By With the summer heat bearing down and the strains of the pandemic impacting us all, turning to services like the Criterion Channel is a ritual to take solace in. Life may be tough outside, but the Criterion Channel’s August 2020 lineup can hopefully provide some relief, mostly from the heat. Propped up indoors, with a nearby fan or air conditioner (hopefully) manufacturing a temperate environment for self-sustaining entertainment, should be the best way to enjoy any movie on a hot summer day. Things might be rough, but be glad you’re not being assailed by killer spiked motor-vehicles, as in The Cars That Ate Paris, pictured above.
The Criterion Channel’s August 2020 lineup brings another smattering of great content this month, highlighting a personal favorite of mine, Wim Wenders, for his 75th birthday, as well as a series highlighting some of the best of the totally coolest guy on screen Alain Delon’s work is like a greatest hits of terrific films. Melville’s Le samouraï is, of course, a must for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but Purple Noon is an absolutely terrific adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Who needs Matt Damon!
(I, of course, need Matt Damon. The man is a treasure and I apologize for suggesting otherwise.)
All in all, it’s another month of the sort of eclectic selection that continually defines the Criterion Channel as a service not solely for the film buffs and historians. You have incredibly recent work of the utterly insane variety like Bacurau, a film whose theatrical release earlier this year was marred by the pandemic, as well as the revival of kid-friendly classics like Stanley Donen’s The Little Prince, adapting the classic Antoine de Saint-Exupéry story more than 40 years before Netflix released the (also great) animated film by Mark Osborne. There’s just a lot to love.
Here’s the Criterion Channel’s August 2020 lineup.
** indicates programming available only in the U.S.
August 1st
Saturday Matinee: The Little Prince (Stanley Donen, 1974)
Criterion Collection Edition #118; Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)
August 2nd
Australian New Wave
Featuring Voices from the Australian New Wave, a short documentary including interviews with Gillian Armstrong, Bruce Beresford, David Gulpilil, Peter Weir, and others
Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971), The Cars That Ate Paris (Peter Weir, 1974), Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975), Sunday Too Far Away (Ken Hannam, 1975), The Devil’s Playground (Fred Schepisi, 1976), Don’s Party (Bruce Beresford, 1976), Storm Boy (Henri Safran, 1976), The Getting of Wisdom (Bruce Beresford, 1977), The Last Wave (Peter Weir, 1977), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Fred Schepisi, 1978), Long Weekend (Colin Eggleston, 1978), Money Movers (Bruce Beresford, 1978), Newsfront (Phillip Noyce, 1978), Mad Max (George Miller, 1979), My Brilliant Career (Gillian Armstrong, 1979), The Plumber (Peter Weir, 1979), Breaker Morant (Bruce Beresford, 1980), Gallipoli (Peter Weir, 1981), Puberty Blues (Bruce Beresford, 1981), Starstruck (Gillian Armstrong, 1982), The Year of Living Dangerously (Peter Weir, 1982)
August 3rd
Four Documentaries by Ron Mann
Featuring a new introduction by Mann
Imagine the Sound (1981), Poetry in Motion (1982), Poetry in Motion (1982), Twist (1992)
August 4th
Short + Feature: High-Flying Heroes
Mynarski Death Plummet (Matthew Rankin, 2014) and Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939)
August 5th
Rafiki (Wanuri Kahiu, 2018)
August 6th
World Cinema Project: Lucía (Humberto Solás, 1968)
Featuring Humberto & Lucía, a new documentary about the making of the film
August 7th
Double Feature: The Decline of Midwestern Civilization
The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942) and Kings Row (Sam Wood, 1942)
August 8th
Saturday Matinee: Storm Boy (Shawn Seet, 2019)
August 9th
Starring Alain Delon
Purple Noon (René Clément, 1960), Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960), L’eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962), Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil, 1963), Once a Thief (Ralph Nelson, 1965), Le samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967), The Girl on a Motorcycle (Jack Cardiff, 1968), Spirits of the Dead (Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, and Roger Vadim, 1968), Le cercle rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970), The Widow Couderc (Pierre Granier-Deferre, 1971), Un flic (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1972), Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976)
August 10th
