Criterion Collection - Online Cinematheque

1. Heat rises off this film. Everything about it is hot: the iconic eye-searing color palette, the characters’ respective tempers, and, of course, Lee’s hyperstylized, sweltering Bed-Stuy simulacrum. But there ain’t nothing sluggish about it.

2. An oily, sexy, ridiculous melodrama that once seen is never forgotten. Lauren Bacall seethes, and Dorothy Malone is scrumptious as a platinum-haired nympho who just wants to get out of Hadley.

3. Steven Soderbergh’s most personal—and certainly most eccentric—film. Totally balls-out and unapologetic. This kind of movie is really, really hard to get made these days.

4. I first saw this in 1995, when I was seventeen. My boyfriend actually left the room because it was too intense; he apparently couldn’t stomach the potent cocktail of Chloe Webb’s screeching and Gary Oldman’s rheumy-eyed menace. Even though the movie was set in a time we couldn’t remember, it mirrored our teen zeitgeist in a lot of ways. We’d just made it through the second wave of punk.

5. This is documentary in the purest sense: a document. It’s real and sickening, and it feels dirty to watch. And yet there’s something weirdly redemptive about the fact that the Maysles were there. They caught it, they bronzed it like a shoe, and it can’t ever be diminished.

6. Maysles double feature! I was reminded of this one the other day when I encountered a large female raccoon in the middle of Los Angeles. As she licked her paws with urbane nonchalance, I thought to myself, “Holy crap, Big Edie and Little Edie had one of those living in their wall. Hard-core.” I love how ceaselessly imaginative Little Edie is. “Staunch character” indeed. She’s like a fabulous nun in a one-woman order. And Big Edie is dry-as-a-bone hilarious. I don’t view this as a tragedy. There’s probably a Grey Gardens on every street in America.

7. Run! Don’t walk! I enjoy horror movies that involve fog, ooze, or anything nonhumanoid consuming humanity. You can choose to interpret them through a scholarly lens or simply enjoy the spectacle of blobitude.

8. Whoever it was who said “There is only Louise Brooks” was right on. With those sad manga-heroine eyes and immaculate bob haircut, she’s become like Marilyn Monroe for nerds. This film is as full of dread and emotion as any modern-day thriller—and all without the benefit of, y’know, audible dialogue. Spectacular.

9. A film that seems to get more important every year, and I don’t mean that facetiously. I don’t think it’s actually possible to make a flick about high school in the 1970s that surpasses Linklater’s. He did it. It’s done. We all got served. The characters have perfect names too: Pink, Mitch, O’Banion, etc.