For the final month of 2024, Criterion has a stacked lineup of two re-releases and four new additions to the closet. While Fellini and Wim Wenders get a second life with a film of theirs, the Coen brothers add a new film to the collection – arguably the best they have made to date. Two 2023 releases, one on the dangers of A.I. and the other a story of protecting the environment, also enter, while a new Hong Kong action classic is released for a new audience to discover. For the last time this year, these are the releases this December.
8 ½ (1963)
The first re-release is Federico Fellini’s masterpiece on a creative block that resonates with anyone involved in making something. Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) is a film director whose next film is collapsing around him as much as his personal life. His wife, his mistress, his muse, his mother – all are coming onto Guido while his planned sci-fi films have many problems he can’t solve. Among the greatest films about the filmmaking process, it has been sixty-one years since and remains as relevant as Fellini orders his personal circus to make the biggest spectacle anyone has ever seen.
Paris, Texas (1984)
The second re-release is Wim Wenders’ road trip through the American West which won him the Palme d’Or. Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) is a drifter who is picked up by his brother (Dean Stockwell), currently taking care of Travis’ son, and now looks to find his estranged wife (Nastassja Kinski). It is a gorgeous look at a country that was desolate physically and emotionally as Travis himself walked through the desert at the start of the film with Ry Cooder’s haunting slide guitar score.
Eastern Condors (1987)
In a story similar to The Dirty Dozen, a group of prisoners are sent into Vietnam on a secret mission to blow up an abandoned bunker full of weapons to prevent them being found by the Viet Cong. It becomes a scramble to fight through the military to complete the mission at any cost, no matter how many men fall. Sammo Hung directs and stars as the leader of the group with an eccentric cast with various tricks of their sleeves, presenting an explosive battle throughout the whole movie that matches other American action films of the era.
No Country For Old Men (2007)
One of the most defining films of the 2000s, the Coen Brothers adapted Cormac McCarthy’s novel and won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director. After stumbling upon a drug deal gone bad and $2 million in a satchel, a Vietnam vet (Josh Brolin) finds himself being chased by a deranged, psychopathic bounty hunter (Javier Bardem, one of the most terrifying characters in film history), while an aging sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) is trailing behind them trying to make sense of the shocking violence. It’s a Western noir with tinges of dark comedy – the perfect Coen brothers mix – and delivers on every level, to which it is very rare a film could do nothing wrong in its story.
The Beast (2023)
In the future when artificial intelligence has controlled the world, a woman (Lea Seydoux) starts to feel emotions that require her memory to be erased, but she refuses to give in. Her past lives come back to haunt her with different encounters with another man (George Mackay) and she wants to keep all of her feelings rather than be purified. Director Bertrand Bonello amazingly constructs this sci-fi as a warning to what A.I. can take away from us and how essential such emotions are to remember.
Evil Does Not Exist (2023)
Following up his Oscar-winning Drive My Car, director Ryusuke Hamaguchi tells about a man who learns his village being threatened by a real estate project and fears the damage it will do to their environment. The man then finds himself in the middle between his home and the disillusionment of being there and being hired as a caregiver for the company looking to take over the whole area for their profits. It is a battle line that Hamaguchi approaches with the same tone as Drive My Car, with a measured compassion that does not overdo itself.
