If you live in the US, November is a time for feasting and excess. Obviously, you have the joy of Thanksgiving, which is a feast that makes you literally pass out from food exhaustion. Then you have Black Friday, which is a lesson in excess, as people just go out to buy everything they can at low prices as they brace for the Christmas season. Well, in the tradition of November feasts, the Criterion Collection is here to feed us well with plenty of new releases for us to overindulge in. 

Continue reading ‘Power Of The Dog,’ ‘Infernal Affairs,’ ‘Malcolm X’ & More Coming From Criterion In November at The Playlist.

“Something should be happening. But what?” wonder two women named Marie (Marie I and Marie II, respectively) in “Daisies,” Věra Chytilová’s 1966 anarchic sendup of all things bourgeois and authoritarian. At the heart of the film lies the conclusion reached by Marie I and Marie II that the world is “spoiled,” henceforth, they too shall be “spoiled.” Almost immediately banned by authorities in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic upon release, ‘Daisies’ is as subversive in content as it is experimental in form, as it eschews linear narrative in favor of utilizing various film stocks and montage editing techniques to amplify its critique of authoritarianism and patriarchy.

Continue reading ‘Daisies’ Trailer: 4K Restoration Of Czech New Wave Masterpiece To Open In August at The Playlist.

With wind in their long hair and drugs stowed in their motorbikes, a couple of born-to-be-wild men blaze a path on the American highway in the opening credits of “Easy Rider.” It’s a quintessential cinematic moment that epitomized the general mood of an entire generation. American 1960s counterculture was a watershed for free speech and socio-politically charged expression from the younger generation. A plethora of movements would rise out of the period, giving voice to the oppressed and the disenfranchised while flipping off The Man as a direct reaction to the disastrous Vietnam War.

Continue reading Born To Be Wild: 11 Counterculture Films Riding Shotgun With ‘Easy Rider’ at The Playlist.