2023 Criterion Forum Awards

[kekid]

Second Sight, I’d have thought. Not UHD, but a superlative presentation.

Thank you, MichaelB.

[Therewolf]

Best release
1. Ranown Westerns
2. Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers
3. Pasolini 101
4. Mean Streets
5. Targets

Best boxed set
Ranown Westerns

Best modern film
Godland

Best booklet
Pasolini 101

Best reissue or upgrade
Blast of Silence

Best cover
The Others

Best packaging
Pasolini 101

Best discovery
Godland

[colinr0380]

Best release (1-5)
1. Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers
2. Bo Widerberg’s New Swedish Cinema
3. The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse
4. The Trial
5. One False Move

Best Boxed Set or Multi-Film Collection
Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers

Best Modern/New Film
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Best Commentary
Joseph McBride on The Trial

Best “Bonus” film
Uprising on Small Axe

Best Booklet
Targets

Best On-Disc Non-Commentary Extra
Richard Linklater on Targets

Best UHD Release
One False Move

Best Reissue
Branded To Kill on UHD

Best Upgrade
The Last Picture Show with Texasville

Best Cover
Chilly Scenes of Winter

Worst Cover
The Servant

Best Packaging – Non-Boxed Set Individual Release
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Best Packaging – Boxed Set
Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers

Best Discovery
Two Films by Marguerite Duras

Most Unnecessary Release
Hmmm… maybe I will go for the safe choice of The Ranown Westerns since it doubled up on the Indicator release, but it makes sense for the separate territories they were each covering

Most Flawed Release
Nothing really stood out in this category, although the disappointing lack of extras outside of a couple of pre-existing on the internet/already released on disc filmed discussions on Romeo & Juliet suddenly got explained in rather worrying terms!

Best Thread
I really enjoyed, and tried to contribute a bit to, the An Internet Thread About The Internet, uh, thread this year, which felt as if we could use it as a repository for all the interesting things that we find dotted about the place.

Member of the Year
As usual too many to mention, but in a break from constantly voting for fei hong every year (though they still put in a sterling performance) I’ll go for Lemmy Caution and their travelogues. I much prefer to be a homebody and explore the world from the comfort of my own home, so it takes a lot to make me excited about the idea of seeing the world!
____
Lots of great films over the last year, although two – the Unearthed Films release of Nicolas Roeg’s Full Body Massage and Cinema Guild’s release of Hong Sang-soo’s Walk Up will have to wait until next year’s round up, as I only received them post my arbitrary cut off point of 25th December!
My arbitrary rundown for this year’s pick ups/look back on the year that was is:

