The Criterion Channel’s January 2020 Lineup
As the 2010s come to a close, we’re welcoming a new decade on the Criterion Channel with a look back at how movies from half a century ago imagined the future in our Seventies Sci-Fi series, featuring strange journeys to outer space, visions of dystopia, and modern classics by Stanley Kubrick, John Carpenter, George Lucas, and other masters of the genre. Also playing are major tributes to art-cinema legends Luis Buñuel and Jane Campion, a centenary celebration of Federico Fellini, breakthrough work by the brilliant young filmmakers Chloé Zhao and Khalik Allah, a new documentary about Paul Schrader by Alex Ross Perry, and much more!
** indicates programming available only in the U.S.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1
Directed by Susan Seidelman
Featuring a new introduction by the filmmaker
Susan Seidelman first made her mark with her vividly gritty debut, Smithereens (the first American independent film to screen in competition at Cannes), and has continued crafting offbeat comedies built around memorably messy, idiosyncratic women.
Short films: And You Act Like One Too (1976), Yours Truly, Andrea G. Stern (1979). Features: Smithereens (1982), Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Cookie (1989), She-Devil (1989).
THURSDAY, JANUARY 2
From the Archive: Taxi Driver
With a 1986 audio commentary featuring director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader
Robert De Niro gives one of his most riveting performances in this powerful study of a dangerously fractured psyche let loose in grimy 1970s New York City.
3 Faces
Streaming premiere
The latest from Iranian metafiction master Jafar Panahi is a slyly comic, quietly revelatory tale of community and solidarity under the eye of oppression.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 3
Double Feature: Preach It!
Elmer Gantry and Wise Blood
Beware of false prophets in a pair of daring adaptations of American literary masterworks.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 4
A behind-closed-doors look at the American legal system that is as riveting as it is spare, Sidney Lumet’s electrifying, iconic adaptation of Reginald Rose’s teleplay stars Henry Fonda as the dissenting member on a heated jury.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 5
Seventies Sci-Fi
Streaming for one month only!
Featuring: No Blade of Grass (Cornel Wilde, 1970), A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971), The Omega Man (Boris Sagal, 1971), THX 1138 (George Lucas, 1971), Z.P.G. (Michael Campus, 1972)**, Westworld (Michael Crichton, 1973), Soylent Green (Richard Fleischer, 1973), Dark Star (John Carpenter, 1974), The Terminal Man (Mike Hodges, 1974), Rollerball (Norman Jewison, 1975), A Boy and His Dog (L. Q. Jones, 1975), Death Race 2000 (Paul Bartel, 1975), Shivers (David Cronenberg, 1975), The Ultimate Warrior (Robert Clouse, 1975), Logan’s Run (Michael Anderson, 1976), God Told Me To (Larry Cohen, 1976), Demon Seed (Donald Cammell, 1977), Mad Max (George Miller, 1979)
MONDAY, JANUARY 6
Criterion Collection Edition #555
TUESDAY, JANUARY 7
Short + Feature: Family Feuds
The Hypnotist and The Little Foxes
Home is where the betrayal is in a catty Bette Davis classic and a gloriously camp melodrama homage.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8
Directed by Agnès Jaoui
In her wry, sharply observed studies of class and social relationships, actor, writer, and director Agnès Jaoui zeroes in on the follies and foibles of the French bourgeoisie and the neuroses and power plays that consume her hilariously self-absorbed characters.
Featuring: The Taste of Others (2000), Look at Me (2004)**
THURSDAY, JANUARY 9
Three by the Dardenne Brothers
Urgent, unembellished, and uncompromising, these realistic tales set on the margins of society unfold like taut thrillers of the everyday, displaying the searing emotional intensity and deeply felt social conscience that have made Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne among the most lauded filmmakers working today.
Featuring: La promesse (1996), L’enfant (2005), The Kid with a Bike (2011)
FRIDAY, JANUARY 10
Double Feature: She’s a Femme Fatale
Pandora’s Box and Something Wild
A legendary Louise Brooks performance inspires Jonathan Demme’s freewheeling screwball joyride.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 11
Saturday Matinee: Zazie dans le métro
A brash and precocious ten-year-old (Catherine Demongeot) comes to Paris for a whirlwind weekend with her rakish uncle in Louis Malle’s audacious comedy, packed wall-to-wall with visual gags, editing tricks, and effects.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 12
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Featuring a 1964 profile of Buñuel from the series Cinéastes de notre temps
One of cinema’s great iconoclasts and mischief makers, Spanish master Luis Buñuel combined surrealist non sequiturs with taboo-shattering attacks on the bourgeoisie, the church, and social hypocrisy to create some of the most incendiary films of the twentieth century.
MONDAY, JANUARY 13
Observations on Film Art No. 34: Vampyr—The Genre Film as Experimental Film
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s haunting 1932 masterpiece has long occupied a singular place in film history, resting somewhere at the intersection of horror, avant-garde cinema, and waking nightmare. In this episode of Observations on Film Art, Professor David Bordwell explores how Dreyer managed to honor the conventions of horror cinema while at the same time breaking the boundaries of the genre wide open through his experimental use of sound, shadows, and camera movement.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 14
Short + Feature: Colt Classics
Seide and The Black Stallion
There’s no better friend than a horse in these two moving coming-of-age films.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15
Songs My Brothers Taught Me
The stunning feature debut from Chloé Zhao (The Rider) is a gorgeous, elegiac vision of contemporary Native American struggle and resilience.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 16
Betty Blue (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986)
Criterion Collection Edition #1002
A Dog’s Life
Dogs have their day in these tail-wagging tributes to our furry companions, featuring faithful four-legged friends, killer canines, telepathic pooches, and more.
