Thursday, March 28, 2024

Criterion Collection: January 2022

It is a brand new year and a new generation of movies are going to be inducted into the Criterion Criterion Hall Of Fame. The opening month is a great batch to release with 4 of the 5 films being released from 1993 onward. Only one film is getting the rechristening while the rest are newcomers; including two recently made documentaries, a groundbreaking drama that began a movement, and the breakout film that made Jane Campion an international star director. They are amazing films, all of which are not really obscure, and a great way to start the year. Also, I turn 32 years old. Can anyone buy me one of these as a gift? Blu-Ray? Please?

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

The one re release, courtesy of 4K UHD, is the introduction to Beatlemania with the quad in their youth; boyish charm running away from flocking girls, and getting into some fun trouble in Richard Lester’s hype-making film. It was written, shot, and released in a short period, capturing the entire frenzy the world was in with the band’s legendary songs including the film’s title, “Can’t Buy Me Love” and, “I Should Have Known Better.” It would be the first of several movies by the band and Lester would also direct their follow-up, Help! 

The Piano (1993)

Jane Campion had already produced Sweetie and An Angel At My Table to critical acclaim, but it was her Palme d’Or, Oscar-winning romantic drama that cemented her reputation. Holly Hunter won her Oscar as a mute woman sent to colonial New Zealand in an arranged marriage, only to fall hard for a Maori native (Harvey Keitel). Anna Paquin, then just a little girl, played the mute’s daughter who translates her sign language and she would win a surprising Oscar, the second youngest in competitive history. Its erotic passion, amazing scenery, and Michael Nyman’s haunting piano score package the picture as one of the best films in the 1990s.

The Celebration (1998)

Writer/director Thomas Vinterberg and friend Lars von Trier established the Dogme 95 movement from their native Denmark where they followed certain rules in their movies to keep it traditional and not reliant on advanced technology. In other words, just a camcorder. Vinterberg would release the first film from this movement, a darkly comic tragedy about a family getting together for the patriarch’s sixtieth birthday when his son gives a speech – and drops a bombshell accusation which creates a stream of emotional bedlam amongst the wealthy. It would win the Jury Prize at Cannes, starting a string of hits that finally cashed in twenty years later with his Oscar-winning Another Round.

Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020)

Kirsten Johnson makes her documentary into a form of pre-grieving the death of her father – who is still alive and cooperative in this movie. He is a widower who retires after he is diagnosed with dementia. While he can still remember things, the father and daughter play fantasy about how he could possibly die (falling down the stairs, hit by a falling air conditioner, heart attack) and what it would look like at his funeral and when he reaches heaven. It’s very touching and creative, taking an original route to something every person has to deal with; the death of a loved one, especially if it’s a parent you are particularly close to. It was criminal that it was snubbed at the Oscars.

Time (2020)

That same year with Dick Johnson, a very real, heart wrenching documentary about love and injustice that the Academy did nominate. It follows a woman, Sibil Fox Richardson, who fights for the parole of her husband serving a lengthy sentence for armed robbery in prison. She herself took part in the crime and only served less than four years; raising six children on her own and became an activist as a prison abolitionist. Director Garrett Bradley puts together a story of how punishment is corrupt while devotion separated by plexiglass does not deter one woman’s fight for a fair and just system that can bring back her husband to freedom.

Follow me on Twitter: @bsusbielles (Cine-A-Man)

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