Watch the following before it leaves the platform at the end of the month, it's really good!

https://www.criterionchannel.com/stories-we-tell

Stories We Tell, directed by Sarah Polley (Canada, 2012).

I also watched the couple of Menelik Shabazz films that are leaving the channel at the end of the month, The Story of Lovers Rock and Time and Judgement, and can highly recommend both.

Lineup for June has been announced and they'll be adding Tsai Ming-Liang's The Hole, which is a masterpiece. A slow cinema musical set in a mostly abandoned apartment building during a pandemic. Hoping it'll be a remastered version and they'll release it at some point, because it's a beautiful movie but the only version that has been available is pretty bad quality. Very much worth watching either way.

I can recommend two docs

Intimate Stranger by Alan Berliner (USA, 1991)

https://www.criterionchannel.com/intimate-stranger

and

The Woodmans by C. Scott Willis (USA, 2010)

https://www.criterionchannel.com/the-woodmans


...both leaving the platform at the end of June.

Not really a recommendation, but we watched Yentl earlier this week. The movie isn’t bad at all, but the music? Good lord, is it atrocious. (This is kind of a problem, seeing as it’s, you know, a musical.) It’s just one “soaring” mid-tempo ballad after another, with no sonic, thematic, or textural variety at all. The lyrics are just straightforward recitations of Yentl’s thoughts, except with rhymes.

Also, why would you cast Mandy Patankin in a musical in a role in which he doesn’t sing a single note?

They have the Mike Leigh film Topsy-Turvy with Leigh's commentary, and I highly recommend it.

iembalm wrote: Fri Jun 17, 2022 10:50 am They have the Mike Leigh film Topsy-Turvy with Leigh's commentary, and I highly recommend it.

I think Topsy-Turvy is Leigh’s best film.

Mike Leigh dome.

The Birth of the Goalie of the 2001 F.A. Cup Final
Naked
The rest

Looking forward to watching the newly transferred version of Chameleon Street once I can get some rest, and peace and quiet. Have heard a lot of good things about it.

On the Mike Leigh front: High Hopes is a swell, underrated film, also on the Channel. One of my favorites of his, in fact. Am still waiting for his BBC work to get the blu-ray treatment.

The documentaries of Kazuo Hara, especially The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On.



Also, Les Vampires is streaming but leaving at the end of the month. I can't recommend it strongly enough.