Through the first half of the year (I wrote this after June 30), I’ve watched 100+ films of various genres coming from the Criterion Channel, which I always endorse. Every month, there’s a new slate and new themes that allow me to discover for the first time or rewatch. Here are a few of these films that have impressed me so far, but if you check out my Letterboxd (https://letterboxd.com/bsusbielles/list/criterion-channel-2023/), you can see what I have listed in order so far.
Adam’s Rib (1949)
One of several films with real-life couple Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, this battle of the sexes comedy from director George Cukor is a witty tale of the gender gap existing in real life. After a distressed woman (Judy Holliday) wounds her husband for having an affair, the assistant district attorney becomes the prosecutor while his wife, a defense attorney, takes up the woman’s case. The ongoing legal battle causes a bitter debate between the couple and brings up the question of who really wears the pants in the family.
What’s Up, Doc? (1972)
Off the major success of The Last Picture Show, director Peter Bogdonavich shifted to a screwball comedy, playing homage to slapstick and love with this bonkers chase from the airport to the San Francisco pier. Ryan O’Neal is a musicologist looking to win a research grant but gets consistently caught in the troublesome bosom of Barbra Streisand, who finds the engaged stiff attractive. Meanwhile, other figures get caught up with their own goodies in matching bags, causing mayhem and neverending laughter to the end of the film.
Attica (1974)
This documentary immerses viewers in the infamous prison riot of 1971 in New York State, capturing many points of view on what went on for four days in September. It has no bias, editing in numerous news and surveillance footage with interviews with prisoners, prison officers, and police who were outside trying to negotiate. It still has the raw feel of it being of recent years with the emotions of racism, distrust in authority, and demands for proper treatment in a hectic, chaotic time filled with sociopolitical turmoil.
Vera (1986)
One of the earliest sympathetic portrayals of transgenderism came from Brazil loosely based on the life of a trans man whose poems were published at the age of 20 just before his tragic death. It is about the horrors of growing up in a facility for abandoned youths with violence and rejection all over and how a single person got out of the system to form an independent identity against norms. This is a humanist portrayal that rejects perversion against someone who identifies as the opposite sex and is a very important film in LGBT cinema.
CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel (2018)
In 7.5 hours, director Shivendra Dungarpur tells the story of not just the Czech New Wave, but also the story of a singular director who dominated the field. Menzel, director of the Oscar-winning film Closely Watched Trains, allowed himself to be interviewed over a period of eight years, which Dungarpur cuts from archival footage to important films to numerous interviews with those who made the New Wave happen. It is a living textbook of how a country used a newly established liberalizing of free speech to satirize communist society and Menzel’s devotion to Czech cinema, never leaving his home country (his fellow countryman, Milos Forman, went to Hollywood), and was committed to his work for his entire life.
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