The Criterion Channel is the carefully curated streaming service that was launched in the wake of the long-lost FilmStruck. Devoted exclusively to classic movies, famous art films, and world cinema, the service also features extensive commentaries from cinema scholars, enthused video essays, and all manner of tools to equip both outsiders and longtime devotees to the extended world of film.
And, just to sweeten the deal, The Criterion Channel also is home to many, many enthused introductions to their films, some of them from recognizable and beloved nerd icons. If you wanted to know more about deep-cut international films, maybe some of your nerd heroes can point the way.
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Stan Lee
The Criterion Channel features a nine-minute short film called “Marvel Mon Amour,” directed by Daniel Raim, and featuring the late great Stan “The Man” Lee himself, recounting his unlikely friendship with famed French New Wave director Alain Resnais. In the film, Lee talks about the glory days of writing Marvel Comics, and how he would occasionally get visits in Marvel’s New York office from celebrity fans like, of all people, Federico Fellini. Alain Resnais, the director of art house essentials like Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad was, evidently, a huge fan of Marvel, a close friend of Lee, and would even crash at Stan Lee’s guest house when he visited America.
The story goes that Resnais, convinced that Lee could make a good movie, convinced him to write a screenplay about pollution. Lee had never written a film before, but took a crack at it, penning what was called The Monster Maker. Learning about this script will immediately put it at the top of lists recounting Great Unfinished Cinema Projects.
Lee doesn’t talk much about watching Resnais’ films, but he does describe the famed director as “a great guy,” and was amused that Resnais always wore a red shirt. Seriously, watch this interview. It’s pretty special.
Guillermo del Toro
It should come as no surprise that Guillermo del Toro has a broad and eclectic taste in film. Thanks to The Criterion Channel’s interview series Adventures in Moviegoing, del Toro – along with many others – give brief three-to-four-minute rundowns on some great classics that have influenced them… and not always the ones you might think.
Del Toro loves Jean Cocteau’s 1946 version of Beauty and the Beast, which one might be able to predict. But del Toro is also an enormous fan of Jean Renoir’s 1931 love-triangle drama La Chienne, explaining that he used to project the film repeatedly for a cinema club he belonged to, slowly falling in love with it. He also takes a special moment to recommend a 1971 Mexican film called Canoa: A Shameful Memory, a movie largely unknown outside of Mexico, but one of the most revolutionary films for Mexico.
Brad Bird
The director of The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol reveals in his Adventures in Moviegoing interviews that he is drawn to certain deeply emotional – some might even say sentimental – cinematic fables. For instance, he loved Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 silent movie City Lights, a comedic weepie of the highest order. He explains that silent filmmaking was vital to understanding Pixar storytelling mandates, as the studio insisted their stories should be able to be followed even if you watched the movie with the sound off. “It keeps you honest.”
Surprising for Brad Bird is his affection for Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 film Yojimbo, a violent and cynical precursor to spaghetti Westerns. Yojimbo is certainly fun to watch, but it’s a dour film about a sarcastic man-with-no-name, played by Toshiro Mifune, who manipulates foolish street gangs into fighting one another. “You become very aware of what stars bring to a movie.”
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Roger Corman
Although B-movie god Roger Corman flooded the 1950s and ’60s with some of the silliest schlock ever seen on movie screens, he actually has quite refined taste as a moviegoer. He was responsible for, for instance, bringing Ingmar Bergman’s 1972 masterpiece Cries and Whispers to America, a film he says “had to do with love, emotion, sex, but also dread, hate, and pain especially.” The tone in Corman’s voice betokens a deep abiding respect for one of cinema’s greatest directors.
Indeed, Corman never recommends schlocky movies, tending to revel in Federico Fellini’s famous autobiography Amarcord, or Volker Schlöndorf’s dark war fantasy The Tin Drum. The Tin Drum, a bizarre film, was a bold adaptation of a famously unfilmable novel about a three-year-old boy who elects to stop aging when the Nazis rise to power in Germany. Corman admires Schlöndorf’s canny ability to simply get the job done.
Paul Feig
The affable director of comedies like Spy, Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters, and the amazing A Simple Favor is, perhaps predictably, drawn to classic comedy films, but his selections on Adventures in Moviegoing tend to skew to the dark side. For instance, Feig is a big fan of the greasy and unpleasant 1986 cult comedy Withnail and I. “A fish-out-of-water tale is great. Especially if that fish is insane.”
Feig is also fond of Jacques Tati’s subdued-yet-ambitious 1967 comedy Playtime. “I have really nice memories of it… but this was the one that resonated with me.” He notes that it “took its time in a satisfying way.” His four-minute intro is enough to get even the least curious to hunker down with a near-silent 124-minute comedy with no real plot. Hm… 124-minute comedies with almost no plot? Playtime may have influenced Feig in ways he didn’t realize.
Michael Cera
Perhaps possessed of the most unexpected taste, the actor from This Is the End, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and Youth in Revolt appears to be fond of dark and challenging psychosexual dramas. Would you expect, for instance, Cera to be a fan of the tragic 1975 groundbreaking German queer film Fox and His Friends? “I find that movie really heartbreaking,” Cera says. “It’s humorous how cruel the world is.” Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Fox’s director, was amazingly prolific and Cera notes the time he discovered Fassbinder as one of constant and repeated catharsis. “How could someone have more than 10 great films? It just keeps going and going.”
In addition to extolling his passion for Kurosawa (High and Low in his case) and Bergman (Scenes from a Marriage), Cera is particularly passionate about an obscure near-horror Japanese sex film by Nagisa Oshima called Empire of Passion. He notes that he watched it with friends and that “it’s a really uncomfortable movie to watch with other people.” That could be said of all the films in Cera’s interview series. They are all extreme, violent, emotionally harrowing, or sexually explicit. There are so many dark and intense films on The Criterion Channel, and Cera seems to have found a half dozen of the best ones.
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All of the interview segments listed above link directly to the films in question, so if the introductions interest you even in the slightest, you can begin watching immediately. If you want a look into the minds of your nerd heroes, just look them up on the The Criterion Channel, set aside some time, and prepare to see at least a dozen exhilarating films. You may find that high-minded, obscure, and perhaps lesser-known art films from all over the world are the very thing much of your favorite artists have been directly inspired by.
Source: IGN.com Nerd Heroes Discuss Their Favorite Movies on The Criterion Channel