The best movies on the Criterion Channel right now

In John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence, Gena Rowlands (Cassavetes’ real-life spouse) stars as Mabel Longhetti, a mother of three with disturbing mannerisms. When Nick (Peter Falk), her construction worker husband, decides to have Mabel committed for six months to a psychiatric institute, his plans for a reconditioned spouse and realigned family quickly spiral upon Mabel’s return. Featuring an iconic performance from Gena Rowlands, A Woman Under the Influence is a raw film that speaks to the powers of truly independent cinema. Shot in a cinéma-vérité fashion by cinematographers Mitch Breit and Al Ruban, the guerilla look and feel is brutally honest and at times uncomfortably claustrophobic, lending to the overall mood of the picture.

Writer/director Wong-Kar-Wai is perhaps most famously known for films like The Grandmaster and In the Mood for Love, but 1994’s Chungking Express helped to truly engrain the auteur as an international visionary. Our story is split in two, each side depicting the tribulations of Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and Cop 663 (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung), police officers with love troubles. Cop 223 is dumped by his girlfriend but vows he will give her one month to return. In the meantime, he takes to buying cans of pineapple with a May 1 expiration date (the day the month will pass) and pining for a local drug-smuggler (Brigitte Lin). Cop 663, after a breakup of his own, begins frequenting a train-line snack station. His flight attendant ex-lover goes to meet him there, but Faye (Faye Wong), a shop employee, informs her that it’s his day off. She gives Faye a key to 663’s apartment, which Faye uses to break into the officer’s home, where she takes to cleaning and decorating. Oh, and she’s falling for 663. Worlds collide, stories weave, and characters cross paths in this unconventional but utterly mesmerizing film that was really nothing more than an exercise for Wong-Kar-Wai. The director whipped the story together and shot the film in less than two months, while he was taking a break from editing his historical epic, Ashes of Time.

The feature film debut of writer/director David Lynch, Eraserhead is a surrealistic tale about the horrors of parenting, repressed desires, and whatever other metaphors you can plug into Lynch’s weird blueprint. When Henry (John Nance) joins his girlfriend, Mary (Charlotte Stewart), and her family for a very odd dinner, Mary informs him that she is pregnant. Only a few cuts later, and we are introduced to the baby, an otherworldly creature that quickly falls ill. Suffering an emotional breakdown, Mary leaves Henry alone with their ailing creation, where a deluge of nightmarish visions begins to consume him. Eraserhead can be interpreted in several haunting ways, but above the symbolism, the film introduced the world to the dreamlike narratives, strange dialogue, and droning soundscapes of its auteur, David Lynch. The film was financed by Lynch and the AFI Conservatory, which is where it was also shot. Production was on-again/off-again over a period of five years, where at times the cast and crew even lived on-set. Their efforts were noble, and the product of their labor quite extraordinary, if not totally out of this world.