{"id":20164,"date":"2017-02-15T18:51:56","date_gmt":"2017-02-15T22:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=20164"},"modified":"2017-05-25T16:20:53","modified_gmt":"2017-05-25T20:20:53","slug":"the-criterion-collection-announces-may-2017-releases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2017\/02\/15\/the-criterion-collection-announces-may-2017-releases\/","title":{"rendered":"The Criterion Collection Announces May 2017 Releases"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today The Criterion Collection\u00a0announced their May 2017 line-up, and it’s huge — 12 titles!\u00a0Upgrades? Yes, the first of the year! And better than that? There are two, including one of the worst looking films from Criterion’s early DVDs.<\/p>\n

The blurbs are from The Criterion Collection\u2019s website (so are the links)\u00a0— go there to see the details on the supplements.<\/p>\n

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\"\"May 9, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles\u00a0<\/em>(1975)
\nd.\u00a0Chantal Akerman<\/p>\n

From\u00a0The Criterion Collection<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

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A singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman\u2019s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles<\/em> meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow (Delphine Seyrig)\u2014whose chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her son, and turning the occasional trick. In its enormous spareness, Akerman\u2019s film seems simple, but it encompasses an entire world. Whether seen as an exacting character study or one of cinema\u2019s most hypnotic and complete depictions of space and time, Jeanne Dielman<\/em> is an astonishing, compelling movie experiment, one that has been analyzed and argued over for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\"\"May 16, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

Othello\u00a0<\/em>(1952)
\nd.\u00a0Orson Welles<\/p>\n

From\u00a0The Criterion Collection<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

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Gloriously cinematic despite being made on a tiny budget, Orson Welles\u2019s Othello<\/em> is a testament to the filmmaker\u2019s stubborn willingness to pursue his vision to the ends of the earth. Unmatched in his passionate identification with Shakespeare\u2019s imagination, Welles brings his inventive visual approach to this enduring tragedy of jealousy, bigotry, and rage, and also gives a towering performance as the Moor of Venice, alongside Suzanne Cloutier as his innocent wife, Desdemona, and Miche\u00e1l MacLiamm\u00f3ir as the scheming Iago. Shot over the course of three years in Morocco, Venice, Tuscany, and Rome and plagued by many logistical problems, this fiercely independent film joins Macbeth<\/em> and Chimes at Midnight<\/em> in making the case for Welles as the cinema\u2019s most audacious interpreter of the Bard.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\"\"May 16, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

Good Morning\u00a0<\/em>(1959)
\n<\/em>d. Yasujiro Ozu
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

From\u00a0The Criterion Collection<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

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A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu\u2019s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, Good Morning<\/em> (Ohayo<\/em>) tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking as an act of resistance after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his childish protagonists. Shot in stunning Technicolor and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors\u2019 new washing machine and unemployed men look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy reworks Ozu\u2019s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . .<\/em> to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\"\"May 23, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dheepan\u00a0<\/em>(2015)
\nd.\u00a0Jacques Audiard<\/p>\n

From\u00a0The Criterion Collection<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

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With this Palme d\u2019Or\u2013winning drama, which deftly combines seemingly disparate genres, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard cemented his status as one of the titans of contemporary world cinema. In an arresting performance, the nonprofessional actor Antonythasan Jesuthasan (himself a former child soldier) stars as a Tamil fighter who, along with a woman and child posing as his wife and daughter, flees war-torn Sri Lanka only to land in a Paris suburb riddled with drugs. As the makeshift family embarks on a new life, Dheepan<\/em> settles into an intimate social-realist mode, before tightening, gradually and organically, into a dynamic turf-war thriller, as well as an unsettling study of the psychological aftereffects of combat. Searing and sensitive, Audiard\u2019s film is a unique depiction of the refugee experience as a continuous crisis of identity.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\"\"May 30, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 2<\/em><\/p>\n