Les yeux sans visage [Eyes Without a Face] (1960)

I can’t for the life of me recall for certain whether an old friend recommended this one to me or Carnival of Souls or both (I’m pretty sure Carnival was in there, just less sure whether this was as well). Once upon a time, after all, Criterion went fairly light on horror flicks, so I […]

Deux Jours, Une Nuit [Two Days, One Night] (2014)

Once again, DVD Profiler’s movie pick told me what to watch–I don’t think I knew a single thing about this movie when I bought it, nor when I put it in the player today. I just decided that I’d get better momentum out of it just plowing forward, totally disregarding whether I was “in the […]

Les rivières pourpres [The Crimson Rivers] (2000)

Why did I buy this movie on DVD 13 years ago? Well, put simply: because I’d bought the sequel a few months earlier. I never did get around to watching it, and discovered the only Blu-ray release were outside North America. This often gets awkward with non-English language films: no subtitles available being a common […]

Alphaville: une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution [Alphaville: A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution] (1965)

A fellow cinephile asked me if I’d celebrated or acknowledged Jean-Luc Godard’s birthday today (though it was yesterday), and I admitted I not only hadn’t but had never seen anything he directed (despite collecting a few over the years). I didn’t get a specific suggestion quite in time, so I decided that my vague notion […]

Delicatessen (1991)

Not entirely sure, but I believe this might be the most well-regarded of the Jeunet films I’d not seen (having caught Amélie rather early on, but not particularly falling in love with it), his debut co-direction with Marc Caro has been on my watch list for ages and ages, but I’ve only now finally gotten […]

Bob le flambeur [Bob the Gambler] (1956)

My Criterion want list had this and a few other Melville films on it, only to see them go out of print, to my disappointment. I discovered that, instead, Kino Lorber had picked up the rights. I believe that might be what set me off into picking up Kino Lorber releases in general, though I […]

État de siège [State of Siege] (1972)

Well, I often have assumptions and other ideas about what a film is about, but usually it’s not an entirely mistaken impression. I think, in the realms of “these are just covers to me so far”, I confused this one with, I don’t know–Gomorrah? I’m not sure, but I thought it was about crime in […]

Copie conforme [Certified Copy] (2010)

Another in the series of, “Is this a Criterion film on sale? Time to buy it!” that I occasionally stumble into (which did lead to the one Criterion film I really, really did not like, Make Way for Tomorrow). I’d seen Kiarostami’s name before–though I know not where–and I’ve certainly seen Binoche before (at the least, […]

Paris, je t’aime [Paris, I Love You] (2006)

At the outset, some time ago (when I first bought this on DVD 12 years ago), I knew only so many names–the Coens, Van Sant, Tykwer, Wes Craven maybe Cuarón. Throw in the actors–Natalie Portman, Bob Hoskins, Elijah Wood, Steve Buscemi, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Nick Nolte, Maggie Gyllenhaal, etc–and things get better. Fast forward […]

Une chambre en ville [A Room in Town] (1982)

Well this is a very peculiar way to end my first foray into the works of Jacques Demy, given the rest of the contents of Criterion’s box set (The Essential Jacques Demy). It’s primarily his earlier works–a chunk of his early short films, followed by almost every movie from his first decade, skipping only Model Shop to […]