Criterion Collection Film Noir for 2015

It's been a pretty great year for film noir fans, home video-wise. And the grand poobah of them all, Criterion, has released some pretty good ones. I describe and show each one in this video. (And yes, my collar is popped....and no, it wasn't on purpose!)

[Culturedog]

Dude!  Bring on those laserdiscs!

Nice haul as always.  Sorry to hear that you've failed your peers by not enjoying Ride the Pink Horse.  Haven't seen it myself, but it's awesome that you stuck it to Silver and Ursini.  Criterion always sells their commentators as "film historians" or "film scholars",  which sounds very, very impressive.  But I often wonder how many of them take the paycheck and phone it in.

I used to be one of a revolving group of moderators for a classic film series at a local arthouse cinema, and the staff would always look at me strange when they handed over the check at the end.  I would only take on the films that I either loved or had some basic level of interest in, and would steep myself in the film and related research the week of the screening.  Apparently most of the other mods would just show up cold after the film had played, let the audience do all the work and call it a day.  Which the theater fully expected and tolerated.  Apparently the money came from a grant or something.

I'm sure Criterion runs a tighter ship, just fun/funny to hear someone dare to call shenanigans on the film scholars!  Keep up the good work!  Huzzah!

[paulb]

I'm not an avid watcher of Film Noir but there are a couple I like. Richard Widmark really rubs me the wrong way so while I hear and understand your praise for Night and City, I feel I must pass because of my dislike for him.  I do however, own Pickup on South Street on Criterion. I picked that up because I had first seen a remake of it called The Cape Town Affair with Jacqueline Bisset and liking that so much I sought out the original. What I wound up liking, after establishing my dislike for Widmark in that movie is my attraction to Jean Peters. That led me to her role in Niagara but that's another story. Was wondering what you thought of Pickup O.S.S.  And lastly, as part of my limited appreciation for the film noir genre, I wanted to ask you if you've seen Woman On the Run, a hard to find film that kicked off this summers Summer of Darkness on TCM.  Here again I was drawn to WOTR originally because of my fondness for Ann Sheridan who stars. Along with Sheridan I think Woman on the Run is a pretty nice slice of film noir.  Any thoughts?  Enjoyed your 2015 Criterion Noir review.