Paul Robeson as a con man in disguise in BODY AND SOUL (1925), which proved his charisma didn't rely solely on his wonderful voice.

Rain in December always makes me think of Wonder Boys and my rust belt liberal arts college creative writing professor who started the first class saying "Wonder Boys has already been written; please do not try to write Wonder Boys."

Based on no evidence but ourselves, we have decided we are the world's tallest Criterion podcast.

It's a bleak midwinter on Lost in Criterion, as Donovan H. joins us for our annual Holiday Special, a break from Criterions where we discuss a film that takes place during the end of year holidays but are not holiday movies. This year it's the late William Friedkin's To Live and Die in LA (1985).

Tonight you will be visited by two ghosts that you think are one ghost until the doctor who cares about your dog more than you do figures out who your new girlfriend's mom is. Lewis Allen's The Uninvited (1944) is complicated but fun, throwing a little seriousness at a haunted house flick.

It's so fucked up to have been a kid during the D&D is the devil freakout and the Tipper Gore dirty lyrics freakout and live to see the teen suicide machine get such a pass.

Sure only 25% of the Rene Clair films we've seen ended with the creation of a worker-owned paradise, but that's a much better percentage than any other director we've seen so we had high hopes. I Married a Witch (1941), his second US film, is sexy and fun, but not as political as we wanted.

We finish up our boxset of Roberto Rossellini directing Ingrid Bergman with Journey to Italy (1954), a film about the history and people of Naples, Italy, giving a British couple an existential crisis.

Daily bunny no.3156 can give you some recommendations

Sam the Eagle's "Why am I here?" in A Muppet Family Christmas

Our November Patreon bonus celebrates Tatsuya Nakadai with a look at Keisuke Kinoshita's Immortal Love (1961) a beautiful film elevated by its location shooting and a frankly very weird soundtrack for a Japanese melodrama. Just $1 gets you access to this and all our non-Criterion episodes:

Strong floor? No, ceiling!

60 years before Pope Francis showed that making Catholicism a bit more St. Francis-like could still get the reactionaries to call you antichrist, Rossellini followed up his St. Francis biopic with Europe '51, a tale of how living a St. Francis-like life in 1950s Italy will get you committed.

If you're looking for an Udo Kier film to watch, may I recommend BACURAU (2019), starts off like a worthy slice of sociopolitical realism and ends up as demented Brazilian neo-western exploitation. Don't read anything else, just see it. Contains one of my favourite film moments of the 21st century.

We kick off 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman with Stromboli (1950) a film that was incredible controversial in its time not for its content but for its director and star's personal lives.

50 years ago today, this photo of the Chicago press conference for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was taken. In the background you can see Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert — in the clothes they wore in the Siskel & Ebert pilot, which was also shot that same day.

!!!

RIP Todd Snider One time I was working the coffee bar at a hotel and looking up tickets for Todd's show that night and wondering if I could afford it when Todd came in for coffee and by the time we stopped talking he'd given me 3 CDs, a signed notebook, and 3 tickets to the show.

This week we're talking Eduaord Molinaro's La Cage aux Folles (1978) which is a funny movie, but we're more interested in one of the disc's bonus features, a brief history of drag and gender-nonconformity from Laurence Senelick.

Maybe Lyonne can use her AI company to recast herself into the main role after the Dinklage season premieres.

A lot of good to be said about this film, but also the ceasefire scene is my favorite Christmas movie. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzW...

I think there are portions of this episode where we forget that The Great Dictator came out in 1940. Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be (1942) is not the earliest anti-Nazi comedy, but dang if it's not equally the best. Remember that fascists are absurd, and deserve to be mocked at every turn.

‘It takes a lot of energy to be an asshole’ Steven Soderbergh knows the score. Interview by @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social www.vulture.com/2017/11/stev...

Happy Halloween! Just posted is this month's Patreon Bonus, where we look at the Jim Henson and Nicholas Roeg 1990 adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches and wonder why it wasn't better. $1 gets you access at www.patreon.com/lostincriterion

Our second in back to back Satyajit Ray films, Charulata (1964) is among the most visually stunning films we've seen, so viscerally (and visually) capturing longing.

The Criterion Collection is finally showing us two (or three) more Satyajit Ray films! This week we talk about the beautiful The Big City (1963), and as a bonus get to see the more cynical but equally lyrical The Coward (1965).

I don’t know if there’s a more perfect illustration of the utter fucking nonsense that creative pollution by AI will produce than this choice to illustrate the power of Paramount’s new “localization” and “customization” technology by face-swapping Brad Pitt into the lead role of GET OUT

Bought the Olympic's boxset during the flash sale, which we will not begin to cover until June 2029 because I still believe in the future.

Saw an armored car for a company called LOOMIS today and maybe it's just the time of year, but that's not a name that inspires security to me.

tremendously admire his work and the way he talks abt an exploratory creative process BUT it is very sad to me how little that sort of thinking & working is possible. like u need to have an enormously successful career in a medium that isn't yet perfectly industrialized in order to get to this point

We face off with the existential dread of a midlife crisis with John Frankenheimer's Seconds (1966), a movie where money and technology can make you hotter (and can provide you with artwork to claim you made) but can't make you like yourself.

Goddamn @theamynicholson.bsky.social COOKED with this FRANKENSTEIN review. Bow down to one of the greats. www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

Learned that an anonymous outside expert on submersibles did an interview with the OceanGate Titan investigation, and they released a transcript, with all the names redacted. The first line of his first answer? "I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic."

RIP to Drew Struzen, the greatest to ever do it. 🙌

Start off Indigenous People's Day right with this fantastic film!

Gigli = better than AI

The cheeky Criterion Collection put out @realgdt.bsky.social's The Devil's Backbone as Spine #666. This week we talk about the film, del Toro's twin driving forces of anti-fascism and neat special effects, and how war is bad for kids (and adults), a lesson human society apparently cannot remember.

I know I'm not the best at it, but in 12 years of a weekly podcast I'm still not near spending $400,000 on it.

Five Nights at Maud's

It's food, glorious food, on this week's episode as we talk Gabriel Axel's delicious ode to art, Babette's Feast (1987).

Amazon have removed the guns from their Bond posters, giving the tantalising impression that Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan think you’re a wanker.

this is basically portland's version of a haka

Just posted this month's Patreon bonus episode: just $1 and you can hear us talk about golf, the Doctrine of Discovery, if something is folk horror, how pacifism can reinforce the structures of racial capitalism, and Ryszard Bugajski's 1991 film Clearcut starring the late Graham Greene.

A dumb sentimental way I interact with movies now is that I tear up at depictions of radical community, so I'm the weirdo crying through One Battle After Another.

Cannot wait to do an episode on One Battle After Another after its inevitable Criterion release in 12 years when we get to it.

We may spend a little too much time talking about San Francisco Seals' manager Lefty O'Doul's relationship to baseball in Japan, but eventually this episode is about Kenji Mizoguchi's fantastic and melancholic film The Life of Oharu (1952).

Hey real quick, why did we gain 4000 new listeners in Brazil yesterday?

If they had the capacity to do this, it would be really bad. And they probably will try to do a couple of high profile examples to make you think they *do* have the capacity. But like a lot of stuff, this is a memo designed to get you to voluntarily stop doing stuff they don’t like.