It was more than a little heartening to see Roger Corman paid tribute by Quentin Tarantino at Cannes’ closing night. By now the director-producer-mogul’s imprint on cinema is understood to eclipse, rough estimate, 99.5% of anybody who’s touched the medium, but on a night for celebrating what’s new, trend-following, and manicured it could’ve hardly been more necessary. Thus I’m further heartened seeing the Criterion Channel will host a retrospective of Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations running eight films and aptly titled “Grindhouse Gothic,” though I might save the selections for October.
Centerpiece, though, is a hip hop series including Bill Duke’s superb Deep Cover, Ghost Dog, and numerous documentaries––among them Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest, making Michael Rapaport a Criterion-approved auteur. Ten films starring Kay Francis and 21 Eurothrillers round out series; streaming premieres include the Dardenne brothers’ Tori and Lokita, Lou Ye’s Saturday Fiction and Suzhou River, and Dos Estaciones; the recent Bo Widerberg boxset and The Watermelon Woman are this month’s Criterion Editions. Spring Fever rounds out a Lou Ye retro, while Dustin Guy Defa and Rowland Brown’s crime films constitute director retros.
Back By Popular Demand
The Big Heat, Fritz Lang, 1953
Anatomy of a Murder, Otto Preminger, 1959
The Apartment, Billy Wilder, 1960
Premiering In August
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Ådalen 31, Bo Widerberg, 1969
Anatomy of a Murder, Otto Preminger, 1959
The Apartment, Billy Wilder, 1960
Bad Fever, Dustin Guy Defa, 2011
The Baby Carriage, Bo Widerberg, 1963
Beat Street, Stan Lathan, 1984
Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest, Michael Rapaport, 2011
The Big Heat, Fritz Lang, 1953
Charm Circle, Nira Burstein, 2021
The Cocoanuts, Robert Florey and Joseph Santley, 1929
Colossus: The Forbin Project, Joseph Sargent, 1970*
Declaration of War, Dustin Guy Defa, 2013
Deep Cover, Bill Duke, 1992
The Delta, Ira Sachs, 1996
Desperately Seeking Susan, Susan Seidelman, 1985
The Devil Is a Sissy, Rowland Brown and W. S. Van Dyke, 1936
Dog Day Afternoon, Sidney Lumet, 1975
Dos Estaciones, Juan Pablo González, 2022
Dramatic Relationships, Dustin Guy Defa, 2016
Editing, Dustin Guy Defa, 2021
Family Nightmare, Dustin Guy Defa, 2011
Fear of a Black Hat, Rusty Cundieff, 1993
For the Defense, John Cromwell, 1930*
Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme, Kevin Fitzgerald, 2000
God Is an Artist, Dustin Guy Defa, 2015
The Haunted Palace, Roger Corman, 1963
Hell’s Highway, Rowland Brown, 1932
House of Usher, Roger Corman, 1960
Jamel Shabazz Street Photographer, Charlie Ahearn, 2013
Jewel Robbery, William Dieterle, 1932
Krush Groove, Michael Schultz, 1985
Ladies’ Man, Lothar Mendes, 1931
Mandalay, Michael Curtiz, 1934
The Masque of the Red Death, Roger Corman, 1964
One Way Passage, Tay Garnett, 1932
Paid in Full, Charles Stone III, 2002*
Person to Person, Dustin Guy Defa, 2014
Person to Person, Dustin Guy Defa, 2017*
The Pit and the Pendulum, Roger Corman, 1961
The Premature Burial, Roger Corman, 1962
Quick Millions, Rowland Brown, 1931
The Raven, Roger Corman, 1963
Raven’s End, Bo Widerberg, 1963
Review, Dustin Guy Defa, 2015
Saturday Fiction, Lou Ye, 2019
Scratch, Doug Pray, 2001
Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap, Ice-T and Andy Baybutt, 2012
Spring Fever, Lou Ye, 2009
Street of Chance, John Cromwell, 1930*
Style Wars, Tony Silver, 1983
Suzhou River, Lou Ye, 2000*
Tales of Terror, Roger Corman, 1962
The Tomb of Ligeia, Roger Corman, 1964
Tropicalía, Rodney Llaverías, 2022
Trouble in Paradise, Ernst Lubitsch, 1932
Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, Lizzie Gottlieb, 2022*
Unemployees, Joel Potrykus, 2023
The Virtuous Sin, George Cukor and Louis J. Gasnier, 1930
The Watermelon Woman, Cheryl Dunye, 1996
When the Daltons Rode, George Marshall, 1940*
Wild Style, Charlie Ahearn, 1982
*Available in the U.S. only