1. I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses – Severin Films released this more left-field Canadian film that got caught up in the UK’s “video nasties” scare in the 1980s, in a double bill along with the director’s even more obscure and potentially far more controversial TV movie Recommendation For Mercy.
2. Electric Dragon 80,000v (Third Window) – which was arguably the most essential release of the year, which Third Window put out at the same time as the director’s much later film Punk Samurai
3. Martin (Second Sight) (UHD) – finally completing the yawning gap left in the Romero filmography, and essential to be placed next to Arrow’s “Between Night and Dawn” set from a few years back.
4. The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle (Severin) – an astonishing achievement in physical media, bringing together a scattered collection of oddities that exist in various states of obscurity and putting out one of the most comprehensive sets of the year. As with Severin’s previous Al Adamson and Ray Dennis Steckler sets, this may seem insane to do given the quality of the films, but given that this may be the only chance that many of these films ever get to see the commercial light of day I am glad for the attention given to them
5. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Second Sight) (UHD) – the other big Second Sight release of an essential 1970s horror classic of the year
6. Gunbuster: Aim For The Top! (Discotek) – the essential anime release of the year, either in this edition or Anime Limited’s UK edition later in the year (that would have been higher if there had been any extras on it, whether by Jonathan Clements or anybody else), which brought the pre-Neon Genesis Evangelion (but just as powerful) teen girl-centred sci-fi series to disc. That bookended a very Hideaki Anno themed year for me with the release of Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon A Time by Anime Limited in the UK in December. So now we can all debate about whether Christopher Nolan stole the time dilation for dramatic-tragic effect idea for Interstellar from this show!
7. Accion Mutante (Severin) - Álex de la Iglesia’s debut feature reached UHD to complement Severin’s previous releases of The Day of the Beast and Perdita Durango on the format. Whilst this is not my favourite of the director’s films (that would be The Day of the Beast!) this has a fabulous irreverent and very un-PC sense of humour as well as fantastic performances by Álex Angulo and Santiago Segura (who would go on to team up to further effect in Day of the Beast). Plus the “presented by Pedro Almodovar” imprimatur probably explains why one of Almodovar’s regular cast members, Rossy de Palma, briefly turns up in the Fifth Element-anticipating swanky party massacre scene!
8. Looney Tunes: Collector’s Choice Volumes 1 & 2 (Warners) – whilst it should have happened years before now, at least it is happening now. More classic cartoons please!
9. Thieves Like Us and O.C. & Stiggs (Radiance) – plugging some glaring gaps in the Robert Altman filmography. Dare I hope that some enterprising label may release Quintet? Perhaps in a package with a copy of the game included?
10. The End of Civilization: Three Films by Piotr Szulkin (Radiance) – the weirdest release of the year by far, but it may turn out to be the one that most repays further viewings!
11. The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter (Indicator) – it speaks to the high quality of the year that this release of films that I have long wanted to re-encounter only just failed to make my top ten list
12. The Lukas Moodysson Collection (Arrow)
13. Andrzej Zulawski: Three Films (Eureka)
14. Bluebeard’s Castle (BFI)
15. Elegant Beast (Radiance)
16. Crying Freeman (Discotek) – I finally upgraded my late 90s VHS Manga Entertainment boxset of this one for the new Blu-ray release of the anime version of this material, which also means that I finally get the Japanese audio in addition to the (worryingly accented!) classic English language dub! I’m still going to hang on to my VHS collection however, partly because of the beautiful thick cardboard box everything is housed in and mostly because it came with a book of the first chapter of the manga!
17. Jet Pilot and Thunderblot (Indicator) – similarly to Radiance and Altman, Indicator plugged some important gaps in the Josef von Sternberg filmography, from either end of his career bookending the more celebrated Marlene Dietrich works
18. Hopping Mad: The Mr Vampire Series (Eureka) – I still have somewhat fond memories of my teacher in A level “Communication Studies” lessons in the late 90s showing the class clips of the first Mr Vampire film to illustrate how comedy never travels. Whilst the rest of the class seemed to take that lesson on board, I hadn’t the heart to tell the teacher I had a copy of it on VHS from a Channel 4 screening a few years earlier, and had watched it so many times that it wasn’t ‘obscure’ to me! Although I ended up preferring the weirdly Spielberg influenced Mr Vampire II when I saw it in 1997 (as part of another Channel 4 vampire season, "Blood Lust", which was bizarrely scheduled for Christmas! And which was wildly eclectic in scope, going from Mr Vampire II (on Christmas Eve!) to Hammer's Vampire Circus, the silent Nosferatu with the Bernard Hermann score, Guillermo del Toro's Cronos and of course the jewel of the entire season, Love At First Bite with George Hamilton!), which had a fascinating contemporary Hong Kong setting and cute kid protagonists in the Goonies/Explorers/Gremlins vein. Those were the only two films in the series I had seen before Eureka released this set with the other three entries.
19. Violent Streets: The Umberto Lenzi/Thomas Milian Collection (Severin Films)
20. Bruce Lee At Golden Harvest (Arrow) (UHD) – the set where the plethora of extra features and unseen material is the essential draw over and above the films!
21. Indicator’s Jean Rollin series – 6 releases in 2023, all of them lovingly presented
22. Katsuhito Ishii Set (Third Window)
