CRITERION LISTS

Criterion website

Lots of new releases from the Criterion Collection recently.

This summer for instance they rereleased their issue of the long out of print Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom. A cult flick, though more or less a slog to sit through, unless your eager to see some of Jack-Ass like humiliations that the young and attractive cast are put through by their psychotic Fascist hosts. But needless to say the film has it’s fans and will continue to be a curio for a new generation of gawkers.

Upcoming Criterion will be releasing some titles never before available on DVD here in the US, including a couple of from Melville, Le Doulos (1962) and Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966) and Samuel Fuller’s 1982 Kristy McNicol disasterpiece White Dog which is more less “Cujo meets Falling Down meets Little Darlings”.

They are also putting out their own issue of Costa-Gavras’ powerful Missing from 1982. The Universal Studios edition is still in print, but it’s good news that the leftist filmmaker is joining the Criterion family. A number of his other films have been unavailable here. I would love to see Criterion take on his brilliant State Of Siege (1973) which has only been available on a long out of print VHS edition.

The Criterion website lists film makers MY TOP TEN CRITERIONS

Here's hack autuor Allan Arkush not very interesting list.

Because everyone loves lists, I’ll add MY TOP CRITERIONS...

1) The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo 1966) 

2) Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir 1975) 

3) Diabolique (Clouzot 1954) The Wages of Fear (Clouzot 1953) 

4) The Naked Prey (Wilde 1966) 

5) The Fallen Idol (Reed 1948) / The Third Man (Reed 1949)

6) Jean-Pierre Melville Fun-Pack (Bob Le Flambeur (1956) / Le Samourai (1967) / Army of Shadows (1969)/ Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

7) The Ice Storm  (Lee1997)  

8) Harlan County USA (Kopple 1976)

9) Bicycle Thieves (De Sica 1948) 

10) Hoop Dreams  (James & Marx 1994)

11) Louis Malle Fun Pack  (Elevator to the Gallows (1957) / Murmur of the Heart (1971) /Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) 

12) Notorious (Hitchcock 1946) 

13) High and Low  (Kurosawa 1963)

14) This Is Spinal Tap (Reiner 1984)

15) The Long Good Friday (Mackenzie 1979)

And lemme give some love to:

The Bank Dick (Cline 1940), Sullivan's Travels (Sturges 1942), Ace in the Hole (Wilder 1951), La Strada (Fellini 1954), Knife in the Water (Polanski 1962), Claire’s Knee (Rohmer 1970), Straw Dogs (Peckinpah 1971),  A Woman Under the Influence  (Cassavetes 1974), The Tin Drum (Schlöndorff 1979), Burden of Dreams (Blank 1982), Brazil  (Gilliam 1985), Mona Lisa  (Jordan 1986), Sid & Nancy (Cox 1986), The Vanishing George (Sluizer 1988), Hard Boiled (Woo 1992), Man Bites Dog (Belvaux, Bonzel & Poelvoorde 1992), Dazed and Confused (Linklater 1993), Naked (Leigh 1993), Rushmore (Anderson 1998), Beastie Boys Video Anthology (Various 2000)

-sweeneyrules