The Criterion Channel’s November 2019 Lineup

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1

The Mustache Club
Whether you’re swearing off shaving for Movember, rock a bushy upper lip year round, or are just an appreciator of fine facial hair, you’re invited to bask in the glory of some of the biggest, glossiest, and most impressive mustaches ever to grace the screen.

Featuring: The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, and Tim Whelan, 1940), The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940), 49th Parallel (Michael Powell, 1941), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1943), Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962), High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963), Capricious Summer (Jiří Menzel, 1968), The American Friend (Wim Wenders, 1977)

They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1942)
Criterion Collection Edition #880

Double Feature: Love Me Do
A Hard Day’s Night and The Hours and Times
John Lennon as a prankster pop-culture icon, then reimagined in his more intimate moments.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2

Saturday Matinee: Kes
Featuring an introduction by Bill Hader
Ken Loach’s masterpiece, about a miner’s son whose close bond with a wild kestrel provides him with a spiritual escape from his dead-end life, is cinema’s quintessential portrait of working-class Northern England.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3

MGM Musicals from the Golden Age
In the heyday of the classic Hollywood musical, one studio reigned supreme: MGM. These beloved tune-filled classics, exploding in blazing Technicolor, are marvels of craftsmanship and razzle-dazzle entertainment that are filled to the brim with some of the most indelible moments of movie magic ever committed to celluloid.

Featuring: Broadway Melody of 1940 (Norman Taurog, 1940), For Me and My Gal (Busby Berkeley, 1942), Cabin in the Sky (Vincente Minnelli, 1943), Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944), The Harvey Girls (George Sidney, 1946), Easter Parade (Charles Walters, 1948), The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli, 1948), On the Town (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1949), In the Good Old Summertime (Robert Z. Leonard, 1949), The Barkleys of Broadway (Charles Walters, 1949), Summer Stock (Charles Walters, 1950), An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951), The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli, 1953), Give a Girl a Break (Stanley Donen, 1953), I Love Melvin (Don Weis, 1953), Lili (Charles Walters, 1953), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Stanley Donen, 1954), Brigadoon (Vincente Minnelli, 1954)*, It’s Always Fair Weather (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1955), That’s Entertainment! (Jack Haley Jr., 1974)

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3

Starring Judy Garland
Both a powerhouse, once-in-a-generation vocalist and an actor of tremulous emotional sensitivity, Judy Garland set the standard for what it means to be a true all-around entertainer. These flights of fantasy are enduring testaments to the brilliance of a performer who never gave less than her dazzling all.

Featuring: For Me and My Gal (Busby Berkeley, 1942), Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944), The Harvey Girls (George Sidney, 1946), The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli, 1948), Easter Parade (Charles Walters, 1948), In the Good Old Summertime (Robert Z. Leonard, 1949), Summer Stock (Charles Walters, 1950)

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4

12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957)
Criterion Collection Edition #591

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5

Short + Feature: Last Call
El doctor and Under the Volcano
Images of wonder and terror swirl beneath the Mexican sun in these delirious, alcohol-fueled fever dreams from Suzan Pitt and John Huston.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6

The Arbor*
Documentary meets the avant-garde in Clio Barnard’s electrifying debut feature, a dazzling account of a brilliant artist beset by tragedy.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7

Three Jacks
No actor defined the restless, countercultural spirit of the New Hollywood of the 1970s more completely than Jack Nicholson, whose roguish attitude and explosive yet nuanced performances in these cultural touchstones made him a star.

Featuring: Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970), The King of Marvin Gardens (Bob Rafelson, 1972), The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973)

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9

Saturday Matinee: Elephant Boy
Walk with Sabu and the elephants in this charming translation of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book story “Toomai of the Elephants.”

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10

Caught on Tape
Trust no one in these anxiety-inducing tales of surveillance, wiretapping, and paranoia run amok.

Featuring: A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan, 1957), Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971), The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981), Diva (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1981), Three Colors: Red (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994), Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005), The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)*

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11

The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
Criterion Collection Edition #5
With a new documentary by Daniel Raim featuring François Truffaut’s daughter Laura Truffaut, made to celebrate the film’s sixtieth anniversary

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12

Short + Feature: Listen Up
Death of the Sound Man and Blow Out
Let’s hear it for the Foley artists—these underappreciated technicians take center stage in two slyly self-reflexive studies in sound.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13

7 Films by Suzan Pitt
Featuring Suzan Pitt: Persistence of Vision, a 2006 documentary by Blue and Laura Kraning
Enter the wild and wondrous world of the late Suzan Pitt, an independent animation visionary whose oneiric psychosexual odysseys are direct channels to her dreams, nightmares, fantasies, and inner desires. 

Featuring: Crocus (1971), Jefferson Circus Songs (1973), Asparagus (1979), Joy Street (1995), El doctor (2006), Visitation (2011), Pinball (2013)

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14

Directed by Peter Greenaway
Featuring a 2016 documentary portrait of Greenaway
Endlessly fascinated by the baroque, the bizarre, and the esoteric, the uncompromisingly personal films of British iconoclast Peter Greenaway are richly realized worlds unto themselves—witty, outrageous, sumptuous, shocking, and unapologetically intellectual.

