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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?

Should have the rest of October's releases on Monday

"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.

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

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?

at least i got it for 20 off marketplace oh well

The half off Barnes and noble usually starts Fridays right? So will it start October 30th or November 6th? Looking forward to it but curious if anyone knows a little bit better then me.

Duelists (1977)

It's coming in January. Of all of Leigh's films, it seems a bit of an odd choice--it doesn't have quite the charm or the up-and-coming star power of Happy-Go-Lucky. It's not the mature capstone of Another Year. It's not his strong comeback Hard Truths, which would pair nicely with existing disc Secrets and Lies.

It's easy to think of it as one of his minor works. Not of the calibre of his early BBC movies, but not him operating at the top of his form.

And yet...it's got so much heart. The two stars are wonderful together. Katrin Cartlidge was taken from us much too soon, and we get to see much more of her here than in Naked...or From Hell. I saw Career Girls in the theater when it was new, and my partner left at the end trying to hide tears. There's a lot of charm and a lot of reality in this movie. I will always step up for it, and I will always watch it if it's on.

Feeling a bit like god’s favorite after finding an early delivery in my mailbox today. I went into studying film & media because of Kubrick. Haven’t been this excited for a physical media release in a long time. Elated to have the complete Kubrick in my collection!

⚠️ Minor Spoilers

It feels like watching someone drift through life without really knowing what he's doing or why.

Alexei seems distant from his mother even as a child. He's left alone with books and paintings, and there's that scene where the old woman comes to the wrong door and leaves. He just stands there for a moment before going back inside. I don't know why, but that moment stuck with me. The house itself almost feels like a maze. Even as an adult, Alexei doesn't seem to understand why he and his mother keep arguing, and that same distance carries over into his marriage and his relationship with his son. He seems to see his mother in his wife, too. Maybe he's repeating things he never really understood himself, and only starts thinking about them when it's too late.

I liked how the film mixes his memories with things he couldn't have experienced himself, along with paintings, literature and historical footage. It made me think about how much of what we remember isn't really ours, but comes from things we've heard or read or imagined. The conversations jump around, people get emotional out of nowhere, and sometimes I had no idea how one scene was connected to the next. I couldn't always make sense of it, but it still felt like there was some kind of connection between everything.

I'm still not sure what to make of the film as a whole. I just keep coming back to that feeling of drifting through life and trying to make sense of it all only when it's already in the past.

I’ll post a picture of the display when available, but wanted to let any collectors close by know that The Friends of the Wichita Public Library (Wichita, KS) used bookstore received a large donation of Criterion Collection movies. Perhaps as soon as today the donation will be available at their store inside the Advanced Learning Library for sale. They cannot take orders online, or ship, so you’ll need to come to the store. They have over 200 titles including a number of the Eclipse box sets.

Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock is one of those films that makes you wonder, ‘What the hell did I just watch?’ It’s beautiful, hypnotic, and profoundly disturbing—the sort of mystery that draws you in and messes with your head. You can spend hours trying to make sense of it, but the film’s greatest trick is making you feel that perhaps there’s nothing to figure out in the first place. It’s a landmark of Australian cinema and one of the most haunting films ever made about the unknown.

Full analysis here

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

Made a post few days ago saying that I would like to see Mohsen Makhmalbaf on criterion collection. It got removed because I have to justify why I think he should be in collection. To put it simply I think that he represents ethos of Iranian new wave better than anyone else, even Kiarostami. His films blend real and fiction. He has a collection of films literally called "poetic trilogy". I am sure that there are people like me who got curious after watching close up to see what cyclist and other Makhmalbaf films are about. I can't be the only one right?

This is just delusional posting but what do you think would be the most bizarre reasoning that the announcement was delayed today?

Anora has been my favorite film of the decade so far. I'm really excited to get this one as my first Criterion, just in time for my birthday! Can't wait to get more movies eventually.