It is now May and getting close to the summertime, so the heat is being turned up with the new batch from Criterion. It’s five films this time around; two getting the 4K UHD treatment, and three new additions. One film is the debut of a New Hollywood renegade, another film is one of many classics from Ridley Scott, and the last is a contemporary film that was not seen much at all by a well-noted director. The two re-releases are a Japanese cool pop smash from the 1960s and a poetic story above Berlin during the 1980s.
Branded To Kill (1967)
The first of two re-releases, this classic piece from the Japanese New Wave by iconoclast Seijun Suzuki was so hated by the studio that he was fired. It wasn’t the first time he ran afoul of making visual, violent, and comic work that didn’t go with tradition, but was popular with the burgeoning youth of the period. Joe Shishido plays a hitman who screws up the job so badly that his bosses put out the hit on him and he must escape. The absurdism of his composites cost Suzuki a decade from filmmaking, but fans of his including Park Chan-wook, John Woo, and Quentin Tarantino inspired them to make movies as wild as they can be.
Targets (1968)
The debut film from Peter Bogdonavich was a shockwave to the system that helped take down Old Hollywood with a montage of mindless carnage through two prisms. One is a retiring horror actor (Boris Karloff) and the other is a disillusioned young man (Tim O’Kelly) who decides to go on a shooting rampage. In the same year as the killings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, it was a timely release that commented on random gun violence (sounds familiar) while acting as a low-budget thriller. It was produced by Roger Corman and Bogdonavich received some help from Samuel Fuller on the script, who asked to not be credited.
Wings Of Desire (1987)
The second re-release is Wim Wenders’ magical realist tale over Berlin about an angel (Bruno Ganz) who falls for a woman and is willing to become mortal to be with her. From above the city, he and other angels can hear everything from the people below and the temptations are too great to resist that even Peter Falk, playing a fictional version of himself, tells the angel what it means to be human. Made before the reunification of Berlin and Germany, Wenders’ portrait of a city that remains beautiful but forcefully separated is a spiritual journey full of wonder in black & white and color.
Thelma & Louise (1991)
A high mark in feminist cinema, Ridley Scott’s road trip adventure with two friends (Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon) who become sudden fugitives is a drive of rebellion against everyone who wouldn’t see them as equals. Changing the gender roles of women in the driver’s seat and getting revenge on male chauvinism, the movie strayed from the narrative of women cannot defend themselves and that they can be as tough as men. Brad Pitt played the suave drifter who teaches the girls how to rob a bank and shot himself up to international stardom, and writer Callie Khouri won an Oscar for her script.
Petite Maman (2021)
A quiet follow-up to Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, director Celine Sciamma created this relatively short film – a brisk 72 minutes – about a young girl who has lost her grandmother; when her distressed mother leaves him, the girl bonds with another girl her age with a surprising connection to the mom. Sciamma’s story of grief and generational love is another sight of beautiful scenes with hope after grief that contains the action within a small frame of time, yet is very impactful.
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