Featuring: Intervals (1973), Windows (1974), Dear Phone (1976), H Is for House (1976), A Walk Through H (1978), Water Wrackets (1978), Vertical Features Remake (1978), The Falls (1980), The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), Prospero’s Books (1991), The Pillow Book (1996)*

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15

Double Feature: Jamdown Style
The Harder They Come and No Place Like Home
The reggae rhythms rock steady in a Jamaican-cinema landmark and its long-lost follow-up.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16

Saturday Matinee: My Life as a Dog
Featuring an incredibly mature and unaffected performance by the young Anton Glanzelius, this beloved and bittersweet film from Lasse Hallström evokes the struggles and joys of childhood.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17

Queersighted: The Ache of Desire
Featuring a conversation between critics Michael Koresky and Melissa Anderson
Queer cinema has existed nearly as long as the movies themselves, and Queersighted aims to bring attention to film history through a distinctly queer lens. Rather than provide a history of films featuring lesbian, gay, transgender, or bisexual characters and themes, this new series draws out the presence of a non-heteronormative, non-gender-binary cinema that has always existed alongside, parallel, or underneath the status quo. This first installment, The Ache of Desire, presents a range of movies about that longing feeling that is so specific to the queer experience and to queer cinema itself.

Featuring: Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966), Les rendez-vous d’Anna (Chantal Akerman, 1978), Yentl (Barbra Streisand, 1983), Desert Hearts (Donna Deitch, 1985), Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai, 1997), Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001), I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang, 2006), Raging Sun, Raging Sky (Julián Hernández, 2009), Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie, 2013)*

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18

An Elephant Sitting Still
Exclusive streaming premiere, featuring a new introduction by critic and programmer Aliza Ma and Hu Bo’s 2017 short film Man in the Well
One of the most acclaimed feature debuts of the last decade, the first and, tragically, last film from Hu Bo, who took his own life at the age of twenty-nine, is a tour de force of existential fury and transcendent catharsis.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19

Short + Feature: Table Manners
Next Floor and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
Best not to eat before digging into these gut-busting banquets of grotesque gastronomy that double as subversive explorations of excess, corruption, gluttony, and greed.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20

Directed by Alice Rohrwacher
Blending elements of neorealism and folklore with a contemporary feminist worldview, these tender evocations of adolescent awakening from one of contemporary cinema’s most sensitive and perceptive auteurs are marvels of quiet, unassuming grace.

Featuring: Corpo celeste (2011), The Wonders (2014)

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21

The Koker Trilogy (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987/1992/1994)
Criterion Collection Edition #990/991/992

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22

Double Feature: As Triers Go By
Reprise and Oslo, August 31st*
Punk poet Joachim Trier directs these explosive and empathetic portraits of young men on the edge.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23

Saturday Matinee: Meet Me in St. Louis
Judy Garland rides the trolley into cinematic immortality in this nostalgic holiday heart-warmer.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24

Karyn Kusama’s Adventures in Moviegoing
The director of edgy genre-exploders like Girlfight, Jennifer’s Body, and Destroyer sits down with presenter and critic Alicia Malone to discuss the feminist potential of horror movies, her love for paranoid seventies thrillers, and favorite films that have shaped her approach to moviemaking.

Featuring: Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955), High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963), Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975), Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982), Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985), Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow, 1987)

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26

Short + Feature: Someone’s Listening
Hacked Circuit and The Conversation
Deborah Stratman conjures a sense of all-pervasive surveillance while giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the work of Foley artists as they create the sound effects for the final scene of The Conversation, Francis Ford Coppola’s seventies paranoia classic.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
Featuring a new introduction by director Leslie Harris
An ambitious, outspoken, and hilarious young black woman encounters bumps on the road to adulthood in this still-fresh nineties indie classic.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28

Glorious Food!
Just in time for Thanksgiving, feast your eyes on a buffet of some of cinema’s most sumptuous banquets, a smorgasbord of lip-smacking delicacies that delight in the sensual pleasures and social rituals of eating.

Featuring: The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962), Tom Jones (Tony Richardson, 1963), Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966), Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (Les Blank, 1980), My Dinner with Andre (Louis Malle, 1981), Tampopo (Juzo Itami, 1985), Babette’s Feast (Gabriel Axel, 1987), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway, 1989), Yum, Yum, Yum! A Taste of Cajun and Creole Cooking (Les Blank, 1990), Delicatessen (Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, 1991), Eat Drink Man Woman (Ang Lee, 1994), Big Night (Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci, 1996), The Secret of the Grain (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2007), Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2008)

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30

Saturday Matinee: A Kid for Two Farthings
Carol Reed directs this East End fairy tale about a young boy who comes into possession of a curiously-horned goat he believes to be a unicorn with the power to grant wishes.