Criterion Channel Jan 2026

It is a new year! and I, your movie-watchingest friend am here to remind you that you subscribed to the criterion channel and haven’t watched anything on there in awhile.

Leaving Soon!

I always look at the leaving soon list. Every streaming service churns their releases in and out but only criterion does it with an actual letterboxd list. Starting with movies I’ve seen:

Daughters Of the Dust (Dash, Julie. 1991) — I saw this in college as part of a film class and I still sometimes think about the scenes where they make the indigo dye and talk about where souls are before they’re born. I’ve seen two of Dash’s films and you could probably write a pretty easy essay just on her use of sound as distancing effect, so like. Fair warning.

The Big Sleep (Hawks, Howard. 1946) — On the subject of using the form to create a weird distancing effect between the audience and the work, The Big Sleep is one of those movies I love but damn if I know whats going on in it. This is becuase of the Hayes code! The book is very sensical, almost straightforward, but they had to jump through so many hoops to satisfy the manic whims of a perverse protestant the film is almost totally incoherent. Kinda the ultimate product of tiktok kids saying “unalived”. The Hayes Code: Technically Not State Censorship.

Unrest (Schäublin, Cyril. 2022) — I’m having a really hard time giving a blurb for this one without just doing a summary. So don’t read this blurb, just go watch it and come back. OK. Here’s best I got: Its a synecdoche about the importance of human labour in even the most seemingly mechanical of things, focusing mostly on one woman who makes the precise little spring that keeps a watch ticking by keeping it constantly off balance, as she is herself unbalanced by the suddenly enforced implementation of the newly developed assembly line and efficiency — made possible by her every movement being timed and optimised by some clark with a clipboard and one of her own damn watches. For an anarchist screed about the mechanisation of labour its beautifully framed and still and very quiet, letting you come to your own conclusions. Cannot recommend enough.

Movies I haven’t seen but intend to before the end of the month:

• Ran (Kurosawa, Akira. 1985) I used this movie as set dressing one day but haven’t actually seen it. Not the easiest film to track down for whatever reason.
• Scarface (Hawks, Howard. 1932) An apparently definitional gangster picture that has completely missed me by
• Rio bravo (Hawks, Howard. 1959)
• Red River (Hawks, Howard. 1948)
• The King of Comedy (Scorsese, Martin. 1982) I saw that awful Joker picture and I cannot stand only watching the modern remake/ripoff of something

Floating Point:

Maya Deren is one of my favourite film weirdos her style is so simple, technically, but effective. A true master of leading motions and the cut. This is why you’ve probably seen her Meshes of The Afternoon (1943) in a class or video essay on editing. But she did a lot of other stuff before being slowly poisoned and losing her mind, and her collected writings in the book by documentext is rival only to Eisenstein for per-page film theory (my favourite is still the first one I read; “Magic is New”, in which she tries to get a permit to shoot in central park). Rarely are her films collected and presented in any notable way so its really cool criterion is doing a “Maya Deren, Master Of the Avant Garde” collection and you can watch my favourite of hers, At Land, as well as the one about cats and even her unfinished (masterwork? white whale?) Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. These are the Kino Lorber scans so I think they’re just DVD quality but worse they have soundtracks. Turn off the soundtracks. a study of choreography for the camera doesn’t work with sound.

—Jacob