I'll disagree with you, DR Dan, on Kevin Smith and "Chasing Amy." Loved that movie, but I haven't seen it since it came out. I also loved "Clerks." And "Mallrats" was OK fun. I'm probably in a minority on this.
I state the following not to disparage your views DR John G., but rather out of my difficulty in understanding the appeal that Kevin Smith somehow maintains 20 years after "Clerks".
If any of Smith's movies was "worthy" of a Criterion edition it would be "Clerks" and not "Chasing Amy". My feeling is that "Clerks" remains Smith's best movie, and will stand up over time. Everything he's done since then pales in comparison. "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" was unwatchable and feels like a very inside joke. "Dogma" had an interesting premise but overall it was not good as it was beating the dead horse that is anti-Catholicism. I also find Smith to return to the same stoner humor over and over. Maybe I was never the target audience. As funny as they were and could be, even Cheech and Chong get tiresome. I have a hunch that "Chasing Amy" was given the placement in the Criterion "pantheon" because of Ben Affleck and his then-recent Oscar for "Good Will Hunting", and that the folks choosing the films thought it was "cutting edge". Remember that Roger Ebert was a board-member for Criterion and he was the only reviewer that I know of who liked the Burt Reynolds starrer "Cop and a Half" (a certifiable bomb if there ever was one). So, Ebert was not always a reliable barometer of taste; I was a Siskel fan myself. I've read that enough time has now passed to let slip the secret that William Goldman was the "ghost" who actually wrote the screenplay for "Good Will Hunting". The gambit was made to "ensure" a win for Affleck (no secret here, not a fan) and Damon (who I'm not crazy about, but he is better than the other guy) to "kick" them into a higher pay-grade.
I will now yield the soap box.
