As far as DVD quality:
Chasing Amy
Great movie, but god awful criterion release
Made in U.S.A is easily my least favorite Criterion so far.
Kicking and Screaming by Noah Baumbach
Kicking and Screaming by Noah Baumbach
The Last Wave is horribly minimal.
(Is getting the last wave in the mail soon) : /
Ha, aw, sorry sir. At least the movie itself is good. At least, I really like it. :)
.
I’m excited. I’ve been on a Peter Weir hunt as of late. I even bought Green Card, if you can believe it.
Homicide, the David Mamet film. It has some great dialogue at times but the film felt like a intriguing misstep not a important contemporary film.
I always thought every other post in this thread was:
Armageddon
or
Chasing Amy
Should be, anyway.
okay, am i the only Criterion fanboy that thinks that Armageddon and The Rock belong in the collection? They both define the genre of Balls-to-the-Wall adventure/action film. they may not be deep. they may not reach the heights of Breathless or Seven Samauri, but they belong in the collection.
i can’t speak to Robocop, never seen it.
The film, and i use that term VERY lightly, that i think should be banished to the dustiest corner is Grey Gardens. what an awful film. Gawd! It sucked. I’ll never get that time back!
This upsets me – how is Armageddon influential? Or Chasing Amy?
“The Last Wave is horribly minimal.”
Yep. But it’s still a terrific film.
I haven’t seen a lot of these movies that are getting mentioned (armageddon, the rock or chasing amy) fortunately. However, I was a bit perplexed by House getting on there. It obviously wasn’t bad in the sense of a Michael Bay movie, it is much more creative and interesting to watch, but I really can’t say it’s a great film by any means.
Whether you like House or not, the fact is that it’s become a cult classic which, until Criterion released it, was not available in the states. This is after all one of the most central reasons behind why they release the films they do, isn’t it?
Worst release: The original Salo. The new one is great, but the old DVD had a terrible transfer!
Worst films in the collection (that I’ve seen): The Night Porter and The Man Who Fell to Earth. I found them quite boring, which is a shame because I love Charlotte Rampling and David Bowie. I was also very disappointed in The Double Life of Veronique and Picnic at Hanging Rock.
First print of Amarcord.. huh.. both the film and the dvd :-)
I love House and have insisted on showing it to friends hoping to convert them. Just the little vignettes I showed them really piqued their interest.
As for worst I have to say The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Really felt like it was one of the few Fincher movies that did not quite feel Fincher which is unfortunate because with a half decent script that was not derivative of the own screenwriter’s work, I think it would have been an interesting adaptation of the Fitzgerald story. Yes, its special effects were seamless but it had a group of fine actors with really nothing to do and it was so hokey. Now if Criterion did Zodiac, now we would be talking about true Fincher films.
I quite like The Rock, it is probably Bay at his best and most forgivable, mostly because Cage, Harris and Connery sell it but I cannot say the same about Armageddon.
RoboCop is one of my favorites and yeah it is symbolism with the subtlety of a sledgehammer but I love it. I don’t have the Criterion copy, but I have seen the uncut version at local film marathons and nothing has made me think otherwise about the film.
either THE THIEF OF BAGDAD or WEEKEND would be my least favourite film of which criterion has released a copy
Metropolitan.
Fortunately, I borrowed a Critertion edition of this one from the library so I wasn’t out any coin. Best i can say is Metropolitan cured my insomnia. The Last Days of Disco runs a close second.
Hmmm. Maybe the problem is Whit Stillman.
Try as I might, I cannot give the slightest damn for any of his characters.
Off the top of my head:
Z (can’t stand Costa-Gavras)
The Last Days of Disco (as cited above, I have problems with Stillman too)
Monsoon Wedding (totally generic object)
The Blob (but it’s cult, I guess)
Picnic at Hanging Rock is a horrible movie. Armageddon is horrible too.
But I can’t say much for Criterion. Sadly, in the UK we only really have Artificial Eye and Second Run to distribute the greats. Criterion is Region 1-exclusive, I believe.
Rather than releasing Fritz Lang’s Ministry of Fear on a near bare bones standalone release, it would’ve made a better fit in an Eclipse set featured along with, say, You Only Live Once and While the City Sleeps. I mean, sure, it has an essay, but you get essays in the individual Eclipse cases too.
“But I can’t say much for Criterion. Sadly, in the UK we only really have Artificial Eye and Second Run to distribute the greats. Criterion is Region 1-exclusive, I believe.”
So why don’t you have a multi region DVD player? I don’t understand why anyone would limit themself by having a DVD player that isn’t multi region.
ann e.
Here are two movies that annoyed the hell out of me. I want to make it clear at the outset that there are Godard films I really like, but I don’t think he could have been more pretentious with these two if he tried. The color was fun, but not enough incentive to sit through this self-indulgent garbage. It seemed like Jean-Luc reached a point in his career where he thought, “Oh I’m Jean-Luc Godard, everything I make is pure genius.” Wrong.
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her
Made in U. S. A.