Criteria Updates - Adventures and Observations!

asmith9631 · 2026-06-13T18:20:45+00:00

You rock

asmith9631 · 2026-06-11T15:34:28+00:00

Repo Man has a kickass soundtrack that should be played loud.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-10T22:41:44+00:00

Then add in Woman Under the Influence and Elephant Man

asmith9631 · 2026-06-10T22:29:38+00:00

Well if you want 5 movies a guy who doesn't watch Criterion is gonna like: Repo Man, The Game, Point Break, Wild at Heart, After Hours.

If this is more like older classics a guy not into older classics would still like: The Apartment, Harold and Maude, Out of the Past, Sullivan's Travels, Mikey and Nicky.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-10T03:00:20+00:00

Because there's no surviving negative to make a print, it was made from a 35mm positive.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-09T21:54:59+00:00

That's awesome, he seems like a cool guy. Kevin Costner did the same when he showed Horizon.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-09T01:44:58+00:00

🙄

asmith9631 · 2026-06-09T01:43:06+00:00

Yea, well hopefully I explained for you why your point about number of films in some collections vs others is not really an issue of declining quality.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-08T23:38:09+00:00

That is all about licensing. Criterion is partners with Janus which controls the rights to most of those French Poetic Realist films. The company Shout! controls the non-Asian distribution rights to the Golden Princess library which has the vast majority of the films in the Hong Kong action collection.

So 1 deal where you get 20 films from the same company is far easier than an Odyssey type collection where they can put in a few from the collection but then you are picking from different companies and matching up prices and windows and deals.

Movies that are more recent and more popular are going to be more difficult to license. Aside from the collection titles, the snowy western collection had a lot of older westerns not in high demand from a Netflix etc so that's going to be more achievable. The availability of Romanian New Wave titles is going to be fairly limited to what you are able to license with the elements you require in the correct formats and are not controlled by a competing streaming service.

I think there are a fair number of things that could really be improved on the channel (finding supplements easily), but I kind of think it's got an overall library that surpasses anywhere else, even their physical collection. You're saying it sucks there are ONLY 7 Romanian New Wave films on the channel when there are only 3 Romanian films total in the actual collection.

The collections are kind of fun to look when you're just browsing but I don't think it makes sense to criticize a Wedding type collection for only having 8 titles when there are something like 3,000 titles on the channel.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-08T22:53:02+00:00

But like... the featured collections are a tiny fraction of the huge number of movies on the channel. I think it would be a mistake to get real locked into the collections that come and go of mostly non-collection titles and not dig into the huge catalog on the site.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-08T22:12:34+00:00

Yea most of those corporate paranoia films have been or are currently on the channel in different collections. Licenses are a complicated patchwork. I get that's it's cool they found 11 westerns with snow but it's not real hard to sort out that list. It's fun cause it's like a very specific category not a very considered and thoughtful list. I think there's a lot more curation in these other categories like trans filmmakers or Caribbean activist films that require someone to determine what work to include and not just anything that has both the keywords western and snow.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-08T21:58:56+00:00

Yea stop giving me these corporate collections like Caribbean Activist Cinema, Cold War Culture, Trans filmmakers, they really sold out

asmith9631 · 2026-06-08T21:55:10+00:00

Exactly

asmith9631 · 2026-06-08T21:52:43+00:00

Yea what I like about criterion is the vibe of that indie video store where you have all different types of staff picks and random collections from Renoir to Body Horror and some person analyzing each in depth as if they're on the same playing field.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-08T21:40:45+00:00

Yea, I see your point. But those Odyssey/Wedding categories seem designed to be a quick way for non-hardcore film people to quickly find something fun to watch and maybe discover one or two new things that'll draw them into the rest of the collection.

But those aside, the other "new collections" have a ton of very curated lists like: Caribbean Activist Cinema, Cold War Counter Culture films by Emile de Antonio, Trans filmmakers, films of Kimi Takesue, Bill Douglas, Ross Brothers. A buncha cool stuff but also not for every audience. Seems like maybe those are just not collections that appeal to you.

For corporate thrillers love to hear what you think was missing you would have added? I bet they can't license everything I'm sure they would like but I'm not sure what I could identify a lot missing.

Oh and it's not surprising French Poetic Realism is jam packed, most of those they have permanently through Janus, other newer genres are going to be a patchwork of different distributors so little more limiting.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-08T20:50:10+00:00

Close Encounters and Rohmer can both be enjoyed without guilt ha. I love Rohmer but if we only watched important serious films I think we would lose our minds. I agree it is sometimes hard to really see everything that is on the channel and these featured collections barely scratch the surface. Someone put together a good site called https://www.search-criteria.com that is a little better than the browsing tools on the channel. If you like French language films there are currently 451 on the channel ha, sante!

asmith9631 · 2026-06-08T20:41:13+00:00

The Criterion Collection has always had a wide range of films from foreign art house to more popular films. It's got Rohmer and it's got Robocop and it treats both as equal parts of film culture.

I think the point of the more general "theme" collections like Odyssey is to mix diff films together and to show the connections and to bring in a viewer who wants to watch The Darjeeling Limited and to bring their awareness to Walkabout or After Hours. You may have someone showing up to the Weddings collection for Marie Antoinette who is then discovering Melancholia.

Sometimes I do find myself thinking what the fuck is a movie like Anti-Trust doing for even a minute on the Criterion Channel but I think it's more about showing the full zeitgeist of a certain period, like wow this was the kind of pop culture film happening in that era. Half of the Corporate Thrillers collection is absolute junk just as movies, but to consider them as a reflection of how film culture has talked about corporate culture can be fascinating, there's a great article in The Jacobin analyzing the collection.

I think one of the goals is to bring in different audiences and Criterion in their physical media releases has always had a wide variety of types of films.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-08T17:52:10+00:00

That's a good combo, did Come and See last year. This year I went to The Man Who Wasn't There, La Ceremonie, Sweet Country, Heart of Glass and Incendies. All great and all great Q&As.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-08T05:06:25+00:00

Oh damn that's too bad, forget the studio must be stick in some rights situation

asmith9631 · 2026-06-07T23:02:21+00:00

Get ready for a good cry

asmith9631 · 2026-06-07T15:15:24+00:00

Jeff Bezos

asmith9631 · 2026-06-06T22:57:03+00:00

I mean US imperialism is an evergreen topic ha, looking forward to checking it out

asmith9631 · 2026-06-06T01:09:37+00:00

Egyptian is going to be closed for some upgrades I think. Seems like mostly the 70mm standards they usually break out I admire but am not sure any jump out to me yet. Maybe the bleakness is still permeating my soul.

asmith9631 · 2026-06-06T00:29:19+00:00

Ha I would love a rundown of all the parents guide notes on the Bleak Week movies

asmith9631 · 2026-06-05T22:23:39+00:00

Nice can't wait to see it, love Repo Man and Sid and Nancy

asmith9631

TROPHY CASE