The Criterion Collection is one of the best things humanity has going for it. I would own every one if I had the money. But beggars must be choosy. Fortunately, Criterion has a bunch of famous film buffs list their top ten Criterion films just in time for the holiday season. A great bunch of films that will have you adding to your Amazon wish list like crazy.
While an entertaining film in its own right, this zany 1973 movie from the Soviet Union offers an unusual peek at what constituted cinematic delight behing the iron curtain. Based on a play by Mikhail Bulgakov (whose Master and Margarita is must reading) “Ivan Vasilievich Back to the Future” is about an inventer who builds a time machine and zaps his friends and himself back to the time of Ivan the Terrible. As the time portal is open, his two friends get trapped in the 1500s and the domineering Tsar gets trapped in 1973. His friends are chased around as demons until they decide to impersonate the Tsar and his assistant–made easy by a serendipitous resemblance–while Ivan the Terrible stomps around the inventor’s apartment waving his knife. Though I found myself laughing legitimately at some of the gags in the film, I must admit ironic distance is what really made the film excellent. 60 million tickets to this film were sold in the USSR the year it came out. I think if more americans saw the film then, the Reds couldn’t help but appear a good deal less fearful.