By Summer is winding down and the weather is beginning to cool with it–thank goodness. We had the excuse of staying indoors in our air-conditioned rooms so as to binge all these movies and shows; now I guess we can say it’s to stay warm? Alternatively, there is still, y’know, a global pandemic occurring.
But who needs an excuse to indulge in more monthly goodness on the Criterion Channel, coming into the year’s final third with a strong lineup and the debut (as far as I’m aware?) of Sergio Leone–AKA, my all-time favorite.
For me, Leone encapsulates the very best of films in that he makes style the substance, reworking the tried-and-true, beat-a-dead-horse western back in the ’60s and blasting the lid off with what would today be considered, perhaps, the sort of visual pizzazz seen in music videos. Indeed, the strength of his collaboration with Ennio Morricone and the symbiotic relationship between his frames and Morricone’s compositions is, if you’ll allow the pomp, pure cinema.
Basically, go watch A Fistful of Dollars and then everything else he’s done. (And Yojimbo ain’t too shabby either!)
* indicates programming available October 1
** indicates programming available only in the U.S.
September 1st
Sátántangó (Béla Tarr, 1994)
Short + Feature: Super Bowles
You Are Not I (Sara Driver, 1981) and The Sheltering Sky (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1990)
September 2nd
Two by Dorothy Arzner
Working Girls (1931), Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)
September 3rd
Criterion Collection Edition #974
The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949)
September 4th
Double Feature: Spaghetti alla Samurai
Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961) and A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964)
September 5th
Saturday Matinee: Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
September 6th
Pre-Code Joan Blondell
Blonde Crazy (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), Millie (John Francis Dillon, 1931), Night Nurse (William A. Wellman, 1931), The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman, 1931)*, Big City Blues (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932), The Crowd Roars (Howard Hawks, 1932), Lawyer Man (William Dieterle, 1932), Three on a Match (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932), Union Depot (Alfred E. Green, 1932), Blondie Johnson (Ray Enright, 1933), Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon, 1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933), Dames (Ray Enright and Busby Berkeley, 1934), He Was Her Man (Lloyd Bacon, 1934)
September 7th
Three by Robert Greene
Actress (2014), Kate Plays Christine (2016), Bisbee ’17 (2018)
September 8th
Short + Feature: Through Her Eyes
Nettles (Raven Jackson, 2018) and It Felt Like Love (Eliza Hittman, 2013)
September 9th
Four Films by Janicza Bravo
Gregory Go Boom (2013), Pauline Alone (2014), Woman in Deep (2016), Man Rots from the Head (2017)
September 10th
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Running Fence (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin, 1977), Islands (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin, 1987), Christo in Paris (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Deborah Dickson, and Susan Froemke, 1990), Umbrellas (Albert Maysles, Henry Corra, and Grahame Weinbren, 1994), The Gates (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Antonio Ferrera, and Matthew Prinzing, 2008), Walking on Water (Andrey Paounov, 2019)
As well as the short films Christo’s Valley Curtain (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Giffard, 1974)
September 11th
Double Feature: Tears of a Clown
Lenny (Bob Fosse, 1974) and Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling (Richard Pryor, 1986)
September 12th
Saturday Matinee: The Phantom Tollbooth (Chuck Jones, Abe Levitow, and Dave Monahan, 1970)
September 13th
Directed by Albert Brooks
Real Life (1979), Modern Romance (1981), Lost in America (1985), Defending Your Life (1991), Mother (1996)
September 14th
Art and Craft** (Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman, Mark Becker, 2014)
September 15th
Short + Feature: The Dakar Connection
A Thousand Suns (Mati Diop, 2013) and Touki Bouki (Djibril Diop Manbety)
September 16th
Three by Lucrecia Martel
La Ciénaga (2001), The Headless Woman (2008), Zama (2017)
September 17th
Criterion Collection Edition #839
Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)
September 18th
Double Feature: Paradises Lost
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (FW Murnau, 1931) and Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012)
September 19th
Saturday Matinee: Charlotte’s Web** (Charles A Nichols and Iwao Takamoto, 1973)
September 20th
The Films of Agnès Varda
Featuring extensive supplemental features from Criterion’s The Complete Films of Agnès Varda box set
La Pointe Courte (1955), Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Le bonheur (1965), Les créatures (1966), Lions Love (. . . and Lies) (1969), Daguerréotypes (1975), One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977), Mur Murs (1981), Documenteur (1981), Vagabond (1985), Jane B. par Agnès V. (1988), Kung-Fu Master! (1988), Jacquot de Nantes (1991), The Young Girls Turn 25 (1993), One Hundred and One Nights (1995), The World of Jacques Demy (1995), The Gleaners and I (2000), The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (2002), The Beaches of Agnes (2008), Agnès de ci de là Varda (2011), Varda by Agnès (2019)
And the short films: Du coté de la côte (1958), L’opera-mouffe (1958), O saisons, o chateaux (1958), Les fiancés du Pont Macdonald (1962), Salut les cubains! (1964), Elsa la rose (1966), Uncle Yanco (1968), Black Panthers (1970), Réponse de femmes (1975), Plaisir d’amour en Iran (1977), Ulysse (1982), Les dites cariatides (1984), 7 p., cuis., s. de b. . . . (à saisir) (1985), T’as des beaux escaliers, tu sais (1986), Le lion volatil (2003), Ydessa, les ours, et etc. . . . (2004), Les 3 boutons (2015)
September 21st
Streetwise (Martin Bell. 1984)
TINY: The Life of Erin Blackwell (Martin Bell, 2016)
September 22nd
Short + Feature: All by Myself
The Amateurist (Miranda July, 1998) and Je tu il elle (Chantal Akerman, 1974)
September 23rd
Thank You and Good Night (Jan Oxenberg, 1992)
And the short films: Home Movie (Oxenberg, 1973), A Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts (Oxenberg, 1975)
September 24th
Streaming premiere
Corpus Christi (Jan Komasa, 2019)
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff
Young Törless (1966), Baal (1970), The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, 1975), Coup de grâce (1976), The Tin Drum (1979), Circle of Deceit (1981), Swann in Love (1984), Death of a Salesman (1985), The Handmaid’s Tale (1990), Voyager (1991), The Ogre (1996), The Legend of Rita (2000), Diplomacy (2014)
September 25th
Double Feature: Mall Wonders
Golden Eighties (Chantal Akerman, 1986) and Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello, 2016)
September 26th
Saturday Matinee: Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard, 1938)
September 27th
By the Book
The Count of Monte Cristo (Rowland V. Lee, 1934), The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935), La bête humaine (Jean Renoir, 1938), Of Mice and Men (Lewis Milestone, 1939), Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946), The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946), Anna Karenina (Julien Duvivier, 1948), Oliver Twist (David Lean, 1948), Divorce Italian Style (Pietro Germi, 1961), Lord of the Flies (Peter Brook, 1963), Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964), Closely Watched Trains (Jirí Menzel, 1966), War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk, 1966), Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968), The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko, 1977), The Getting Of Wisdom (Bruce Beresford, 1977), Empire of Passion (Nagisa Oshima, 1978), Watership Down (Martin Rosen, 1978), My Brilliant Career (Gillian Armstrong, 1979), Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979), The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999), The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke, 2001), The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002), Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, 2008), and many, many more!
September 28th
The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (Brett Story, 2016)
September 29th
Short + Feature: All This Jazz
When It Rains (Charles Burnett, 1995) and Ornette: Made in America (Shirley Clarke, 1985)
September 30th
The Loveless (Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery, 1981)
Source: Criterion