Criterion Collection Edition #892; Festival (Murray Lerner, 1967)
August 11th
Short + Feature: Hands of Fate
Cutaway (Kazik Radwanski, 2014) and L’argent (Robert Bresson, 1983)
Criterion Collection Edition #51; Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
August 12th
Three by Mia Hansen-Løve
Featuring a new introduction by Hansen-Løve
Father of My Children (2009), Goodbye First Love (2011), Things to Come (2016)
August 13th
Three by Bill Gunn
Featuring a 1984 interview with Gunn
The Angel Levine (Ján Kadár, 1970), Ganja & Hess (Bill Gunn, 1973), Personal Problems (Bill Gunn, 1980)
August 14th
Double Feature: Behind the Screens
Hollywood Shuffle (Robert Townsend, 1987) and The Player (Robert Altman, 1992)
August 15th
Saturday Matinee: The Secret Garden (Agnieszka Holland, 1993)
August 16th
Directed by Wim Wenders
Features: Alice in the Cities (1974), Wrong Move (1975), Kings of the Road (1976), The American Friend (1977), Paris, Texas (1984), Tokyo-ga (1985), Wings of Desire (1987), Until the End of the World (1991), Palermo Shooting (2008), Pina (2011)
Shorts: Same Player Shoots Again (1968)
August 17th
Documentaries by Les Blank
Features: A Poem is a Naked Person (1974), Burden of Dreams (1982)
Shorts: The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins (1968), God Respects Us When We Work, but Loves Us When We Dance (1968), Spend It All (1971), A Well Spent Life (1971), Dry Wood (1973), Hot Pepper (1973), Always for Pleasure (1978), Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980), Sprout Wings and Fly (1983), In Heaven There Is No Beer? (1984), Gap-Toothed Women (1987), Yum, Yum, Yum! A Taste of Cajun and Creole Cooking (1990), The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists (1994), Sworn to the Drum: A Tribute to Francisco Aguabella (1995)
August 18th
Short + Feature: Landscapes of Loss
Voices of Kidnapping (Ryan McKenna, 2017) and Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzmán, 2010)
August 19th
Starstruck (Gillian Armstrong, 1982)
August 20th
Bacurau (Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, 2019) Exclusive streaming premiere, featuring an interview with directors Mendonça Filho and Dornelles
Three by Robert Siodmak
Phantom Lady (1944), The Killers (1946), Criss Cross (1949)
August 21st
Double Feature: Art of Darkness
The American Friend (Wim Wenders, 1977) and Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976)
August 22nd
Saturday Matinee: The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (Roy Rowland, 1953)
August 23rd
Bad Vacations
Bonjour tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958), La collectionneuse (Éric Rohmer, 1967), The Deep (Peter Yates, 1977), House (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977), Long Weekend (Colin Eggleston, 1978), The Green Ray (Eric Rohmer, 1986), The Comfort of Strangers (Paul Schrader, 1990), The Sheltering Sky (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1990), Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997), Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001), La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001), Unrelated (Joanna Hogg, 2007), Sightseers (Ben Wheatley, 2012)**
August 24th
John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection (Julien Faraut, 2018)
August 25th
Short + Feature: Poetry in Motion
The Lonedale Operator (D. W. Griffith, 1911) and And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead (Billy Woodberry, 2015)
August 26th
Sun Don’t Shine (Amy Seimetz, 2012)Featuring a new introduction by Seimetz and her short film When We Lived in Miami
August 27th
Three by Stephen Cone
Featuring a new interview with Cone
The Wise Kids (2011), Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (2015), Princess Cyd (2017)
August 28th
Double Feature: Private Eyes
Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmak, 1944) and Variety (Bette Gordon, 1983)
August 29th
Saturday Matinee: The Scarlet Pimpernel (Harold Young, 1934)
August 30th
Films by Bill Plympton
Features: The Tune (1992), I Married a Strange Person! (1997), Mutant Aliens (2001), Hair High (2004), Idiots and Angels (2008), Cheatin’ (2013), Revengeance (2016)
Shorts: Your Face (1987), One of Those Days (1988), 25 Ways to Quit Smoking (1989), How to Kiss (1988), Push Comes to Shove (1991), The Wiseman (1991), How to Make Love to a Woman (1996), Sex and Violence (1997), Guard Dog (2004), The Fan and The Flower (2005), Guide Dog (2006), Hot Dog (2008), Santa, the Fascist Years (2008), Horn Dog (2009), The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger (2010)
August 31st
Exporting Raymond (Philip Rosenthal, 2010)
Featuring a new introduction by Rosenthal