23. Door/Door II: Tokyo Diary (Third Window) – plus the other “Director’s Company” releases of the year with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Guard From Underground and Shinji Somai's Typhoon Club. But Door and Door II were the most exciting and unexpected turn ups of all
24. I may have just missed out on picking up Cinema Guild’s edition of Hong Sang-soo’s Walk Up, but I did manage to lay my hands on a copy of The Novelist’s Film, released earlier in the year!
25. … and similarly Tsai Ming-liang had his early film Vive L’amour released by Film Movement in the US (although the disc is A/B/C all region coded)
26. … and Picturehouse Entertainment for bringing out Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker to Blu-ray in the UK. With Kore-eda commentary!
27. The Man On The Roof (Radiance) – which anticipated and beautifully complemented Criterion’s Bo Widerberg set from later in the year
28. Naked Lunch (Arrow) (UHD) – a great edition of a film that grows on me more with every viewing. It was a Cronenberg year all around really, bookended by picking up the US edition of Crimes of the Future in January (so I have not got to the eventual UK edition that arrived later on in 2023) and Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool turning up
29. Urusei Yatsura: The TV Series Collections 1-3 (Discotek Media) – after releasing all six of the Urusei Yatsura features on Blu-ray over the last few years, Discotek went back to where it began and released the 1981-1986 TV series throughout the year. Volume 4, which completes the entire 192(!) episode run is coming out later this month. Apparently after this the next big ‘classic anime’ project that Discotek is going to focus on is the classic 70s tennis series Aim For The Ace! (That’s what Gunbuster: Aim For The Top!’s subtitle is doing a riff on by the way, since Anno’s series begins – like Starship Troopers – like a sports training show before going into something much bigger)
30. Carlito’s Way (Arrow) (UHD)
31. The Cassandra Cat (Second Run)
32. The Executioner Collection (Arrow) / Female Yakuza Tale (Discotek) – two films by Teruo Ishii
33. The Five Days (Severin) – the Dario Argento spaghetti western!
34. House of Terrors and A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse – Mondo Macabro released two Blu-rays of classic Japanese horrors
35. The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock (Indicator) and Murder Obsession (Raro/Radiance) – two Riccardo Freda films from opposite ends of his career (although I would love either Indicator or Radiance to go further back and release some of the Italian sword-and-sandal ‘peplum’ films one day – maybe after their Mexican cinema boxsets!)
36. Hellraiser: Quartet of Torment (Arrow) (UHD)
37. Magic, Myth and Mutilation: The Micro-Budget Cinema of Michael J. Murphy 1967-2015 (Indicator) / From Hollywood To Heaven: The Lost and Saved Films of The Ormond Family (Indicator) – two enormous boxsets of some of the most fringe films ever made. Whatever the quality, it is hard to argue with the archival job that went into them
38. The Bullet Train (Eureka) – how did I never know about an earlier version of Speed before now! Also notable was Eureka’s release of the 1970s Golgo 13 live action film. And Samurai Reincarnation, making for a strong year of classic Japanese releases through Eureka (and they are already off to a flying start in 2024 with The Fall of Ako Castle)
39. Skinamarink (Shudder) – amazing to see a YouTube creator move into the ‘real filmmaking’ world, even to the extent of getting a release on physical media! In a good way, I think this film may be at the vanguard of forcing traditional critics and festivals to expand their frame of reference into this area. Let’s hope these creators can keep their idiosyncratic, internet-honed edge and not be subsumed! (i.e. Kyle Edward Ball: when Marvel come a-knocking, run the other way ASAP!)
40. Freud (Indicator) – finally I got to hear the score in context, rather than as part of the Alien score now!
41. Enter The Video Store: The Empire of Screams (Arrow)
42. Flesh + Blood (Eureka) – picked up in memory of Michael Parkinson
43. Decision To Leave (Mubi) – which I almost dropped in annoyance of finding out that they put out a separate UHD edition months after the Blu-ray edition, but I still have to acknowledge the film itself
44. The Dunwich Horror (Arrow) - I'm going through a bit of a Lovecraft phase at the moment, so this was a much appreciated addition to picking up the two Gollancz leatherbound hardback collections of the stories as well as the videogames The Sinking City (which had a bit of a notorious tussling over rights history behind it that put me off of it for a while, but the concept of an open world Lovecraft game was too strong to resist, sadly! Although happily it looks as if the rights are back with the initial studio, Frogwares, from January!), Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened(! another Frogwares production), the recent Call of Cthulhu and arguably the excellent retro-inspired World of Horror (although really World of Horror is more Junji Ito inspired. Not that I'm complaining about that either!)
45. Blackhat (Arrow UHD) & Miami Vice (88 Films Blu-ray)
46. Inu-Oh (Anime Limited)
47. Welcome To The Dollhouse (Radiance)
48. The Dead Mother (Radiance)
49. Gothic (BFI) – another Ken Russell gap plugged by the BFI! Will we get an edition of Salome’s Last Dance at some point? (Hint, hint!)
50. The City of Lost Children (Studio Canal)
51. Dark Places (Nucleus Films) – Nucleus Films had a relatively quiet 2023, although they are due to release cult naughty French films Dressage and Education Anglaise around March of 2024!
52. Jeans Blues: No Future (Discotek)
53. Enter Santo: The First Adventures of the Silver-Masked Man (Indicator) and Mexico Macabre (Indicator)
54. The Street Fighter Trilogy (Arrow)
55. BFI Flipside had another strong year with their first UHD release, of Full Circle: The Haunting of Julia, and the third volume of the Short Sharp Shocks collection of shorts.
56. and how could I not end the list off without noting Discotek’s release of the ‘notorious’ 70s Japanese anime series turned internet sensation Chargeman Ken!


