CriterionCast

Criterion Helmed, All Tomorrow’s Parties Line-Up Announced, Several Rumored Releases To Be Screened

As if the recent November titles weren’t enough, we now have some other films to add to our upcoming Criterion Collection wishlists.

The Criterion Collection will once again be curating the upcoming All Tomorrow’s Parties Film Screenings, in Monticello New York, this September. The event overall, will be curated by Criterion alum, Jim Jarmusch (Down by Law, Night on Earth, Stranger Than Paradise, Mystery Train). Earlier today, ATP & Criterion announced their line-up of films, and hidden among the list of epic titles that we already knew were going to be released, or are already available, were a few little verifications of rumors going around.

The line-up looks to be pretty amazing, and if I could afford the flight, I would surely head out for that weekend. Several of the new BBS box set will be screening, as well as some other films that we’ve discussed on the show (like Naked Lunch).

Last year, for All Tomorrow’s Parties, Criterion made up some pretty awesome posters for all of the films, which they never made available in their store. Hopefully this year, they’ll make a few more prints, so that the fans can fill up their wall space, and Criterion’s purse.

Check out these images from last year’s ATP, courtesy of Flickr user Mark Schoneveld



Hopefully we’ll also get some new, sweet handmade buttons from Criterion’s own, Jason Polan:

The films that are not currently in the Criterion Collection, and have not yet been officially announced, are as follows:

Pedro Costa’s Ne Change Rien:

Director Pedro Costa explores the creative musical process of French actress and singer Jeann Balibar, capturing the artist both in the studio and on stage. With no formal narrative or voice over, Costa’s documentary simply shoots Balibar as she writes, records and rehearses with her band. What emerges is not only an intimate glimpse into the life of a musician, but the struggle and the magic of the creative process.

Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing

THE KILLING is one of the finest heist noir films of the 50s, a film wound so tightly it will leave one alternately exhilarated and exhausted. It’s tale of small-time thief Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) and the motley crew of a gang he assembles to pull off a daring robbery at a local racetrack. Needless to say, nothing goes according to plan. Kubrick’s nonlinear storytelling remains as fresh now as it was in 1956 and an entire generation of filmmakers–Quentin Tarantino, we’re looking at you–are indebted to this classic caper film. The end result is the tightest, most consistently entertaining film of Kubrick’s career.

Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly

Regarded by many critics as the ultimate film noir, KISS ME DEADLY is a cultural hand grenade, circa 1955. Ralph Meeker stars as sleazy, cynical private detective Mike Hammer who picks up a nobody hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman) only later to discover she’s been brutally tortured to death. Ditching his bedroom work, Hammer pursues the secret behind the brutality, purely for profit . . . and finds out he’s onto something too hot to handle. This wide-open anarchic masterpiece is a startling example of subversive cinema and a turning point in American culture.

Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild

The humdrum life of businessman Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) is suddenly interrupted when sexy, free-spirited Audrey (Melanie Griffith) shanghais him for a bizarre weekend road trip. Things get even stranger when they pose as a married couple, attend Audrey’s high school reunion and visit her mother. And when Audrey’s dangerously psychotic ex-con of a husband Ray (Ray Liotta) shows up, what had been a liberating fling for Charlie turns into a bloody battle for survival. Director Jonathan Demme’s screwball odyssey is a look at the pleasures and dangers of stepping outside the norm, in life and in film.

Some pretty exciting news, right? I’d say that with this confirmation that Kubrick’s The Killing will one day make it’s way back into the arms of the Criterion Collection (it was once a Criterion laserdisc), it is a safe bet that Killer’s Kiss will also. 

Most of these titles were from MGM, and there are many other rumored titles floating around on various forums, so it will be interesting to see how they’re teased out by Criterion.

Check out the complete list of films screening on September 3-5, at All Tomorrow’s Parties, below:


FRIDAY

NE CHANGE RIEN (1.30pm)
Director: Pedro Costa
French/English, 2009, 100 min
Click for: More Info / Trailer

Director Pedro Costa explores the creative musical process of French actress and singer Jeann Balibar, capturing the artist both in the studio and on stage. With no formal narrative or voice over, Costa’s documentary simply shoots Balibar as she writes, records and rehearses with her band. What emerges is not only an intimate glimpse into the life of a musician, but the struggle and the magic of the creative process.

