“Chicken for Linda” (dir. Sébastien Laudenbach & Chiara Malta, 2023)
Image Credit: Criterion Channel
Criterion Channel knows that neo-noir just hits differently during the sweltering heat of summer, when murderous temptation and high-intensity sexual jazz seem to have sweltered in the humidity, and so the streamer has tilted until July. of it all with a genre retrospective that ranges from the horny (“Out of Sight”) to the crazy (“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”) and the even hotter (“The Last Seduction”) to , well , Ken Russell (‘Crimes of Passion’). Of course, when it comes to sun-soaked crimes of passion, it’s hard to do better than Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet,” which is the centerpiece of a pop Shakespeare series spanning from his “The Tempest” 1979 by Derek Jarman to ‘The Tempest’ by Michael Almereyda. “Hamlet” and beyond (by “beyond,” I mean Joss Whedon’s “Much Ado About Nothing”).
Anyone looking for classic dialogue in a different measure would do well to explore the Columbia Screwball series, which boasts a number of classics (“His Girl Friday”) along with lesser-known offerings such as Richard Boleslawski’s “Theodora Goes Wild” , in which Irene Dunne plays a provocative writer whose anonymously published novel scandalizes the rest of her conservative Connecticut town. More outrageous—and far more violent—fun awaits in the Channel’s tribute to Times Square, which naturally kicks off with “Sweet Smell of Success” before plunging even deeper into mayhem with “Taxi Driver,” “Midnight Cowboy” and “Variety” by Bette Gordon .’
July’s slate also includes a mini-retro tribute to Nicolas Roeg (including the Donald Sutherland classic ‘Don’t Look Now’), a celebration of Heisei Era Godzilla and a spotlight on the punk spirit that ran through Mexican cinema in the late of the 80’s. And yet, as much as I hate to miss the rare opportunity to highlight older films in this column, my pick for the month is a brand new animated title that’s too special to be lost in the shadow of ‘Inside Out 2’ and ‘ Gru 10” or whatever, especially come awards season. Chicken for Linda by Sébastien Laudenbach and Chiara Malta, as wonderfully self-aware as it is deceptively so, is the story of an eight-year-old girl named Linda who… wants chicken. For dinner, specifically. But Laudenbach and Malta manage to draw an ocean of emotion from this idea of an idea, creating a musical delight that exalts the power of animation to make even the simplest of emotions feel as infinite and expressive as our most sacred memories. Do not miss it.
All movies are available to stream on July 1st
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