Because a man has got to have hobbies, one of mine is collecting boutique blu-rays of movies you typically won’t find on the anemic streaming services down here in NZ. And the gold standard of fancy-schmancy blu-rays has always been the Criterion Collection, which has specialised in bringing both iconic classics and obscure discoveries to screens for years now.
Criterions play to the obsessive fans out there – who doesn’t love a good Criterion Closet video? – and one of their calling cards is the often-dazzling artwork they put on their discs. In an age where physical media seems to be becoming an afterthought for so many people whose eyeballs are glued to their phones 24-7 , Criterions are still cool, darn it. Even Natasha Lyonne thinks so:
Sometimes their disc covers play with recognisable imagery, sometimes they go abstract and arty as heck. On a recent trip to San Francisco, I visited my beloved Amoeba Records, which boasts an entire heaving shelf of used Criterions in their movie room. I dove in to fill in my Criterion Charlie Chaplin collection, rare noirs and more, and a few times, I just picked up a movie because I liked the cover.
You probably shouldn’t judge a movie entirely by its cover – or its poster, for that matter – but sometimes, a single stark image can lure you into discovering something entirely new. Take the gritty delights of Burt Lancaster’s prison breakout movie Brute Force, which drew me in solely based on that amazing artwork. Or the incredibly insane gonzo Japanese horror-comedy, 1977’s House, which sucked me in just with that haunting dog/demon/ghost image on the cover.
I love the Criterions which don’t just do a variation on the movie poster, but instead pick an image from the movie to capture the vibe wonderfully – Clark Gable’s It Happened One Night, or Billy Wilder’s icy cold noir Double Indemnity. Of course, not every Criterion cover is a winner, but when they hit, they hit.
I know we’ve got an ocean of “content” to navigate these days, but for me, sometimes the best gamble to take is picking a random Criterion based solely on its art, perhaps a movie I’ve vaguely heard of, perhaps one I’ve never heard of. You never know, you might discover your next favourite thing.
You can’t judge a movie by its cover, but you sure can be seduced by it.
Nik Dirga 