There is a lot of love about Paul Schrader's film
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters -- the visuals are incredible and the score by Phillip Glass is a world-class one, and it's further proof that Paul Schrader is the gayest "straight" man on Earth -- but I've always been disappointed by it all the same because the real life writer and filmmaker and homosexual fascist Yukio Mishima was actually more fascinating and more deranged and, well, hotter (see up top), than the movie ever is. I'll always recommend
Mishima's own film called Patriotism over Schrader's sort-of-biopic any day. (And Criterion has released that movie themselves.)
But since Criterion is now
upgrading their Mishima disc to 4K come June I'll go ahead and admit I cannot wait to see the new restoration -- I sort of wish they'd add
Patriotism itself to the special features of this disc if they're not going to upgrade that one from DVD but I guess we can't have (anything) everything.
That said the June release I'm the most excited about isn't that one -- it's
William Friedkin's Sorceror in 4K! I've admitted before that I only saw this movie about five years ago for the first time -- I know I'm not alone in being thrown off by its title; I thought it was a fantasy movie for the longest time a la
Krull or
Zardoz aka some bargain basement shit from a period and genre that I'm not super interested in. But no it's a remake of Clouzot's 1953 thriller
Wages of Fear (which Criterion helpfully
just dropped onto 4K earlier this month) and it turns out that it ranks among Friedkin's greatest accomplishments. It's a spectacular film, tense and hypnotic and so much stranger than you're expecting it to be. It haunts me. I got to see it on a big screen last year and man alive does it play like gangbusters that way. Anyway it immediately became one of my favorite Friedkins and I wish I'd seen it earlier. (And speaking of amazing scores the one here from Tangerine Dream is The Shit.)
And then further on in June we've got
The Wiz hitting 4K -- the 1978 reworking of
The Wizard of Oz with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson has always creeped me out in a not good way, but I know it's iconic to a lot of people so I'll shut up! -- and then
the 1988 documentary Thelonious Monk Straight, No Chaser about the jazz musician, which, yeah, not a jazz person so this isn't for me either. So moving right along...
... because this is a loaded month, there's also the 1939 screwball comedy
Midnight starring Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, and John Barrymore -- I have never seen this. Any fans? It was written by Billy Wilder so I'm sure it's crackling and it's got one of those great fake-identity screwball plots where Colbert infiltrates Parisian society pretending to be a Hungarian noblewoman. I'm sure it's fun and thankfully
it's on Criterion Channel to watch right now so maybe I'll watch it this weekend to gauge my interest in a hard copy.
Next up there's François Girard's 1993 pianist bio-pic
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould which is one that's been on my to-watch list for decades now but I've never gotten around to. 1993 was right around when I was beginning to turn into a movie dork properly so I remember hearing a lot about this one at the time, but we've never crossed paths. Its pastiche approach to its story, which tells Gould's life in 32 separate chunks that range from animation to interview -- always sounded like a treat so I'll definitely be seeking this one out at last, for sure, now that I have been re-reminded. Oh and the final June drop is
Terry Gilliam's masterpiece Brazil in 4K. Certainly no slouch to end with there!
Posts
