Do Androids Dream of Criterion Streams?

I have not been to the movie theater in over a fucking year. This is a bummer. Before the pandemic, my kids and I would go at least two or three times a month. We’d see whatever — well, typically “R” rated movies with violence and sex and bad things and all that good stuff. These are my kids after all. Yeah…I’m one of those kind of dads. My parental philosophy is this — everybody gets to do what they want, just don’t fuck up. Every day is your birthday, until it’s not. Wait…what does that even mean?

I love seeing movies at the theater and I love the whole movie-going experience, good and bad. Brand new, rundown, multiplex, megaplex, single screen, HD, XD, 3D, 35 mm, first run, second run, matinee, midnight, sloped floor, stadium seats, arthouse, discount, Dolby, THX, repertoire, whatever! My kids seem to share this love with me, or at least they pretend. Before this whole pandemic thing, we had a routine: go to a movie, arrive early, get concessions, sit in middle (sweet spot), watch every preview, enjoy the movie, pee, drive home, discuss. When talking with people, I find the most controversial part of this routine is the concessions. So let’s discuss movie treats.

Lots of folks tell me they don’t do concessions because it all costs too much. They get kinda passionate about it for some reason and get upset when I disagree. I might say something like, oh bullshit, and follow up with something like, who gives a fuck? It’s fun.

I always buy concessions. It’s part of the Boz movie deal. Don’t go to a movie with me if you are not willing to stand in line and get some concessions like a real American patriot. That’s right, patriot baby! I don’t care if the candy and popcorn are a rip-off. I will gladly pay $20 to get my kids some rubbery hot dogs with stale buns dipped in cheese whiz if that’s what they want. You get what you want when you go to a movie with me, the experience, good and bad. America!

My Dad took me to a lot of movies when I was younger but we didn’t do concessions. I never understood this. He’s a man who would bring little plastic sandwich baggies filled with a collection of circus peanuts, black licorice, Dots, and Junior Mints. We would drink fountain water in the lobby if we were thirsty. Now I saw a lot of great movies with my Dad (a few from memory: Scarface, Rocky, Sudden Impact, Gothic) and it was fun and all, but that’s enough circus peanuts right there to poison an elephant. So, if you’re cool with poisoning fucking elephants, go ahead and cheap out on the concessions.

Now that I have convinced you (or not) to get some real movie treat$ (e.g., patriots, elephants, poison) let’s talk movies. 2019 was a great year for movies, one of the best in my memory (which is, admittedly, foggy). At one point, my son and I saw a run of movies that was unmatched — Midsommar, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Lighthouse, Parasite, Uncut Gems. I was also able to catch the new cut of Apocalypse Now at the IMAX — a full-on masterpiece — and suffered through 3+ hours of The Irishman at some arthouse dump in Monterey (check, experience).

By contrast, 2020 was a shit year for movies and not just your regular “King’s Speech” shit year for movies. It was a big, steaming pile of pandemic shit year for movies and the virus took a serious dump on our movie-going plans. We thought we could drown our theater closure sorrows with streams — Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Shutter, HBO, even fucking Crackle — but no amount of 4K could replace the controversial concessions, giant screen, surround sound, and reclining pleather seats we used to complain about.

At one point, we decided to get the Criterion Channel to help ease our pain. It worked a little, but not so much — clunky interface and general lack of options at subscription prices with a decent selection of “film” films. Their selection was fancy enough — maybe too fancy at times for its own good (I fell asleep) but they had some real solid shit too. At times the vain gloriousness of it all gave me nose bleeds, especially the subscriber emails where highfalutin auteurs like Wes Anderson or Noah Baumbach would ramble on about their most precious channel favorites. Oh Wes. Oh Noah.

Sooo I thought it’d be fun to close this rambling mess of an essay with my very own pseudo-subscriber email just like I’d imagine Oh Wes and Oh Noah might, aka the Boz Picks Criterion Channel Faves For You. Now I’m talking random, stuck at home, locked out of the theater, stir crazy, suicide watch shit. I won’t bore you with any lengthy reviews, just the titles and maybe a fleeting thought or two and a quote. That should be good ‘n plenty enough, ta-fricking-da and bonne nuit:

Dear valued subscriber,

In response to our invitation to contribute his list of favorite Criterion titles, hard core reprobate and sophomoric degenerate moron, Boz Bahzoh, wrote, “I thought my take on a top-five favorites list might be to simply quote myself from the toilet paper scrawls I periodically write while dumping my ass out after a long night of getting totally juiced up and basted.” His top streaming selections were:

The Driller Killer — Abel Ferrara, say yes. “Hey, while I was in the pizza parlor, this creepy old man came up to me and said, ‘sweetie, you don’t have to kiss to make babies’ …so I walked right up to him and said out loud, ‘I know but you still gotta fuck!’”

Lost in America: kill your dreams traveling the country in a shitty Winnebago with a neurotic twit like Albert Brooks. Kill them dead. “The Desert Inn has heart!”

The Brood: Oliver fucking Reed fires up some “psychoplasmics” therapy and Samantha Eggar makes mutant babies. “They’re her children. More exactly, they’re the children of her rage.” Ohhh the body horror.

Fantastic Planet: see blue giants and human-shaped Oms on planet Ygam… uhhh holy heavenly acid flashback city. “ Legend says that from his tomb he still animates the ball of life.” Got that?

Paris, Texas: great, great, the very best. “And for the first time he wished he were far away. Lost in a deep, vast country where nobody knew him.”

Related posts:

This article revolves around one of the most famous interview topic “defer in iOS”. We will not only know what exactly is defer but also will concrete our concept on defer with help of real interview…

Selling online products and services is getting difficult day by day because of the rapidly increasing competition. In short, utilizing appropriate marketing strategies is now the only way to keep…

Had you ever thought how the life will look like if you had zero debts in other words, no debts whatsoever? In today’s article you will find a 360° different approach to your relationship with debt…