In terms of things I backed on Kickstarter and therefore cannot really put on the above list, I wanted to mention Redwood’s edition of Tod Browning’s 1927 film The Show (which well complements Criterion’s Browning set of films) along with Grapevine’s releases of So This Is Paris, Wolves of Kultur and By The Law, and Deaf Crododile’s dual Kickstarters for The Pied Piper (which also let me pick up the earlier releases of The Son of the Stars and Delta Space Mission) and of Visitors From The Arkana Galaxy

Phew! And that is with trying to cut down talking about just Indicator, Radiance and Mubi titles to a minimum!

[swo17]

Best Release
1. Pasolini 101
2. Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers
3. The Trial
4. Small Axe
5. Triangle of Sadness

Best Boxed Set
Pasolini 101

Best Modern Release
Triangle of Sadness

Best Commentary
David J. Skal, Freaks

Best Bonus Film
My Life as a Zucchini

Best Book/Booklet
Pasolini 101

Best UHD Release
The Ranown Westerns

Best Reissue/Upgrade
The Last Picture Show

Best Cover
Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers

Best Packaging
Moonage Daydream

Best Discovery
This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection

Forum Member of the Year
brundlefly

[Matt]

Just a reminder that voting ends 6 PM EST Sunday, meaning you have until then to get your lists in.

[zedz]

With the caveat that I haven't seen everything from this year:

BEST RELEASE
1. Two Films by Marguerite Duras - About bloody time! More challenging stuff please, but let's get some proper academic extras in future.
2. Petite Maman - A future classic. [checks notes] Two future classics!
3. Pasolini 101 - Would have liked to see more / better extras, but everything you need is there.
4. Bo Widerberg's New Swedish Cinema - Another 'what took you so long?' I'm not a massive fan of his films, but a set like this has been a no-brainer for Criterion since Day One.
5. Godland - Could also have been No Bears. I suspect that this new auxiliary line might have the more interesting films going forward.

I think it's interesting to note that all five of my selections would have counted as big missed opportunities in earlier years (did that used to be a voting category?) considering how sparse the contextualizing extras were on each disc - and, worst of all, no Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta desert: it's not as if they'll ever have another opportunity to issue that film.

BEST BOXED SET or MULTI-FILM COLLECTION
Given my vote above, I guess it should be Duras, but I just can't think of that as a boxed set, so I'll side with bulk and vote for Pasolini 101.

BEST MODERN FILM
Petite Maman

BEST COMMENTARY
Slim pickings. It has to be McBride on The Trial. But the old Amenabar commentary on The Others is a really good one, full of technical detail.

In other news, for fans of good commentary, the three included on the BFI Ozu set (by Tony Rayns, Jasper Sharp and Adrian Martin) are all fantastic, with little overlap between them and hardly any trotting out of the Ozuian idees recues you've all heard a million times

BEST BOOKLET
I can't read.

BEST UHD RELEASE
Who cares?

BEST REISSUE or UPGRADE
I think the inclusion of Texasville has to clinch this for The Last Picture Show.

BEST COVER
I looked through this year's covers and found it hard to get excited about any of them, so i went with Pinocchio, even though I haven't even seen it in real life.

BEST PACKAGING
Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers - they went to town on the gimmick without corpsing.

