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C What’s On: The Criterion Channel’s August 2020 Lineup

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

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