by Hollywood standards) beauty really draws the eye of the viewer. The plot is conventional melodrama: couple separated by war; will they find their way back together? I'm not spoiling anything by saying they do not- you find less then halfway through the film that he is dead and after that it's just basically an exercise in torturing his unfaithful girlfriend- Veronika- who has hooked up with Boris' cousin, the rascally Mark. The Cranes Are Flying is another legit Criterion Collection win- A movie you've probably never heard of before, which holds the eye and isn't overlong. Chronicle of a Summer (1961) d. Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin (9/16/13)
Movie Review Chronicle of a Summer (1961) d. Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin Criterion Collection #648 OK so this is a "cinema verite" film that features interviews with a variety of people in Paris and I think St. Tropez as well. The handheld camera was introduced to the market while this film was being made, and the use of hand held cameras in Chronicle of a Summer would prove to be a turning point in the development of the film documentary. I wasn't expecting Chronicle of a Summer to be particularly watchable, but I was pleasantly surprised at how interesting the slice-of-life conversations were. In particular there are conversations about race and the holocaust held between a young, Jewish French concentration survivor, two African-French immigrants and some young French men and women that I found particularly compelling. More then just a museum piece, Chronicle of a Summer is a must for anyone interested in the documentary as a separate art form from the narrative film, for people interested in the French new wave and a "pass" for everyone else. For anyone interested, the essay featured on the Criterion Collection product page is a must: One of the more thorough and in depth accompanying essays I've read and that is really saying something because all the essays on the Criterion Collection site are superb. House (1977) d. Nobuhiko Obayashi (9/19/13)
House (1977) d. Nobuhiko Obayashi Criterion Collection #539
I've been reflecting that watching Criterion Collection titles is a good way to seek inspiration. There is a hugely liberating, soul-freeing feeling that stems from having the entire history of world cinema at your finger tips for 7.99 a month. I can't help but wonder about the viewer statistics per movie- what I wouldn't give to know how many watchers a day the most popular title garners.
House is, as the Criterion Collection itself says, a landmark in the Cinema du WTF?, a totally left-field blend of Japanese B Movie budget, school girls in distress, Japanese folk horror, 70s Italian Horror and American grindhouse, with psychedelic visual effects, a demonic cat and cannibalism all thrown into the mix. And if that description doesn't make you immediately want to watch House I will conclude this write-up with a serious of still photographs from the film. House is a Criterion Collection MUST-watch. 100% Watch-ability score.
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