Including: A Dog’s Life (Charles Chaplin, 1918), Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1952), Good-bye, My Lady (William A. Wellman, 1956), A Boy and His Dog (L. Q. Jones, 1975), Baxter (Jérôme Boivin, 1989), Le quattro volte (Michelangelo Frammartino, 2010), Heart of a Dog (Laurie Anderson, 2015)
FRIDAY, JANUARY 17
Double Feature: Poison Pens
The Letter and Le Corbeau
Explosive letters have deadly consequences in these dark tales of write and wrong.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 18
Starring Danny Kaye
A beloved, one-of-a-kind entertainer who honed his animated, rapid-fire performance style on the Borscht Belt circuit, Brooklyn-born comedian, actor, dancer, and singer Danny Kaye lit up the screen with his exuberant charm and inventive wit. Perfect for the whole family, this selection of classic Kaye is a riotous testament to a true original whose talent continues to dazzle and delight.
Saturday Matinee: The Court Jester
Danny Kaye delivers an antic, tongue-twisting tour de force in this uproarious swashbuckling satire.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 19
Starring Burt Lancaster
Capable of projecting both powerful physicality and gentle sensitivity, Burt Lancaster brought his megawatt star power to a wide array of unforgettable roles, embodying heroes, villains, and morally complex everymen with an innate dignity and gravitas. Moving between Hollywood blockbusters and independent passion projects—many made through his own production company—Lancaster left behind an extraordinary body of work that reflects both his penchant for risk-taking roles and his commitment to progressive social causes.
MONDAY, JANUARY 20
Creative Marriages
Celebrating Federico Fellini’s 100th birthday!
Cinema’s great husband-and-wife carnival act, Italian maestro Federico Fellini and actress Giulietta Masina gave birth to a new form of filmic expression that blended earthy realism with extravagant flights of surrealist fancy. These twin masterworks document the evolving creative and personal relationship between two indispensable artists whose legacies are forever entwined.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 21
Short + Feature: Guilty Pleasures
Good Intentions and Death of a Cyclist
A stop-motion thriller and a searing Spanish noir explore the dynamics of crime and self-punishment.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22
Directed by Jane Campion
One of contemporary cinema’s most singular and captivating voices, Jane Campion brings a piercing psychological insight and radiantly expressive visual style to her intense, revelatory explorations of female subjectivity and desire. After becoming the first woman awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes and only the second to be nominated for an Academy Award for best director, she has continued to fearlessly probe the most intimate dimensions of women’s experiences in ambitious, uncompromising films.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 23
Four Films by Khalik Allah
Featuring a new interview with the filmmaker
Growing out of his acclaimed work as a photographer documenting the lives of homeless addicts in New York, Khalik Allah’s visionary films are dreamlike drifts through the margins of society—gritty and sublime portraits of the disenfranchised and dispossessed that, in their infinite compassion and philosophical insight, achieve an almost spiritual transcendence.
Panique (Julien Duvivier, 1946)
Criterion Collection Edition #955
FRIDAY, JANUARY 24
Double Feature: Jackpot!
Bay of Angels and Atlantic City
Jacques Demy and Louis Malle spin the roulette wheel of fate in these tales of love and gambling.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 25
Saturday Matinee: Great Expectations
One of the great translations of literature into film, David Lean brings Charles Dickens’s masterpiece to robust, beautifully photographed life.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 26
Meet the Filmmakers: Paul Schrader
A titan of the American cinema who emerged from the ranks of the 1970s movie brats with his era-defining screenplay for Taxi Driver, writer-director Paul Schrader has pursued a defiantly singular vision in his provocative explorations of guilt and salvation in a soul-sick world. In this episode of Meet the Filmmakers, director Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell, Listen Up Philip) visits the ever-iconoclastic auteur on the set of his acclaimed latest film, First Reformed, where Schrader reflects on the highs and lows of his legendary career.
Directed by Paul Schrader
One of American cinema’s most provocative moral philosophers, Paul Schrader has, for over forty years, probed the guilty soul of the modern world in a relentless search for existential meaning. Grappling with weighty themes of faith, violence, sin, and redemption, Schrader’s films are fascinating windows into his personal obsessions.
MONDAY, JANUARY 27
The Fugitive Kind (Sidney Lumet, 1960)
Criterion Collection Edition #515
TUESDAY, JANUARY 28
Short + Feature: Prime Cuts
Carving Magic and Delicatessen
A meat lover’s special of atomic-age kitsch and surreal French whimsy.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29
Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001)
Criterion Collection Edition #259
THURSDAY, JANUARY 30
Until the End of the World (Wim Wenders, 1991)
Criterion Collection Edition #1007
FRIDAY, JANUARY 31
Double Feature: One Play, Two Masterpieces
The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir) and The Lower Depths (Akira Kurosawa)
Jean Renoir and Akira Kurosawa offer searing visions of life on the bottom rung of society.