CRITERION CORNER REVIEWS OF CRITERION’S OCTOBER SLATE!
October has been something of an unusual month for Criterion, in that the Blu-ray upgrades they’ve released these last few weeks are — on average — far more attractive and compelling than the four films new to the Collection. Seven mainline releases (plus that Aki Kaurismaki Eclipse Series) amounts to a spectacularly loaded non-holiday roster for our home video heroes, and the movies themselves are all over the map, although with Halloween right around the corner I guess it’s appropriate that all 7 of Criterion’s October titles are terrifying in one way or another. Island of Lost Souls explores the enduring horrors of the natural universe, Kuroneko is the ultimate ghost story for anyone who’s ever celebrated Caturday, The Four Feathers is a chilling glimpse at the lengths to which mentally impaired gentlemen will go to satisfy the demands of their psychoses, and Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman is a ghoulish soft-core nightmare about a legendary filmmaker being seduced by the sweet synth sounds of the 1980s. And that’s just the new spines. On the Blu-grade side of things you’ve got the multi-tiered cognitive dissonance of Matthew McConaughey wearing bell bottoms in a good movie, while aspiring filmmakers will be petrified by the inimitable mastery of Harakiri. Oh, and there’s also Salo, a film so bleak that any scenes not involving child-rape have to be considered comic relief, if only by sheer omission. And on that note, let’s dive in!
HEAD ON OVER TO MOVIES.COM TO READ MY REVIEWS OF CRITERION’S (almost) COMPLETE OCTOBER SLATE!*