FIVE EASY PIECES (3.15pm)
Director: Bob RafelsonEnglish, 1970, 98 min

Click for: More Info / Trailer…

Jack Nicholson plays the now iconic cad Bobby Dupea, a shiftless thirtysomething oil rigger and former piano prodigy immune to any sense of romantic or familial responsibility, who returns to his childhood home to see his ailing, estranged father–his blue-collar girlfriend (Karen Black, like Nicholson nominated for an Oscar) in tow. Moving in its simplicity and gritty in its textures, FIVE EASY PIECES is a lasting example of early 1970s American alienation.

REPULSION (5pm)
Director: Roman Polanski
English, 1965, 105 min
Click for: More Info

Catherine Deneuve is Carol, a fragile, frigid young beauty cracking up in her London flat when left alone by her vacationing sister. She is soon haunted by specters real and imagined, and her insanity grows to a violent, hysterical pitch. Thanks to its disturbing detail and Roman Polanski’s adeptness at turning claustrophobic space into an emotional minefield, REPULSION is a surreal, mind-bending odyssey into personal horror, and it remains one of cinema’s most shocking psychological thrillers.

BOTTLE ROCKET (6.45pm)
Director: Wes Anderson
English, 1996, 91 min
Click for: More Info

Wes Anderson first illustrated his lovingly detailed, slightly surreal cinematic vision (with cowriter Owen Wilson) in this visually witty and warm portrait of three young misfits. Best friends Anthony (Luke Wilson), Dignan (Owen Wilson), and Bob (Robert Musgrave) stage a wildly complex, mildly successful robbery of a small bookstore, then go “on the lam,” befriending local thief Mr. Henry (James Caan). The film that put Anderson and the Wilson brothers on the map.

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (8.45pm)
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
English, 1971, 126 min
Click for: More Info / Trailer

Set during the early 50s, in the loneliest Texas nowheresville to ever dust up a movie screen, this aching portrait of a dying West, adapted from Larry McMurtry’s novel, focuses on the daily shuffles of three futureless teens–the enigmatic Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), the wayward jock Duane (Jeff Bridges), and the desperate-to-be-adored rich girl Jacy (Cybil Shepherd)–and the aging lost souls who bump up against them in the night like drifting tumbleweeds. This hushed depiction of crumbling American values remains the pivotal film in the career of Peter Bogdanovich.

NAKED LUNCH (11pm)
Director: David Croninberg
English, 1991, 115 min
Click for: More Info / Trailer

“Exterminate all rational thought.” NAKED LUNCH, William S. Burroughs’s hallucinatory, “unfilmable” novel is finally realized onscreen by director David Cronenberg. Part-time exterminator and full-time drug addict Bill Lee (Peter Weller) plunges into the nightmarish netherworld of the Interzone, pursuing a mysterious project that leads him to confront sinister cabals and giant talking bugs. NAKED LUNCH mingles aspects of Burroughs’s novel with incidents from his own life, resulting in a compendium of paranoid fantasies and a searching investigation into the mysteries of the writing process.

HEAD (1am)
Director: Bob Rafelson
English, 1968, 85 min
Click for: More Info / Trailer

Hey, hey, it’s the Monkees . . . being catapulted through one of American cinema’s most surreal 60s odysseys. Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork become trapped in a kaleidoscopic satire that’s movie homage, media send-up, concert movie, and antiwar cry all at once. A constantly looping, self-referential spoof that was ahead of its time, HEAD escaped commercial success on its release but has since been reclaimed as one of the great cult objects of its era. Presented here with a new glorious surround sound mix!

SATURDAY: CRITERION CRIME WAVE, CURATED BY JIM JARMUSCH

UNDERWORLD (11am)
Director: Josef von Sternberg
1927, 81 min
Click for: More Info

Josef von Sternberg’s riveting breakthrough is widely considered the film that launched the American gangster genre as we know it. George Bancroft plays heavy Bull Weed, a criminal kingpin whose jealous devotion to his moll, Feathers (Evelyn Brent), gets him into hot water with a rival hood and, ultimately, the authorities. With its supple, endlessly expressive camera work and tightly wound screenplay based on a story by legendary scribe Ben Hecht, UNDERWORLD solidified von Sternberg’s place as one of Hollywood’s most exciting new talents. Presented with a score by Robert Israel.

