Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is this summer’s l’objet de cinéma, the 70mm-sized monolith around which most else will have to orient. There are ways to be creative about it. One such case would be Odysseys, a seven-film series that features the Homeric (Sullivan’s Travels, O Brother, Where Art Thou?), the urban (After Hours), the pastoral (The Searchers), the nationwide (The Straight Story, The Darjeeling Limited), and the continental (Walkabout). No less stressful than the journey of Ethan Edwards is an average wedding, evidenced by the eight movies in a program boasting Melancholia and Rachel Getting Married—plus Marie Antoinette, Chantal Akerman’s Golden Eighties, and Robert Altman’s lesser-seen A Wedding. And in time for that other summer blockbuster, Close Encounters of the Third Kind will stream.
New to Criterion, streaming or otherwise, is James Bond: the first three films (Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger) make an appearance, hopefully portending the eventual physical release for Die Another Day. On a different side of the human-sexuality spectrum from England’s most heterosexual creation is, in time for Pride Month, LGBTQ+ Favorites, a massive collection of features and shorts comprising Chantal Akerman, Shirley Clarke, Derek Jarman, Gus Van Sant, Stanley Kwan, Gregg Araki, and Alain Guiraudie—just to name several. Plus, a Courtney Love retrospective that includes The People vs. Larry Flynt, Basquiat, and 200 Cigarettes.
It’s a major month for premieres. Foremost are the restorations of Shinji Sōmai’s once-unfindable Typhoon Club and Patrick Tam’s Nomad, a film about which no proper judgement can be made until one experiences its final minutes for themselves. For more contemporary cinema, there’s Gary Hustwit’s doc portrait Eno—a new version will appear on the Criterion Channel each month; Hustwit also has past works getting a series in June—and Hlynur Pálmason’s The Love That Remains, for which the director’s provided a new intro. It’s perhaps a bigger month for Criterion originals: the aforementioned After Hours, The Darjeeling Limited, and Sullivan’s Travels, plus David Fincher’s The Game, Fresh Kill, a Martha Graham collection, The Harder They Come, and Repo Man.
The latter is part of an Alex Cox series that includes his underappreciated Highway Patrolman alongside Walker and (speaking of Courtney Love) Straight to Hell. Yann Gonzalez’s sexy menace is featured several times over, while Eric Rohmer’s sexy ennui is neatly collected (don’t sleep on Nadja in Paris). Finally: Makoto Shinkai’s The Garden of Words helps build out Criterion’s new anime set as Wild at Heart buffs up their David Lynch side, and John Schlesinger’s Pacific Heights also makes an appearance.
See the full list of June titles below and more at the Criterion Channel:
Eno, Gary Hustwit, 2024 (premiering June 16)
O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Joel Coen, 2000
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