Criterion Collection Recommendations (Part 1 of 2)

I mentioned previously that Barnes & Noble is having a 50% off sale on the Criterion Collection that began on the 12th and is running through the 1st of August. Furthermore, I mentioned that I would provide a list of recommended titles that you should consider acquiring during the sale. What follows are the first five out of ten; the link attached to the film title will take you to its page on the Criterion Collection website, from which each synopsis has been taken, while the link attached to the prices will take you to their DVD listings at Barnes&Noble.com (if you opt for the Blu-ray format, they are the same price). Unless otherwise noted, these titles are likely to be found in most stores:



Revanche (Götz Spielmann, 2008) - Spine # 502 - "A gripping thriller and a tragic drama of nearly Greek proportions, Revanche is the stunning, Oscar-nominated international breakthrough of Austrian filmmaker Götz Spielmann. In a ragged section of Vienna, hardened ex-con Alex (the mesmerizing Johannes Krisch) works in a brothel, where he falls for Ukrainian hooker Tamara. Their desperate plans for escape unexpectedly intersect with the lives of a rural cop and his seemingly content wife. With meticulous, elegant direction, Spielmann creates a tense, existential, and surprising portrait of vengeance and redemption, and a journey into the darkest forest of human nature, in which violence and beauty exist side by side."

Supplements: A video interview with the director, Götz Spielmann; a half-hour "making-of" featurette; Foreign Land - an award-winning short film directed by Spielmann; a booklet featuring an essay by critic Armond White.

The sale price is $19.99.



Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962) - Spine # 302 - "Following the collapse of his clan, an unemployed samurai (Tatsuya Nakadai) arrives at the manor of Lord Iyi, begging to be allowed to commit ritual suicide on the property. Iyi’s clansmen, believing the desperate ronin is merely angling for a new position, try to force his hand and get him to eviscerate himself—but they have underestimated his beliefs and his personal brand of honor. Winner of the 1963 Cannes Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize, Harakiri, directed by Masaki Kobayashi is a fierce evocation of individual agency in the face of a corrupt and hypocritical system."

Supplements: Video introduction by Japanese-film historian Donald Richie; excerpt from a Directors Guild of Japan video interview with the director, Masaki Kobayashi; video interviews with star Tatsuya Nakadai and screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto; poster gallery; a booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Joan Mellen as well as a reprint of her 1972 interview with Kobayashi.

The sale price is $19.99.



M (Fritz Lang, 1931) - Spine # 30 - "A simple, haunting musical phrase whistled offscreen tells us that a young girl will be killed. “Who Is the Murderer?” pleads a nearby placard as serial killer Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) closes in on little Elsie Beckmann . . . In his harrowing masterwork M, Fritz Lang merges trenchant social commentary with chilling suspense, creating a panorama of private madness and public hysteria that to this day remains the blueprint for the psychological thriller."

Supplements: Audio commentary by German film scholars Anton Kaes and Eric Rentschler; Conversation with Fritz Lang - a 50-minute film by William Friedkin (director of The Exorcist); Claude Chabrol's M le maudit - a short film inspired by M; an interview with Chabrol about Lang's filmmaking technique; classroom tapes of M editor Paul Falkenberg discussing the film and its history; interview with Harold Nebenzal, the son of M producer Seymour Nebenzal; A Physical History of M; stills gallery with behind-the-scenes photos and production sketches by art director Emil Hasler; a booklet featuring an essay by film critic Stanley Kauffmann, a 1963 interview with Lang, the script for a missing scene, and contemporaneous newspaper articles.

The sale price is $19.99.



Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, 2008) - Spine # 493 -  "Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah is a stark, shocking vision of contemporary gangsterdom, and one of cinema’s most authentic depictions of organized crime. In this tour de force adaptation of undercover Italian reporter Roberto Saviano’s best-selling exposé of Naples’ Mafia underworld (known as the Camorra), Garrone links five disparate tales in which men and children are caught up in a corrupt system that extends from the housing projects to the world of haute couture. Filmed with an exquisite detachment interrupted by bursts of violence, Gomorrah is a shattering, socially engaged true-crime story from a major new voice in Italian cinema."

Supplements: Five Stories - a 60-minute documentary on the making of Gomorrah; video interviews with director Matteo Garrone and actor Toni Servillo; video interview with writer Roberto Saviano (the author of the book on which the film is based); short video piece featuring Toni Servillo and actors Gianfelice Imparato and Salvatore Cantalupo; deleted scenes; a book featuring an essay by critic Chuck Stephens.

The sale price is $19.99.



Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987) - Spine # 490 - "Wings of Desire is one of cinema’s loveliest city symphonies. Bruno Ganz is Damiel, an angel perched atop buildings high over Berlin who can hear the thoughts—fears, hopes, dreams—of all the people living below. But when he falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, he is willing to give up his immortality and come back to earth to be with her. Made not long before the fall of the Berlin wall, this stunning tapestry of sounds and images, shot in black and white and color by the legendary Henri Alekan, is movie poetry. And it forever made the name Wim Wenders synonymous with film art."

Supplements: Audio commentary with director Wim Wenders and actor Peter Falk; The Angels Among Us - a 2003 documentary featuring interviews with Wenders, Falk, actors Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander, writer Peter Handke, and composer Jürgen Knieper; "Wim Wenders Berlin Jan. 87" - an episode of the French television program Cinéma cinémas; interview with director of photography Henri Aleka; deleted scenes and outtakes; excerpts from Alekan la lumière (1985) and Remembrance: Film for Curt Bois (1982); notes and photos by art directors Heidi Lüdi and Toni Lüdi; a booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Atkinson and writings by Handke and Wenders.

The sale price is $19.99.


If you have a Barnes & Noble membership ($25/year), you will save an extra 10% if purchasing these titles in-store. Check back next week for my other five recommendations.

Theatrical Review: Unknown (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2011)

When I first saw the trailer for Unknown, I was left with an unyielding anticipation for the film. Not only would it star Liam Neeson, an actor whose return to prominence these last few years I have enjoyed very much, but it would sport an outstanding supporting cast, and it had a premise with which I was ready and willing to be engaged. Naturally, I rushed to the theater to catch the midnight opening this past Thursday, and while the film was not quite what I expected nor wanted, I was far from disappointed.

The film begins simply enough: Dr. Martin Harris (Neeson) and his wife, Elizabeth (January Jones) arrive in Berlin, where Martin is to give a presentation at a biotechnology conference. The couple take a taxi to their hotel, where Martin learns he has left a briefcase at the airport, and thus he leaves Elizabeth to check in while he hails another taxi to take him to retrieve the luggage. On the way to the airport, however, a freak accident leaves Martin in a coma, from which he awakens four days later with no immediate recollection of the accident, and he can only recall fragments of the events leading up to it. His doctor (Karl Markovics, whom you may recognize from The Counterfeiters) fills him on what happened. Martin, remembering the hotel he was going to stay at, promptly leaves the hospital to find his wife, who he is sure must be worried about being alone in a city she does not know as well as the fact that her husband has been missing for four days.

After an initial scuffle with the hotel staff due to Martin's lack of any identification, he spots his wife amid a throng of people and makes his way over to her. However, she does not seem to recognize him at all. Even stranger is when she calls out to "Martin," and a man quickly comes to her side. He is her husband, Dr. Martin Harris (Aidan Quinn). Baffled, Martin is escorted away from the crowd, now faced with the challenge of somehow proving that he is the real Dr. Martin Harris and that the man with his wife is an impostor. He has the hotel security attempt to contact a friend and colleague in the United States (a man named Rodney Cole, played by Frank Langella), but there is no answer. He has them check his profile on the website of the University he teaches at; the photo is not of him, but of the impostor. Obviously, someone went through a lot of trouble to take his place - but how, and why?

Several occurrences thereafter escalate the tension and assure Martin that he is not crazy - namely the fact that he is being pursued by menacing individuals intent on killing him (discreetly). He tracks down the cab driver that saved his life, Gina (Diane Kruger), in hopes that she will help him, learning in the process that she is an illegal immigrant from Bosnia who is trying to lay low. She is hesitant to get involved, naturally, but once it becomes apparent that the assassins after Martin intend to silence her as well, she has little choice. He then enlists the help of an ex-East Berlin Secret Police officer named Jürgen (portrayed by legendary actor Bruno Ganz, notable for his starring roles as Damiel in Wings of Desire and Adolf Hitler in Downfall). Jürgen begins a bit of investigating while Martin and Gina continue to elude their assassins and attempt to reach Elizabeth, whom Martin is convinced must surely be acting against her will.

Throughout the remainder of the film, most of the mystery unravels, but whether or not the secrets revealed are satisfactory depends entirely on the mindset of the viewer. Does it all really make any sense by the time the credits role? Not really. The answers the viewer receives are often preposterous, but that does not stop the film from being engaging. There are two exciting car chases and a few scenes of action that are generally edited efficiently, though there are moments of cutting between rapid close-ups framed at canted angles that, while I can acknowledged their effect of inviting the viewer into the disorientation of the moment, I do not particularly care for. Still, Unknown is ripe with outstanding performances (particularly from Neeson, Kruger, and Ganz) as well as enough exciting moments to make it a worthwhile thriller, so long as one does not expect the mystery to be laden with explanations grounded in conventional logic.

B+