The Criterion Collection in November

From "The Irishman" (Martin Scorsese, 2019)

I've been thinking a lot about the long-time effects of COVID-19 on film exhibition. I know, I know; me and everyone else. I'm really not sure it'll have any effect on my own viewing habits. There's only been a small handful of movies I've had to see in in a theatre in the past five years. Even movies like the last two "Avengers" releases or the last two "Star Wars" films, movies that, in my 20s and 30s, I would have broken my neck to see opening night, have been easy to wait out for a home video release. What I'd love to see is for programming to become less corporatized. I think it'd be good for theatres to become home for the best of the best. Let all but the most cinematic end up on a streaming platform. Save the movie theatre experience for the likes of a "Parasite", a revival of "The Godfather", for any of this month's Criterion releases. That would get me back into a theatre, mask and all.

November 10

There's an off week between the release of "Parasite" and the first release in November. So, you'll have plenty of time to dive into the extras on that "Parasite" set, to watch the black & white version as well as the color release, and to revisit the Bong Joon Ho filmography. Go on, get it out of your system. It's good for you.

This week's release has me asking, "Why don't I know about Claudia Weill?" To be fair, there weren't a lot of teachers repping women in cinema when I went to school 20 years ago, and Weill's filmography is a lot less extensive than, say, a Tamra Davis or an Ida Lupino. But her two features, 1978's "Girlfriends" and 1980's "It's My Turn", are still well regarded, if underseen, and her story and direction on the former earned her admission to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. It set a blueprint for making independent film, utilizing grants from both the NEA and the AFI to get made over the course of nearly three years. It was named to the National Film Registry in 2019. So, yeah, it's a work worth knowing.

Weill sat with director of photography Fred Murphy to supervise the 4K digital transfer and restoration of this indie classic, presented here for the first time. There are also two early short films by Weill on the disc, dating from 1970 and 1972. The cast and crew interviews look pretty great as well. There's a one on one between Weill and Joey Soloway ("Transparent", "Six Feet Under"), as well as a separate interview with the Criterion team. There's also an interview with screenwriter Vicki Polon, who worked with Weill to shape her story into the script. And there's a feature on the cast, with lead Melanie Mayron, Bob Balaban, and Christopher Guest all dropping in to talk about the movie. It's a great chance to discover something new.

November 17

I'll be honest (not that I've been lying until now): it's been a minute since I last saw "Moonstruck". It's odd, because Mrs. Ape and I have been slowly going through a lot of the romantic comedies from the 80s that one or both of us haven't seen, and while we've both seen it, this seems like something we'd come across and say, "Let's watch Nicolas Cage romance Cher!" We make weird statements in our house.

Anyway, Cher correctly won the Oscar for this role, and the remainder of the cast is top notch: Cage, Olympia Dukakis, Danny Aiello, Vincent Gardinia, John Mahoney. Screenwriter John Patrick Shanley also wrote "Joe Versus the Volcano", another beloved rom-com in our house. While Norman Jewison directed a lot of movies I don't care about, he helmed this, "Send Me No Flowers", and "The Cincinnati Kid", and he's in his mid-90s, so, you know, mazel tov!

There are a ton of repeat features on this release. I see ones in common with the MGM DVD that's floating around my apartment somewhere. The real draw, in addition to the 4K digital scan, are a new interview with Shanley, an essay by Vox's Emily VanDerWerff, and a feature on the role of opera in the film with NYU professor Stefano Albertini. If you haven't seen this before, or don't own a copy, you should check it out. 

Well, Criterion's back with a new Jim Jarmusch release, and it's 1999's "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai". His seventh feature was a go-to as we were coming down from boozing in my early 20s. Forest Whitaker is so cool as the ronin in a Mafia world. The RZA score is probably the most-underappreciated Wu-related release from the last millenium. And it's one of the last pre-Guiliani, pre-9/11, street level NYC movies; the city is such a great character in the film. A speaking of character: it's one of the last roles for Henry Silva, one of the greats of Euro crime.

I'm really glad to see this get the Criterion treatment; I haven't thought to watch it in about 10 years, so when it was announced, I was like, "YEAH!" Jarmusch oversaw the 4K restoration here; the Blu-ray even gets a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio refurbishment, which should sound dope on a decent soundsystem. RZA's score gets its own isolated audio track, a feature that isn't nearly as prevalent as it should be, as well as a video essay. Whitaker and Jarmusch regular Isaach De Bankolé also sit for a conversation with Michael B. Gillespie. This looks like no worse than the second-best crime movie to release via Criterion this month.

November 24

I have a few mixed feelings about the "Essential Fellini" set coming out here. On one hand, I already own the Fellini films I love. On the other...damn, what a way to celebrate the master's 100th birthday! It's 14 of his 27 films, from his 1950 debut of "Variety Lights" all the way to his penultimate film, 1987's "Intervista". Two of these have never been issued by Criterion before ("Intervista" and 1957's "Il bidone"), and a number of these had not been restored before this release.

The extras are where this set gets wild. His portion of the anthology film "Spirits of the Dead", "Toby Dammit", and his 1969 documentary for NBC, "Fellini: A Director's Notebook", both receive full restorations. There are sooooo many documentaries; I count nine, only one of which I've ever seen available on video. There's also a "La dolce vita"-era feature on Fellini that originally aired on Belgian TV. There's a metric fuck ton of archival material, video essays, trailers, commentaries: the whole nine yards, the whole ball of wax. Apparently, there are also TWO BOOKS in this thing, chock full of images and essays by smarter people than I. The set isn't as comprehensive as the "AK 100" set from a few years back, but it is the sort of thing I'll have no shame in requesting for Christmas.

I was dubious about "The Irishman" when it came out last year. A 3+ hour gangster opus from a beloved director whose last movie I enjoyed came out 15 years before, featuring the kinda-creepy de-aging software to make the likes of Pacino, Pesci, Deniro, and Keitel not look old as hell? It was ostensibly about Jimmy Hoffa? It was only going to stream? There's no way it could be good, right?

Here's one of those times I admit I was wrong. I subconsciously pooped on this because I didn't have Netflix when it came out, couldn't afford streaming, and thus had to lower the excitement of a Scorsese movie. I finally got around to watching it a few weeks ago, over the course of three days, and I really liked it. It was so good to be able to watch in leisure, and the worries about the integration of the visual effects were really overblown. Shit, truth be told: I really should have been into it because Pesci came back for it.

But do I need to own it? That's the $40 question. I suppose it's going to come down to how much I want to listen to Martin Scorsese discuss his craft. I really enjoyed the actor roundtable that's streaming on Netflix; I'm curious to see how that's been recut for this physical release. "The Evolution of Digital De-Aging" also looks like the kind of thing that would make this worth a purchase for me. It's a real toss up; I'm sure I'll end up ordering this, sleep deprived, during a sale in the near future.

In a perfect world, I'd end up preordering all five of these releases. There's so much about each disc that makes me want to dive in. This, however, is an imperfect world, and, hell, we may not even make it to November 10th as a nation. So I'm planning on hedging my bets. I'll let the missus know that I wouldn't mind a copy of "Ghost Dog" for the holidays, while hoping I pull in some bread from eBay and Discogs to cop her that Fellini set. After all, loving couples share things like movies, right? Provided we're still here and the power's on, we're back in thirty to talk up some Cronenberg, some Iñárritu, and reissues from Bresson and Greaves. Get stoked!

From "Juliet of the Spirits" (Federico Fellini, 1965)