BEST DISCOVERY
Technically, I guess it's Petite Maman, because this is the first time I saw it owing to Covid disruptions, but it wasn't actually a surprise or discovery. None of the not-on-my-radar films I've watched so far have blown me away, so I'll reserve this space in case something in my kevyip manages that.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Best Release
One False Move 
Chilly Scenes of Winter
Inland Empire
Small Axe
Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers

Most Unnecessary: Last Hurrah For Chivalry
Best Thread: UHD Titles Worth/Not Worth Upgrading
Best Reissue and Best UHD: 860 Mildred Pierce
Best Modern Film: This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection
Best Cover: Mean Streets
Best Discovery: Chilly Scenes of Winter

[swo17]

Everyone be sure to check out the Skal extras on the Browning set, in honor of his passing

[Yakushima]

Best Release
1. Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers
2. Bo Widerberg’s New Swedish Cinema
3. One False Move
4. After Hours
5. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Best Boxed Set
Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers

Best Modern Release
Petite maman

Best Commentary
David J. Skal, Freaks

Best UHD Release
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Best Reissue/Upgrade
The Fisher King UHD

Best Cover
Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers.

[domino harvey]

Best Release
01 Last Picture Show + Texasville
02 Bo Widerberg
03 Red Balloon and Other Stories
04 the Servant
05 Targets

Best Box: Bo Widerberg
Best Cover: the Others
Best Upgrade: Last Picture Show

[Black Hat]

BEST RELEASE
1 Pasolini
2 Bo Widerberg
3 Watermelon Woman
4 Drylongso
5 Hollywood Shuffle

BEST BOXED SET or MULTI-FILM COLLECTION
Pasolini

BEST MODERN FILM
Small Axe

BEST COMMENTARY
Joseph McBride for The Trial

BEST BOOKLET
Pasolini

BEST REISSUE or UPGRADE
Kurosawa's Dreams

BEST COVER
The Others

WORST COVER
The Servant

BEST DISCOVERY
Drylongso

[Omensetter]

BEST RELEASE
01. Two Films by Marguerite Duras
02. La cérémonie
03. Chilly Scenes of Winter
04. Inland Empire
05. Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers

Greatest development: Janus Contempories

BEST BOXED SET or MULTI-FILM COLLECTION
Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers

BEST MODERN FILM "New" (2019-2023) films released by Criterion OR Janus Contemporaries (JC)
Godland

BEST COMMENTARY
Joseph McBride, The Trial

BEST BOOKLET
Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers

BEST REISSUE or UPGRADE
The Last Picture Show

BEST COVER
Chilly Scenes of Winter

BEST PACKAGING - BOXED SET, MULTI-FILM COLLECTION, OR INDIVIDUAL RELEASE
Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers

[Matt]

AND THE CRIFFIE FOR BEST RELEASE OF 2023 GOES TO



Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers: Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic
(43 pts)

RUNNERS UP
2. Bo Widerberg’s New Swedish Cinema: The Baby Carriage / Raven's End / Elvira Madigan / Adalen 31 (32 pts)
3. The Trial (29 pts)
4. Pasolini 101 (28 pts)
5. The Last Picture Show plus Texasville (26 pts)
6. After Hours (21 pts)
7. (tie) Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher and Two Films by Marguerite Duras — India Song / Baxter, Vera Baxter (20 pts each)
9. One False Move (16 points)

BEST BOXED SET or MULTI-FILM COLLECTION
Tie: Pasolini 101 and Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher

BEST MODERN FILM
Tie: Petite maman and Triangle of Sadness

BEST COMMENTARY
Tie: Freaks (David J. Skal) and The Trial (Joseph McBride)

BEST BOOKLET
Pasolini 101

BEST UHD RELEASE
Tie: The Trial and Days of Heaven

BEST REISSUE or UPGRADE
The Last Picture Show plus Texasville

BEST COVER
Chilly Scenes of Winter

BEST PACKAGING
Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers

BEST DISCOVERY
Chilly Scenes of Winter

Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers was also the top vote getter in all of the individual awards with a total of 23 votes across all eligible categories. Thank you David J. Skal for your longtime championing of these films and for all your contributions to the history of film.

[Finch]

Thank you for keeping this thread going and tallying the votes, matt!

[ryannichols7]

I should've clarified when on Sunday this was due....since I had assumed it'd be tonight. oops