From Flow to Flames, Criterion Turns It Up to 11

Wowza this month flew by -- it feels like just yesterday we were speaking upon the movies that Criterion is dropping this upcoming August and now here's their September batch now upon us! I suppose we did have the announcement of their glorious and gorgeous Wes Anderson box-set in between -- that's a September release too, landing at the end of the month on the 30th. September is loaded to the gills though -- on top of all that Anderson (which also includes individual releases for Isle of Dogs and The French Dispatch) there are six more titles being unloaded. I guess they know people are starting their holiday shopping right about then? Aaaanyway let's get into it -- first up there's a Jacques Audiard movie I've yet to see, his 2001 movie Read My Lips starring Vincent Cassel and Emmanuelle Devos. He's an ex-con who gets hired as her assistant and who drags her into some sort of Noir-ish scheme -- I am down. I was down as sort as I saw Vincent with a mustache honestly. But speaking of sexy men in Audiard movies...

... we're also getting his 2005 movie The Beat That My Heart Skipped sdtarring prime Romain Duris as a pianist (I said pianist!) whose own shady pops is trying to drag him downward. I have seen this one and it's grand -- def recommended. You know the Emilia Perez shit aside (granted a big aside) Audiard is extremely talented and I hope he can move on to less contentious things next. It'll be nice to look upon some of these older works and remind ourselves of that.

Next up I am amusing myself by putting these two polar opposite movies beside one another -- on September 16th they're dropping Lizzie Borden's feminist punk masterpiece Born in Flames and also on September 16th they're dropping Rob Reiner's faux rockumentary classic This is Spinal Tap -- what a fucking bizarre pairing! But I love it. Watch them back to back and blow yer minds! I have to admit if forced to choose I'd choose Borden's film, which rules -- I think Spinal Tap is fine but I prefer the later Chris Guest movies if I'm being honest. Don't haze me, please! 

And finally (besides the 4K upgrade of Akira Kurosawa's High and Low which sidenote might just be my favorite Kurosawa) we have the animated masterpiece that was last year's apocalyptic kitty cat spectacle called Flow -- this movie is wonderful, transfixing, magical, and I'm shocked how often it comes up day to day in my life? I was just talking about it two nights ago. Weird how often cat-apocalypses can be worked into basic conversation. But then these are weird times!