Alfred Hitchcock's pre-war spy thrillers are interesting because on the one hand they're romps and on the other hand they're designed to subtly push the British public against Germany in a time when the film cannot openly call the bad guys German. This tonal dialectic really worked for us in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934, Spine 643) and The Lady Vanishes (1938, Spine 3), but falls a little flatter in The 39 Steps (1935, Spine 56) and Foreign Correspondent (1940). Here the unevenness is more noticeable, and that's because bubbling just below the surface is a fight between Hitchcock's desire to make a normal Hitchcock movie and producer Walter Wanger's desire to make an up-to-the-minute ripped-from-the-headline-writers' view of the impending war, unhelped by the army of writers working on it throughout production. But also very much helped by the visual effects and production design.

Abdellatif Kechiche's adaptation of Jul Maroh's Blue is the Warmest Color (2013) offers us a lot to talk about, but Criterion's release offers no additional content to frame our conversation, which is extra weird considering the hundreds of thousands of words written on this film upon its release. We're just two cishet guys talking about a lesbian relationship, but maybe that's ok because it doesn't seem like there were any lesbians involved in the lesbian romance movie anyway. But beyond the male gaze-y sex scenes there is a deeply interesting story of a relationship, of a young working class woman coming into her own, and of a student becoming a teacher becoming a burned out teacher.

According to director Terence Davies, he wasn't interested in presenting what happens chronologically next in a film, but emotionally what's next. As such The Long Day Closes (1992) is a stream-of-consciousness coming-of-age exploration of memory, budding sexuality, music, film, and musical films. Oh and there's a like a two minute shot of light on a carpet and it may be the most perfect thing we've ever seen?

We fell in love with Aki Kaurismäki when we first watched Le Havre (2011, Spine 619), and are very excited to talk about the original film in which André Wilms plays Marcel Marx, another tale of immigrant rights but this one an ode to a Paris that no longer exists, a bohemian lifestyle that is increasingly impossible under capitalism. Oh and speaking of being an artist under capitalism, we also talk about Martin Scorsese's recent announcement that he's using AI for storyboarding, a thing he is obviously not actually doing so I hope the money is worth it.

Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) is a very fun movie and an overstuffed Criterion release. But perhaps a comedy of such epic proportions (and aspect ratios) needs an epically sized release.

Having finished the World Cinema boxset, we had resigned ourselves that we would have to go back to doing some acrobatics to read Marxism into the films for awhile again, but little did we expect that Michael Mann's Thief (1981) isn't just a stylish heist film but is also (and moreso) a rumination on the exploitation of labor and rent seeking. There's power in a union, but there's also apparently power in burning everything down just to show your boss who has control.

The first World Cinema Boxset draws to a close with Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid (1960), a film whose influence you can clearly see in many modern South Korean directors' work, from Bong Joon-ho to Park Chan-wook. A sort of domestic horror film punctuated with a moral message ending that left us floored for the audacity of its presentation, The Housemaid is maybe the best movie in a boxset of bangers, a thing I think I've said about each film in the set at this point. We also take some time to reflect on the set as a whole, its weird collection of sponsors, and how we very much want more of this from Criterion.

This week the World Cinema Project boxset changes pace a bit with Trances, Ahmed El Maanouni's 1981 documentary on Moroccan avant-garde band Nass El Ghiwane. But it doesn't change pace too much, as this Nass El Ghiwane's music is firmly anti-colonial and the band members' interviews deliver overt Marxist messaging in much the same way as the previous four films of the set have been.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that the World Cinema Project is Martin Scorsese's plot to smuggle openly Marxist films into the Criterion Collection, and Metin Erksan's Dry Summer (1963) continues the trend. Erksan imagines a world where one rich man can enclose those common goods that sustain life, where one man's greed can choke his community and his own family. Surely not a world that could exist outside of film.

Halfway through the World Cinema Project Vol. 1 boxset and the hits keep coming. This week it's all about the trauma of separation: familial and economic, but also in light of the Partition of India and Bangladeshi independence. Ritwik Ghatak's A River Called Titas (1973) is an intimidating work, lengthy and meandering like the titular river. Its also beautiful and dynamic, tragic and melodramatic. Its a full package brimming over, and a highlight in a boxset that's only highlights.