Eight (No) Mountains, High Enough

There are now (sort of) two Criterion Days per month! Last month they began announcing their "Janus Contemporaries" series, which is an off-shoot of the Criterion Collection that will be putting out Janus movies that premiere in theaters and then on the Criterion Channel -- aka exactly the way you'd pray that streamers would behave with their properties. Give them all physical media releases dammit! Anyway they announced their three November releases today and one of them is one of my favorite films of 2023 so here we are --  Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch's film The Eight Mountains is hitting blu-ray on November 21st (it just hit the Channel this week) and I love love love this movie and cannot recommend it enough. Here is my review at Pajiba from its release earlier this year -- it's about the life-long friendship between two men (Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi) in the Italian Alps and it's one of the best movies about male friendship in years. If you don't have the Criterion Channel and you missed it in theaters, snatch this up! You won't be disappointed. The other two movies they're releasing in November are Godland and the Dardennes' Tori and Lokita, neither of which I've been able to see yet even though, sigh, they're both on the Criterion Channel. I am so far behind on everything!