THE KILLING (2pm)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
English, 1956, 83 min
Click for: Trailer

THE KILLING is one of the finest heist noir films of the 50s, a film wound so tightly it will leave one alternately exhilarated and exhausted. It’s tale of small-time thief Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) and the motley crew of a gang he assembles to pull off a daring robbery at a local racetrack. Needless to say, nothing goes according to plan. Kubrick’s nonlinear storytelling remains as fresh now as it was in 1956 and an entire generation of filmmakers–Quentin Tarantino, we’re looking at you–are indebted to this classic caper film. The end result is the tightest, most consistently entertaining film of Kubrick’s career.

LE DOULOS (3.45pm)
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
French with English subtitles, 1962, 109 min
Click for: More Info

The backstabbing criminals in the shadowy underworld of Jean-Pierre Melville’s LE DOULOS have only one guiding principle: “Lie or die.” A stone-faced Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as enigmatic gangster Silien, who may or may not be responsible for squealing on Faugel (Serge Reggiani), just released from the slammer and already involved in what should have been a simple heist. Shot and edited with Melville’s trademark cool and featuring masterfully stylized dialogue and performances, it is one of the filmmaker’s most gripping crime dramas.

GOMORRAH (5.45pm)
Director: Matteo Garrone
Italian with English subtitles, 2008, 137 min
Click for: More Info

Matteo Garrone’s GOMORRAH is a stark, shocking vision of contemporary gangsterdom, and one of cinema’s most authentic depictions of organized crime. In this tour de force adaptation of undercover Italian reporter Roberto Saviano’s best-selling expose of Naples’ Mafia underworld (known as the Camorra), Garrone links five disparate tales in which men and children are caught up in a corrupt system that extends from the housing projects to the world of haute couture. Filmed with an exquisite detachment interrupted by bursts of violence, GOMORRAH is a shattering, socially engaged true-crime story from a major new voice in Italian cinema.

BRUTE FORCE (8.15pm)
Director: Jules Dassin
English, 1947, 98 min
Click for: More Info / Trailer

Burt Lancaster is the timeworn Joe Collins, who, along with his fellow inmates, lives under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey (a riveting Hume Cronyn). Only Collins’s dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey’s chains? Matter-of-fact and ferocious, BRUTE FORCE builds to an explosive climax that shows the lengths men will go to when fighting for their freedom.

A COLT IS MY PASSPORT (10pm)
Director: Takashi Nomura
Japanese with English subtitles, 1967, 84 min
Click for: More Info

From the late 1950s through the sixties, wild, idiosyncratic crime movies were the brutal and boisterous business of Nikkatsu, the oldest film studio in Japan. One of Japanese cinema’s supreme emulations of American noir, Takashi Nomura’s A COLT IS MY PASSPORT is a down-and-dirty but gorgeously photographed yakuza film starring Joe Shishido as a hard-boiled hit man caught between rival gangs. Featuring an incredible, spaghetti-western-style soundtrack and brimming with formal experimentation.

TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (11.45pm)
Director: Jacques Becker
French with English subtitles, 1954, 96 min
Click for: More Info / Trailer

Jean Gabin is at his most wearily romantic as aging gangster Max le Menteur in the Jacques Becker gem TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (Hands Off the Loot!). Having pulled off the heist of a lifetime, Max looks forward to spending his remaining days relaxing with his beautiful young girlfriend. But when Riton (Rene Dary), Max’s hapless partner and best friend, lets word of the loot slip to loose-lipped, two-timing Josy (Jeanne Moreau), Max is reluctantly drawn back into the underworld.

KISS ME DEADLY (1.30am)
Director: Robert Aldrich
English, 1955, 106 min
Click for: Trailer

Regarded by many critics as the ultimate film noir, KISS ME DEADLY is a cultural hand grenade, circa 1955. Ralph Meeker stars as sleazy, cynical private detective Mike Hammer who picks up a nobody hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman) only later to discover she’s been brutally tortured to death. Ditching his bedroom work, Hammer pursues the secret behind the brutality, purely for profit . . . and finds out he’s onto something too hot to handle. This wide-open anarchic masterpiece is a startling example of subversive cinema and a turning point in American culture.

