Yet 95% of the time that Criterion Collection releases an old film, the reviewers give it four stars. It's always a "masterpiece" of some sort or other -- it's a Criterion. This mass-hypnosis has to stop. The "Collection" has MANY dud rounds in their chamber, and you would be better off buying $5.99 DVDs in many cases.
I guarantee you that if Robert Altman's Popeye were released in a Criterion 2-DVD set for $40 it would get 3.5, maybe 4 stars by most DVD reviewers. They would call it unique in the annals of American filmaking, its scatterbrained genius lost for nearly a generation. Now I like Popeye, but the film is a goddamn mess. It's worth a bit more than $5.99 but if that's what Amazon wants to sell it for, I won't argue.
Here is a small sampling of Criterion films that I feel are overrated:
- Kagemusha
- Alexander Nevsky
- The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
- Mon Oncle
- Playtime
- Bad Timing
- The River
- Good Morning
- Equinox
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- The Blob
- Sanjuro
- Koko: A Talking Gorilla
- Man Bites Dog
- Solaris
- Le Circle Rouge
- Armageddon
- Shoot The Piano Player
- Ran
Don't get me wrong -- many of these are worthwhile films and should be available in one form or other. Some folks like Jacques Tati, some folks like Sejuin Sezuki. Mine is a purely subjective list. Let's put it this way: The Criterion Collection is like an exclusive country club where the sunday brunch is almost always better than at the local IHOP.
My bone to pick is with the so-called "critics" out there. Just because it is a Criterion doesn't mean it should be treated differently from any other film. Realistically, they have to release all the Kurosawa stuff they can, yet it is indicative of the times we are living in when simply any of his works is given the "masterpiece theater" treatment.
Even a cursory look at their Web site is fraught with irritation. A documentary on John Cassavettes's film Faces called "Making Faces". An essay on actor Tetsuya Nakadai titled "The Eighth Samurai" -- as if the entire Japanese world revolves around the overrated Seven Samurai. Raymond Bernard's "astonishing masterpieces" of French cinema; "Terrence Malick has created some of the most visually arresting movies of the twentieth century", his Days of Heaven a "glorious period tragedy"...in short, there is never a missed opportunity to make an obvious reference or to inflate their product. Does anyone else find Joseph Cotten's performance in The Third Man something less than "brilliant"? To me, it's pretty straightforward and uneventful, even dull. It could only come from an American company pulling out all of the stops to make sure everyone knows just how cultured they are.
Despite it all, I am thankful for the Criterion Collection. They've been making money off of me for two decades. For every Kagemusha there is a brilliant Throne of Blood. Criterion should get a medal for preserving films such as: Night and the City, Alphaville, Jigoku, The Killer, Olympia, Double Suicide, My Man Godfrey, Red Beard, Gimme Shelter, Branded to Kill, F for Fake, Brief Encounter and many hundreds more.
But I refuse to wear my church suit to every meal. I like my "days" filled with Thunder, not Heaven.
1 comments:
Don't you undermine your own argument here a little? As you stated your list was subjective and it means nothing if someone else really likes all those films in the way you don't.
I mean, I like Jacques Tati a lot and I don't need to make convincing arguments as to why he belongs in the classic film canon. Do collectors really bother about the sales blurb drummed up by paid reviewers? I know I don't.
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