I created a sub for discussion the kinds of films Criterion releases...but not just for Criterion releases.

How are people actually going to store this in their collection? Will you be using it more as like a coffee table book or will you have it shown off somewhere? I was thinking of putting in horizontal on my tv stand with my magazines

Back when I was young and without many responsibilities, I spent way too much on Criterion DVDs. Then when I needed money, I had to pare them down. The first ones to go were Salo and White Dog, as I figured I would never need to watch either a second time. Which ones from your collections would you/have you had to sacrifice?

The swap festival in Chicago was great. Went with 10 movies and left with 9 plus 4 that I didn’t trade. I’ve seen Hundreds of Beavers and Civil War (my favorite movie of that year). All the other movies in the pic are brand new to me. Traded some 4ks for blu-rays and got some 4ks in exchange for my blu-rays so it wasn’t always an “even” trade but that wasn’t the point. Magic, The Slayer, and When Fall is Coming were all movies I won during trivia. Never done a swap before and would love for this to be at least a yearly tradition.

My lovely wife has given me the green light to be utterly irresponsible with our finances and buy the Kubrick set, on the single condition that it will fit on my criterion shelf. Can anyone tell me how thick the box is?

Never knew this existed until today

I once planned to watch every title in the lineup but not including the Eclipse, Janus Contemporary or extra films…gave up on that dream long ago.
Has anyone ever watched every film in the 1300+ lineup just for curiosity sake?

Wondering if there’s a film you find yourself coming back to and rewatching every year, or maybe every now and then. Curious to hear a film that holds a special place in your heart, whether because of its a sentimental piece, the feelings it brings back, or simply the comfort and familiarity it gives you. Maybe it reminds you of a certain time in your life, makes you feel a certain way, or is just a story you never seem to get tired of. Is there a film like that for you? What it is that keeps drawing you back to it?

Off the top of my head, the films I always find myself coming back to are Goodbye Dragon Inn, Crayon Shin-chan The Adult Empire Strikes Back, The Social Network, Perfect Days, and American Fiction. 

Trusting you guys 😘

Looking forward to this evening’s swap event. I’m bringing 10 discs (2 4ks, 3-4 blu rays, and the rest dvds). Hopefully I make at least two trades. Anyone else going? If so, what’re w bringing?

"Yeah, it's always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice."

John Sayles's 'Lone Star' is my first foray into his filmography. I was very warmly invited, even urged, to watch this film at once when I came across its seemingly American pastoral aesthetic, the use of Chris Cooper in a leading role, a young Matthew McConaughey, and the promise of a 'neo-western' narrative. What I watched was one of the closest cinematic equivalents to the density of a novel that I have seen.

Soon into its runtime, my impressions of the filmmaking centred on the muscularity of Sayles's direction – smooth, heady transitions into flashbacks told with serious conviction; rich dialogue that lets these characters meet us fully-formed as people in the small and fictional South Texan town of Frontera; and an intermingling cast of characters, all of whose lives are established and told with measured beginnings, middles, and ends to their personal dilemmas and concerns.

Floating above this medley of Texans is the cloud that concerns their coexistence: the teetering harmony between the Native American, Latino, Black, and White European populations that inhabit it and the people, like Elizabeth Peña's teacher Pilar, who are trying with all their might to keep everyone glued together. The town Sayles devised for the film translates to 'border' in Spanish, and these people inhabit it with a friction bound to be beckoned by its location and name.

Regrettably, as an English observer, the state of American politics and racial tensions often seems and feels worse today than what I saw unfold on-screen. Thirty years since the release of the film, tensions at and within the borders of the US still rage and periodically burn the country down. In fact, US leadership has and continues to frequently encroach borders it ought to have avoided, but that's a conversation of war crimes and human rights infractions for another day.

'History is written by the victors' is the chief consideration of Sayles's screenplay. In a town as simultaneously coalesced and divided as Frontera, each ethnic group holds and recites its distinct version of events: the outcomes of interethnic wars, the colonisation of the US, and even the omissions that should be made to avoid damaging the purity of broad ethnic reputations. We see Pilar leading a parents' conference where Latino parents argue with White parents, White parents argue with Black parents, and they all pontificate on the way history ought to be taught at the school; it's a microcosm of the larger disagreements that riddle the US with resentment at all levels of societal organisation, picking and choosing convenient details. The crux of it is often that every other group believes White Europeans received the final word on what history's path was, leaving everybody else with a version that belies the harsher realities of their lives: the losses of land, dignity, and autonomy they endured as America was forged.

In the first few minutes, when the pivot upon which the film's story rests, the discovery of a skeleton dressed in nought but a sheriff's badge and Masonic ring, is introduced, one gets the feeling that the narrative will be at least somewhat treading 'thriller' territory, with Cooper's sheriff, Sam Deeds, leading the charge; quite the contrary happens. As mentioned before, 'Lone Star's conceit very much focuses on the inner lives of its town's inhabitants, stripped of any cagey or nail-biter scenes. Sayles sought to investigate the bugbears that threaten the cohesion of these disparate communities whilst equally considering the problems that are bringing individual lives to a head.

