The Criterion Collection in December (plus The Best of 2020!)

From "Amores perros" (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2000)

Christ, where would I be in 2020 if I hadn't been writing these?

I started writing back in May because I decided, with my therapist, that I needed to talk about something good. I live on the other side of the country from most of the people I love, and we're all locked in the house (or should be), and my spouse is susceptible to all manners of infectious disease, which happens when you take chemo, and half the nation seems hellbent to rush us into some afterlife that's not necessarily promised to anyone. I could either give into the desperation, and wallow in the depression I've experienced my entire life, or, you know, I could revel in something that was enjoyable.

So, here we are. Eight months on, reviewing the last Criterion releases of the year of our Lord 2020. It's fun. It's something I look forward to. That shit is crucial right now. I hope you dig them.

December 1

Frankly, I've been rooting for a Criterion edition of "Fast Company", but I suppose we all have to "settle" for the 4K restoration of David Cronenberg's "Crash". I've been rewatching what Cronenberg I own in my collection throughout the pandemic (I wonder why), but I don't own a copy of "Crash", so the timing is good, I suppose. This is the sixth release Criterion has done with the Canadian director, and while the extras are fairly bare bones, "Crash" has only been available as a made-on-demand DVD-R release here in the States for most of the past decade. It's the first time it's been available on a Region A Blu-ray...ever. So, I have to assume its release will fill a fairly big hole in most of our collections. The extras look to carry over from the 1998 Warner Home Video DVD release. Still...Cronenberg. Get weird with it.

December 8

This week is all about the reissues, as Criterion reissues a pair of mid-aught catalog pieces with Blu-ray editions for the first time. Now, neither of these have ever grabbed my attention, probably because I'm more likely to rewatch "Maximum Overdrive" than view Ozu for the first time, but I guarantee they'll be on a number of folks' wishlists. The "Symbiopsychotaxiplasm" films by documentarian William Greaves are the sort of features that I almost certainly should be aware of, but I wasn't aware of until now. "Take One", originally released in 1968, is a work of meta art, the likes of which wouldn't be widely seen until its being championed by Steve Buscemi and Steven Soderbergh in the 90s. It's a feature about a documentary, which is in turn being documented, and then again documented. It's very incepted. "Take 2 1/2" revisited a pair of the leads of "Take One", some forty years after the original shoot. I've suddenly become very interested in this in the course of writing it up. Thanks, blogging! I can't tell if these releases feature the same transfer as the original 2006 Criterion DVD release, but it's on Blu-ray for the first time, ya know?

Also getting a first-time domestic release on Blu-ray: Robert Bresson's 1967 film "Mouchette". Bresson's another French New Wave director whose work I'm only very lightly familiar with. I feel like I saw "Au hasard Balthazar" on a date when it got re-released in 2003...or maybe I just own a copy thanks to Mrs. Ape's cultured influence. You know "Au hasard Balthazar", right? Story of a mistreated donkey? It's great, just great. So I probably should be forgiven for not having seen "Mouchette" before. Instead of an abused ass, it's a teenage girl whose name translates to "little fly" going through 81 minutes of trauma. Look, I have a fair amount of intellectual curiosity about what makes "Mouchette" renowned, but in this Year of our Dark Lord 2020, I don't have any sort of masochist drive to watch something that's going to inevitably depress me, no matter if it's got a fresh 4K restoration. Maybe I'll just save this one over for next year...should we make it that far.

December 15

We come to the end of 2020 with the debut film from Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2000's "Amores perros". I remember becoming aware of "Amores perros" around the same time as Alfonso Cuarón's "Y tu mama tambien", and really just falling in love with both directors' work. In Iñárritu's film, three strangers' lives collide (literally) in a tragic accident. It's a violent, funny, dire, and class conscious piece of work that just really springs off the screen. Just writing about it makes me want to rewatch it (it's been a minute since I last saw it). Iñárritu would get a nom for an Academy Award for "Perros", and go on to win Best Director Oscars for 2014's "Birdman" and 2015's "The Revenant".

He, along with D.P. Rodrigo Prieto, has overseen the 4K digital restoration of "Perros", which includes a remix to 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray. There are a ton of new extras created for this release: a new making-of documentary, conversations with the cast and the director, and all three music videos Iñárritu shot for the soundtrack. It's a great way to end the year's releases with Criterion, and the one of my two must-haves from December.

From "Crash" (David Cronenberg, 1996)

Speaking of which, I've been considering my favorite additions of 2020 to the Criterion Collection. It's fun to write about these ahead of the release, but I really haven't gone back and mentioned how they turned out for me. There's a 50% off sale at Barnes & Noble on all Criterion releases running thru the end of November, so feel free to take this as my recommendations for what you might pick up.

1. "Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits" (various, 1971-1978)
2. "Parasite" (Bong Joon Ho, 2019)
3. "Come And See" (Elem Klimov, 1985)
4. "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (Wes Anderson, 2014)
5. "Paris Is Burning" (Jennie Livingston, 1990)
6. "The Great Escape" (John Sturges, 1963)
7. "Holiday" (George Cukor, 1938)
8. "The War Of The Worlds" (Byron Haskin, 1953)
9. "Dance, Girl, Dance" (Dorothy Arzner, 1940)
10. "Portrait Of A Lady On Fire", (Céline Sciamma, 2019)

I'm back in around 30 with the first releases of 2021 by the Criterion Collection: a Luis Buñuel box set featuring his final three films, Scorsese shoot Dylan, and features from Bing Liu and the late Larisa Sheptiko. Be there...aloha!