The Criterion Collection

Wes Anderson’s deep-sea adventure The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou resurfaces this week on a handful of big screens. In what can only be a happy programming coincidence, the 2004 comedy, featuring the director’s signature eye-popping colors and his grandest-scale sets, will show in all its super-widescreen glory at Doc Films in Chicago (February 17), Cornell Cinema in Ithaca (February 17), and the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles (February 22 and 23). It’s a wide, wide world this week: other Criterion titles shot in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio filling North American repertory screens include Luis Buñuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid (February 18, 20, and 21), François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim (February 22), and Louis Malle’s The Lovers (February 22 and 23) at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York; Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris at Vancouver’s Pacific Cinematheque (February 18 and 19); and Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt at International House Philadelphia (February 22).

Cinematic spectacle comes in all shapes and sizes, though, as evidenced in theaters from California to New England. Los Angeles’s Egyptian Theatre takes a trip to the future and comes back with quite a photo collection in Chris Marker’s La Jetée (February 19); the Los Angeles County Museum of Art soaps it up with Douglas Sirk’s Magnificent Obsession (February 21); and the same city’s New Beverly Cinema counts on Fellini’s 8½ (February 17). In Berkeley, the Pacific Film Archive dances away with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (February 22). San Francisco’s Castro Theatre is crazy for Kirk Douglas with a double feature of Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory and Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (February 22). Seattle’s SIFF Cinema at the Uptown takes a tense ride with Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (February 17–23), stopping off in Glasgow for Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher (February 22). Salt Lake Film Society gets hot under the collar for Jean-Pierre Melville’s Léon Morin, Priest (February 17–23). And Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s World on a Wire strings viewers along at Omaha’s Film Streams (February 19 and 21).

Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning documentary Harlan County USA strikes at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago (February 19). Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai cuts a swath to the Indiana University Cinema in Bloomington (February 20). The Indianapolis Museum of Art suffers from a case of stolen identity with Stanley Donen’s Charade (February 17). The Bryn Mawr Film Institute opens House (February 17), Nobuhiko Obayashi’s insane horror film. The International House Philadelphia is touched by an angel with Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire (February 18). The Cornell Cinema in Ithaca, New York, dries out with Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert (February 17–19). Pleasantville, New York’s Jacob Burns Film Center travels to the future and past with Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (February 18­ and 20). In New York City, Preston Sturges’s The Lady Eve charms and allures at the Museum of the Moving Image (February 19), and Truffaut’s The Last Metro puts on a show at the Walter Reade Theater (February 21)—also playing there this weekend of potential interest to Criterion viewers: James Franco’s My Own Private River (February 19), an experimental re-edit of Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho. Cinestudio in Hartford gets wistful with Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (February 19–22). The Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville, Maine, takes it to the streets with Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (February 22). Meanwhile, up in Toronto, Robert Bresson’s Les dames du Bois de Bologne schemes its way into TIFF Lightbox (February 23).

Moving overseas: Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante keeps sailing through February at London’s BFI Southbank—also there this week are John Cassavetes’s Faces (February 19 and 20) and Godard’s Vivre sa vie (February 20). Robert Altman’s Nixon one-man show Secret Honor sweats it out at Paris’s Cinémathèque française (February 18). René Clément’s Zola adaptation Gervaise grips viewers at the Institut Lumière in Lyon (February 18). Brussels’s Belgian Cinematek offers Carlos Saura’s Cría cuervos . . . (February 19), Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning (February 20), and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Mamma Roma (February 20). Olivier Assayas’s Carlos takes no prisoners at the Munich Filmmuseum (February 22). And the Jerusalem Cinematheque rides off with Renoir’s The Golden Coach (February 17) and screens the last two parts of Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (February 19 and 20).