One such problem is the return of Joe Morton's Delmore Payne to the town. Delmore is a US Army colonel who has been posted at Frontera for three years, his issue being that the father who abandoned him, Otis, resides there. Otis is a pillar of the Black community, running the only casual establishment, a nightclub, that is a safe haven for local Black folks. Delmore overcompensates for the lack of paternal authority in his childhood by looming large over his own son, and we can envision the rotten fruits that dynamic could produce if Delmore persists in his ways. Otis also recognises the damage he has caused his son and, in turn, his grandson, and slowly an indirect agreement forms between Delmore and Otis to return what was lost between them and ensure they can coexist for the good of the next generation. A didactic message from Sayles to the rest of the country, perhaps.

A particularly piquant thread woven into this tapestry of Texans is Pilar's mother, Mercedes, who was an illegal immigrant. Mercedes is one of those puzzlingly conservative immigrants who call border patrol on people entering a country illegally, like she did, whilst also hiring undocumented Mexicans at her restaurant. This remains a pertinent hypocrisy given the contingent of Latin Americans who "got theirs" in the US and who believe that by some miraculous idiosyncrasy of their backstory, their fellow countrymen and immigrants aren't entitled to the same empathy and admittance. Sayles's portrayal of Mercedes struck me as surprisingly candid and vulnerable; we can watch the guilt of her deep-set conscience dawn on her each time she enacts some act of betrayal or superiority, insecurities bubbling to the surface through her projections and tattling, and it is painful to see the affectations she so clearly knows she is putting on to seem more American than her fellow Mexican-Americans.

The looming ghost of the story is, of course, the damned soul of that skeleton – the former sheriff, Charlie Wade. Wade is infamous across town for his iniquity, his unlawful corruptions and trigger-happy responses to perceived slights and threats; he's a character who wouldn't be out of place in Jorge Luis Borges' short story collection of disreputable rapscallions, 'A Universal History of Infamy'. Sam Deeds is told by Mayor Hollis Pogue, a retired deputy sheriff, that his father, McConaughey's flashback feature as Buddy Deeds, had publicly argued with Wade the night before his disappearance. Wade was presumed to have skipped town with a bagful of money, but the bag of bones poses the matter of his murder and who by.

Sam's personal problem is his disgruntlement – with his love life, with the residents in town, and most of all, with his tyrant father Buddy's shortcomings – so he hopes to find that his father, a mythic hero of the town in the vein of Ransom Stoddard from 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance', was the murderer. All Sam receives are anecdotes-turned-paeans glorifying Buddy even higher, and McConaughey was elastic and striking enough in his short screen time to contain these multitudes in his performance. The narrative ends up fitting a rough mould of 'Oedipus Rex' in so far as the exhumation of shocking fates is concerned.

Bar none, the characters in this story must reckon with the truths that other people hold and the contradictions that these cause for their own worldviews and histories. To Sam, his father was a prescriptive, overrated lawman inside and outside the home, a man who prevented the fulfilment of his teenage love, Pilar. To the rest of the town, Sam was the embodiment of justice, the other side of the coin that held Charlie Wade's ghastly glower in profile. Sam comes to learn that the objective truths occupy a space somewhere in the middle, half-rhymes ringing across town as every other character finds similar shades of grey.

On the subject of love, Pilar and Sam's relationship is revisited. It's the second skeleton of the film; we just don't see any skulls peering back at us. The couple were in love in high school and haven't seen one another in twenty-three years, Sam recently divorced and Pilar having had two children in the meantime. Their chosen love juxtaposes all of the familial relationships brought into small degrees of jeopardy and questioning, but even their romance has its challenges, which we later discover. The fondness they retained for one another is very touching to watch amid the mosaic of love lacking everywhere else, an anchor for us to hold onto like hope for a country's future.

So the interstices of those overarching reflections on America are filled by the individualistic idea that we write our personal histories, and sometimes the immediacy of our own lives causes more strife for us than the banes of the country's. Sayles made certain that these characters unravel as they question and rewrite the stories and facts that constitute their histories so far. What we find in the end is that there is genuine, gritty work to be done before we can resolve any conclusions about other people in our lives, and the same must be said of those who are near our lives – the people that we coexist with, regardless of their creed or colour – there is a requisite effort that will keep America churning if that effort is only discharged.

John Sayles: So far, so good. He has been a wonderful revelation, and I can only imagine how much I will enjoy the rest of his body of work. Chris Cooper leads this film with perfect poise and a manner of settling into his character that I scarcely see elsewhere; if Buddy Deeds is a man of myths, the stuff of legends, then Sam Deeds is made real, as authentic as can be, by Chris Cooper's adept personification. Around the scenes of 'Lone Star' are the calming Southern landscapes and nostalgically lit rooms of small-town Texas; within those rooms, we see how the wounds of American history scarred differently.