Lost in Criterion

Abdellatif Kechiche's adaptation of Jul Maroh's Blue is the Warmest Color (2013) offers us a lot to talk about, but Criterion's release offers no additional content to frame our conversation, which is extra weird considering the hundreds of thousands of words written on this film upon its release. We're just two cishet guys talking about a lesbian relationship, but maybe that's ok because it doesn't seem like there were any lesbians involved in the lesbian romance movie anyway. But beyond the male gaze-y sex scenes there is a deeply interesting story of a relationship, of a young working class woman coming into her own, and of a student becoming a teacher becoming a burned out teacher.

According to director Terence Davies, he wasn't interested in presenting what happens chronologically next in a film, but emotionally what's next. As such The Long Day Closes (1992) is a stream-of-consciousness coming-of-age exploration of memory, budding sexuality, music, film, and musical films. Oh and there's a like a two minute shot of light on a carpet and it may be the most perfect thing we've ever seen?

We fell in love with Aki Kaurismäki when we first watched Le Havre (2011, Spine 619), and are very excited to talk about the original film in which André Wilms plays Marcel Marx, another tale of immigrant rights but this one an ode to a Paris that no longer exists, a bohemian lifestyle that is increasingly impossible under capitalism. Oh and speaking of being an artist under capitalism, we also talk about Martin Scorsese's recent announcement that he's using AI for storyboarding, a thing he is obviously not actually doing so I hope the money is worth it.

Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) is a very fun movie and an overstuffed Criterion release. But perhaps a comedy of such epic proportions (and aspect ratios) needs an epically sized release.

Having finished the World Cinema boxset, we had resigned ourselves that we would have to go back to doing some acrobatics to read Marxism into the films for awhile again, but little did we expect that Michael Mann's Thief (1981) isn't just a stylish heist film but is also (and moreso) a rumination on the exploitation of labor and rent seeking. There's power in a union, but there's also apparently power in burning everything down just to show your boss who has control.