“The Breaking Ice” (dir. Anthony Chen, 2023)
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Even by the Criterion Channel’s own sky-high standards, the streamer’s May lineup is an absolute bonanza. The fun starts with an expertly curated tribute to the most popular year in movies, as a retro on the glory days of 1999 brings you everything from “Beau Travail” and “Bringing out the Dead” to Spike Lee’s underappreciated “Summer of Sam” and Sofia Coppola’s “The Virgin Suicides.” Meanwhile, anyone looking to dive a bit deeper into the past need look no further than a series called “Hollywood Crack-Up: The Decade American Cinema Lost its Mind,” which pays homage to the finest on-screen freakouts of the 1960s with “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Seconds,” “Targets,” and a whole lot more.
And now that Venice is making tourists pay to visit during the summer, the most cost-effective way to enjoy the city might be the Channel’s retrospective of the best movies that have been set there; David Lean’s “Summertime” is a lovely place to start, but don’t leave before catching Luchino Visconti’s “Death in Venice” and Paul Schrader’s “The Comfort of Strangers,” which Criterion’s physical media brand has rightfully helped to reclaim from its unearned reputation.
And that’s it… if you don’t count a classic-laden tribute to Columbia’s Golden Era (“From Here to Eternity,” “On the Waterfront,” “Bonjour Tristesse,” etc.), Nobuhiko Obayashi’s “Antiwar Trilogy” (a must for anyone who only thinks of him as the “Hausu” guy), a Shirley MacLaine retro that spans from “The Trouble with Harry” in 1955 to “Bernie” in 2011, films by Michael Roemer (“Vengeance Is Mine”) and Ayoka Chenzira (“Alma’s Rainbow”), and more and more and more. I’m only singling out Anthony Chen’s exquisite “The Breaking Ice” because it flew too far under the radar when it was released earlier this year, and this frigid love triangle deserves a second chance now that “Challengers” has sparked a new interest in such things.
All titles available to stream May 1.