The Adam Glass and John Patrick Owatari-Dorgan attempt the sisyphean task of watching every movie in the ever-growing Criterion Collection. Want to support us? ...
We start into Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi Trilogy this week with what many consider the strongest of the three films, mostly because Ron Fricke's cinematography and editing is masterful in it. Built from scenes of natural beauty and alienating industry with a phenomenal sountrack by Philip Glass, Koyaanisqatsi is a deeply effecting visual poem.
Our dear friend Jonathan Hape (https://www.jonathan-hape.com/) joins us for the entire trilogy (probably).
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1:52:33
Spine 638: Following
Christopher Nolan's first feature, Following (1998) is a neo-noir with an achronological story structure. The man loves a neo-noir with an achronological story structure. Nolan describes the film as the pinnacle of what he could achieve in a low budget and just working with his friends. which is damning if true because it's just not very interesting.
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1:46:43
Spine 637: Purple Noon
René Clément's 1960 adaptation of the 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, Purple Noon is seems to find the director and screenwriter Paul Gégauff trying to drain the homoeroticism out of the source material. Fortunately, cinematographer Henri Decaë and star Alain Delon (in his breakout role) knew how to add it back in through both Delon's fantastic facial acting and some of the most erotic shots of a shirtless man ever to be put to film.
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1:48:27
Spine 636: Heaven's Gate
After Micheal Cimino's The Deer Hunter won five Oscars, United Artists gave him carte blanche for his next film and he really went to town. As in he built and rebuilt at least one whole town, on stilts in a National Park so as not to damage the landscape. If only he'd waited 45 years he could have just bought Glacier National Park outright and really become his film's villains. Anyway, the film was hemorrhaging money is what I'm saying, and is all the better for it.
A slight fictionalization of the historical Johnson County War, Heaven's Gate (1980) is a beautifully shot epic western where Cimino sought to just tell the stories of real people and forgot that talking about real people in their historical context is what historical materialism is. Cimino's seemingly accidental Marxism was not lost on star Kris Kristofferson, and Cimino even changed some details to ratchet up the class conflict that was, historically, already at a fever pitch.
And, hey, it's not often that the historical villains we see in our Criterion films are still around and even have a website that glosses over their government-approved extrajudicial mass murders. "Guardians of Wyoming's Cow Country since 1872" and still shaping society 150 years later, because that's what happens when you don't stop greedy men from seizing absolute power.
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1:56:00
Spine 635: Weekend (1967)
Jean-Luc Godard's goodbye to cinema, at least for a time, Weekend (1967) is not just a condemnation of bourgeois values, but a stunning attack on automobile culture. Sure the messaging is scattershot at best, but there's little in the film that isn't memorable. And it's gotta be hands down the film with the largest salvaged car budget.
The Adam Glass and John Patrick Owatari-Dorgan attempt the sisyphean task of watching every movie in the ever-growing Criterion Collection. Want to support us? We’ll love you for it: www.Patreon.com/LostInCriterion
Ireland