Criterion in August

Criterion's newly announced titles for August range from "well, finally" to "thanks, but..." The most obvious "finally" is a three-film set of Josef von Sternberg silents–Underworld, The Last Command and The Docks of New York–which had been speculated to be on their way for years. Still under the "finally" category is Maurice Pialat's L'enfance nue. After Criterion released Pialat's amazing À nos amours in 2006, we might have expected a number of the director's other films to surface, but so far only a crummy disc of Loulou and an out-of-print one for Van Gogh are the only other Pialat's on home video in the US (Masters of Cinema in the UK have been putting out most of his oeuvre on DVD over the past couple years). While I wouldn't necessarily throw Terry Zwigoff's Crumb or his first film, a documentary called Louie Bluie, into the "no thanks" category, as long as these releases don't lead to Criterion putting out any of his fiction features. And, well, as there's only one other title left (on the main line), you can guess my feelings toward Marcel Camus' Black Orpheus [Orfeu Negro], which will get a remastered reissue DVD release as well as a Blu-ray on the 17th. The Eclipse set will be the First Films of Akira Kurosawa–Sanshiro Sugata, Sanshiro Sugata 2, The Most Beautiful and The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail–all four of which were first issued last December in the AK 100 box set. Aside from Black Orpheus, Crumb will be the only other Blu-ray release in August. I have a non-Criterion DVD update coming up soon.

The Decade List: (Some of) The Worst Films (2001)

Some annotations: 2001 was a bad year for brother filmmaking teams. Whether together (From Hell, Out Cold) or separate (Head Over Heels, Happy Campers), I'm not sure there was a successful fraternal outing in 2001; the Waters brothers, really, have only been involved in two decent films (Heathers, Mean Girls). Though I was instructed not to see Tony's Spy Game, the Scott brothers didn't fare as well either. While the year was also bad for a few repeat actors (Bijou Phillips and the late Brad Renfro both starred in two films together), it was the worst for poor Penélope Cruz, who shows up in four of the worst films I saw from 2001; I don't even like to remember there was a time where I wasn't smitten with her (or a time when she dated someone with a similar last name to hers). But I wouldn't like to imply that all the films I've listed below are without some merit, so I've saved the salvagable bits from a few of the films below.

All About Lily Chou-Chou: the opening scene; Blow: Paul Reubens; Brotherhood of the Wolf: Monica Bellucci; Bully: Bijou Phillips, surprisingly, and Nick Stahl; Ghost World: the Bollywood film Enid (Thora Birch) dances along to from Gumnaam, but not the fact that she's dancing along to it; Life as a House: when angsty, Marilyn Manson-loving teen hooker Hayden Christensen (whose character was obviously researched by watching news programs about "troubled teens") sexually asphyxiates himself whilst masturbating (about 3 minutes in); Moulin Rouge!: the tango scene to The Police's "Roxanne," the only scene where they appear to have let someone other than the blind, speedhead edit the film; The Shipping News: both Judi Dench, whose not-so-secretive bulldyke pisses on the ashes of her dead brother, and Cate Blanchett, who would play crazy again opposite Dench (again playing a lesbian) in the more wonderfully awful Notes on a Scandal; Suriyothai: Nothing, but I should mention that I only saw the original Thai version and not the Francis Ford Coppola edit, which had to be better than what I saw; and Vanilla Sky: Cameron Diaz defending her intense feelings for Tom Cruise by yelling, "I swallowed your cum; that means something!"

- 13 Ghosts - dir. Steve Beck - USA/Canada
- All About Lily Chou-Chou - dir. Shunji Iwai - Japan
- Blow - dir. Ted Demme - USA
- Brotherhood of the Wolf [Pacte des loups] - dir. Christophe Gans - France
- Bully - dir. Larry Clark - USA/France
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin - dir. John Madden - UK/USA/France
- Crush - dir. John McKay - UK/Germany
- Don't Tempt Me [Sin noticias de Dios] - dir. Agustín Díaz Yanes - Spain/Mexico/Italy/France
- From Hell - dir. Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes - USA
- Ghost World - dir. Terry Zwigoff - USA/UK/Germany
- Hannibal - dir. Ridley Scott - USA/UK
- Happy Campers - dir. Daniel Waters - USA
- Head Over Heels - dir. Mark Waters - USA
- Hey, Happy - dir. Noam Gonick - Canada
- His Secret Life [Le fate ignoranti] - dir. Ferzan Ozpetek - Italy/France
- Life As a House - dir. Irwin Winkler - USA
- Mad Love [Juana la Loca] - dir. Vicente Aranda - Spain/Portugal/Italy
- Moulin Rouge! - dir. Baz Luhrmann - Australia/USA
- Original Sin - dir. Michael Cristofer - USA/France
- Out Cold - dir. Brendan Malloy, Emmett Malloy - USA
- Pearl Harbor - dir. Michael Bay - USA
- Planet of the Apes - dir. Tim Burton - USA
- Prozac Nation - dir. Erik Skjoldbjærg - USA/Germany
- River, The [Joki] - dir. Jarmo Lampela - Finland
- Shipping News, The - dir. Lasse Hallström - USA
- Suriyothai [The Legend of Suriyothai] - dir. Prince Chatrichalerm Yukol - Thailand
- Tart - dir. Christina Wayne - USA/Canada
- Tomcats - dir. Gregory Poirier - USA
- Vanilla Sky - dir. Cameron Crowe - USA