Criterion Hall of Fame - Downhill Racer & L'Avventura

With the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina currently in their final week, Matt has found a way to fit in a cheeky little on-brand homage to two of his favourite films in the Criterion Collection: one that is directly about a Winter Olympic sport, and another from a legendary director from northern Italy!First up is Michael Ritchie's New Hollywood sports film Downhill Racer, starring and produced by Robert Redford. It's a stripped down look at what it means for a high level athlete to pursue being the best, and how this kind of achievement does not only happen to decent and likable people. Then he gets to gush about the legendary Italian neo-realist masterpiece L'Avventura from the great Michelangelo Antonioni. It's a deliberately paced examination of the malaise of the upper class, even in the face of a friend and lover that has gone missing, that is regarded as a pillar of world cinema.---Email: [email protected]: https://www.instagram.com/cinemaonashelf/Substack: https://www.cinemaonashelf.substack.comMatt's Letterboxd: @Matty236---Music:"Vibing Over Venus" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/