SUNDAY

EASY RIDER (12.30pm)
Director: Dennis Hopper
English, 1969, 96 min
Click for: More Info / Trailer

As Billy and “Captain America,” Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda motored down the highway on their Harley Davidsons to the roaring strains of Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild,” the definitive counterculture blockbuster was born. The former clean-cut teen star Hopper’s down-and-dirty directorial debut, EASY RIDER heralded the arrival of a new voice in film, one positioned firmly, angrily against the mainstream. After EASY RIDER–with its radical, New Wave-style editing, outsider-rock soundtrack, revelatory performance by a young Jack Nicholson, and explosive ending–the American road trip would never be the same.

THE THIN RED LINE (2.15pm)
Director: Terrence Malick
English, 1998, 171 min
Click for: More Info / Trailer

After directing two of the most extraordinary movies of the 1970s, Badlands and Days of Heaven, American artist Terrence Malick disappeared from the film world for twenty years, only to resurface in 1998 with this visionary adaptation of James Jones’s 1962 novel about the World War II battle for Guadalcanal. A big-budget, spectacularly mounted epic, THE THIN RED LINE is also one of the most deeply philosophical films ever released by a major Hollywood studio, a thought-provoking meditation on man, nature, and violence.

SOMETHING WILD (5.15pm)
Director: Jonathan Demme
English, 1986, 113 min
Click for: Trailer

The humdrum life of businessman Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) is suddenly interrupted when sexy, free-spirited Audrey (Melanie Griffith) shanghais him for a bizarre weekend road trip. Things get even stranger when they pose as a married couple, attend Audrey’s high school reunion and visit her mother. And when Audrey’s dangerously psychotic ex-con of a husband Ray (Ray Liotta) shows up, what had been a liberating fling for Charlie turns into a bloody battle for survival. Director Jonathan Demme’s screwball odyssey is a look at the pleasures and dangers of stepping outside the norm, in life and in film.

CRUMB (7.15pm)
Director: Terry Zwigoff
English, 1995, 120 min
Click for: More Info

An intimate documentary portrait of the underground artist Robert Crumb, whose unique drawing style and sexually and racially provocative subject matter have made him a household name in popular American art. Terry Zwigoff candidly and colorfully delves into the details of Crumb’s incredible career and life, including his family of reclusive eccentrics, some of the most remarkable people you’ll ever see on-screen. At once a profound biographical portrait, a riotous examination of a man’s controversial art, and a devastating look at a troubled family, CRUMB is a genuine American original.

ANTICHRIST (9.30pm)
Director: Lars von Trier
English, 2009, 108 min
Click for: More Info / Trailer

In this graphic psychodrama, a grief-stricken man and woman–a searing Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg–retreat to a cabin deep in the woods after the accidental death of their infant son, only to find terror and violence at the hands of nature and, ultimately, each other. A visually sublime, emotionally ravaging journey to the darkest corners of the possessed human mind; a disturbing battle of the sexes that pits rational psychology against age-old superstition; and a profoundly effective horror film.

MODERN TIMES (11.15pm)
Director: Charlie Chaplin
English, 1936, 87 min
Click for: More Info / Trailer

MODERN TIMES, Charlie Chaplin’s last outing as the Little Tramp, puts the iconic character to work as a giddily inept factory employee who becomes smitten with a gorgeous gamine (Paulette Goddard). With its barrage of unforgettable gags and sly commentary on class struggle during the Great Depression, MODERN TIMES–though made almost a decade into the talkie era and containing moments of sound (even song!)–is a timeless showcase of Chaplin’s untouchable genius as a director of silent comedy.

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1am)
Director: Charles Laughton
English, 1955, 93 min
Click for: More Info / Trailer

A horror movie with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, starring a sublimely sinister Robert Mitchum as a traveling preacher named Harry Powell (he of the tattooed knuckles), whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow, played by Shelley Winters are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of eerie beauty and a sneaky sense of humor, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic–also featuring the contributions of actress Lillian Gish and writer James Agee–is cinema’s quirkiest rendering of the battle between good and evil.

Ryan Gallagher

Ryan is the Editor-In-Chief / Founder of CriterionCast.com, and the host / co-founder / producer of the various podcasts here on the site. You can find his website at RyanGallagher.org, follow him on Twitter (@RyanGallagher), or send him an email: [email protected].

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