Show Notes
We kick off 2026 with a Michelangelo Antonioni film which totally bodes well. La Notte (1961) is the second of three or four films about middle class discontents in a rapidly changing world, and the last of the four that Criterion has decided to show us. It also caps off nearly two months of Lost in Criterion episodes dealing with divorce or other marital troubles - especially if you cast that net wide enough to count the mother-in-law jokes of The Uninvited and take the title of I Married a Witch at face value. What we're saying is that it feels like someone in a decision making position within Criterion was going through some stuff, and since next week starts a boxset of 25 Samurai films, they are no beating those charges. Anyway, we don't like Antonioni or his stated purposes in making these films, so we once gain must come up with a better interpretation of the story in order to stay interested.
More from Lost in Criterion
Sometimes years of doing the podcast align in fun ways and we get to talk about David Cronenberg's Scanners (1981) in October without moving anything around. Scanners is a smorgasbord of body horror effects that starts with a bang and keeps going. But it's also a Parallax View-esque political thriller with murderous psychics. That is to say, it's great.
Pat is a huge fan of the Beatles, which he inherits from his dad, and which he this week fails to pass on to his own children. Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night (1964) is a movie those kids should like; it's fun and funny, it's The Beatles just on the cusp of being THE BEATLES. Popular as anything already, but not quite bigger than Jesus yet. The film is an interesting look at how that popularity is a prison for four guys in their early 20s.
Georges Franju's homage to/remake of Louis Feuillade's 1916 serial, Judex (1963) is a dreamy tale of revenge full of contrivance and illogic and every single frame is a masterpiece. Encountering films like this is biggest reward of doing the podcast.
Howard Hawks directs this grand western in which Montgomery Cliff maybe introduces Hollywood to The Method and John Wayne learns to act. It's a story about greed and America but it's not an open critique because it would be bad if we said America is bad. If nothing else John Wayne would quit the production.
Since first watching Taste of Cherry way back at Spine 45, we have looked forward to each Abbas Kiarostami the Criterion Collection has shown us. Color us intrigued when we found out that Like Someone In Love (2012) was made in Japan. Unfortunately, Pat maybe gets a little hung up on the fact that much of what the characters in this movie do don't really make sense within Japanese culture. Aside from that, it's a fantastic film.