Coming in August: Harlan County USA and American Dream, two unflinching, Oscar-winning reports from the trenches of working-class America, directed by Barbara Kopple; James Gray’s Dostoevskian family tragedy in the form of a Brooklyn gangster drama, Little Odessa; an existential crime thriller, Coup de torchon, directed by French-cinema legend Bertrand Tavernier; Safe, a prescient commentary on self-help culture from Todd Haynes; and Eclipse Series 49: Five Radical Documentaries by Kazuo Hara and Sachiko Kobayashi, five works that wage war against the conformism of modern Japanese society.
Safe (#739) out Aug 4
Julianne Moore gives a breakthrough performance as Carol White, a Los Angeles housewife in the late 1980s who comes down with a debilitating illness. After the doctors she sees can give her no clear diagnosis, she comes to believe that she has frighteningly extreme environmental allergies. A profoundly unsettling work from the great American director Todd Haynes, Safe functions on multiple levels: as a prescient commentary on self-help culture, as a metaphor for the AIDS crisis, as a drama about class and social estrangement, and as a horror film about what you cannot see. This revelatory drama was named the best film of the 1990s in a Village Voice poll of more than fifty critics. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
Buy Safe (Criterion Collection)- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Todd Haynes, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Audio commentary featuring Haynes, actor Julianne Moore, and producer Christine Vachon
- Conversation between Haynes and Moore
- The Suicide, a 1978 short film by Haynes
- Interview with Vachon
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Dennis Lim
Coup de torchon (#106) out Aug 11
With this existential crime thriller, legend of French cinema Bertrand Tavernier transforms Jim Thompson’s hard-boiled novel Pop. 1280 into a darkly comic, philosophically provocative exploration of the brutality and absurdity of colonialism. Moving the story’s setting from the American South to 1930s French West Africa, Coup de torchon features a frighteningly enigmatic performance from Philippe Noiret as a police chief whose seeming ineptitude masks a cold-blooded pursuit of revenge and control that draws his opportunistic mistress (a fiery Isabelle Huppert) into an escalating spiral of violence. With each chilling revelation, Tavernier plunges us ever deeper into an abyss of madness and corruption, laying bare the decaying soul of empire. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Interview from 2001 with director Bertrand Tavernier
- New interview with critic and poet Robert Polito about source-novel author Jim Thompson
- Making-of program featuring on-set footage and interviews with members of the cast and crew
- Alternate ending
- Trailers
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by scholar Lynn Anthony Higgins
Eclipse Series 49: Five Radical Documentaries by Kazuo Hara and Sachiko Kobayashi out Aug 25
Shocking, confrontational, and made with white-hot fury, these radical documentaries—directed by Kazuo Hara and produced by his wife and longtime creative partner, Sachiko Kobayashi—give voice to the outsiders and iconoclasts who wage war against the conformism of modern Japanese society. From a woman willing to risk everything on her journey toward personal and sexual liberation (Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974) to a man whose quest to expose Japanese wartime atrocities borders on madness (The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On), the unforgettable subjects of these films are invited to be collaborators in Hara and Kobayashi’s process, resulting in works of unmatched power and immediacy.
Little Odessa (#1323) out Aug 25
A Dostoevskian family tragedy in the form of a gangster drama, the darkly elegant debut feature by James Gray heralded the arrival of a singular voice in contemporary American cinema. Cloaked in the shadows of New York’s underworld, Little Odessa follows Joshua (Tim Roth), a volatile hit man whose latest assignment takes him back to the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up. After his return home, his criminal life collides with the grim domestic world of his abusive father (Maximilian Schell), ailing mother (Vanessa Redgrave), and loyal teenage brother (Edward Furlong). Channeling the brooding fatalism of classic noir, Gray—who won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion at just twenty-five—composes a haunting reflection on violence that begins at home and ripples ever outward. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director James Gray, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Audio commentary from 2000 featuring Gray
- Once Upon a Time . . . “Little Odessa,” a making-of documentary by David Thompson produced for French television
- New conversation between Gray and critic and podcaster Sean Fennessey
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Glenn Kenny
American Dream (#1324) out Aug 25
Winner of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, Barbara Kopple’s American Dream details the tumultuous 1985–86 labor strike against Hormel Foods in Austin, Minnesota. Fed up with dangerous plant conditions and drastic wage cuts, Austin’s Local P-9 went against the advice of its parent union and, aided by an activist campaign to damage the meatpacking giant’s reputation, conducted a nearly yearlong walkout. But as the strike dragged on, some workers found themselves desperate enough to cross the picket line, dividing a community already roiled by blockades, riots, and the intervention of the National Guard. Following up her landmark documentary Harlan County USA with another uncompromising report from the trenches of working-class America, Kopple captures the human and political costs of one of the most significant setbacks to organized labor amid the unchecked corporatism of the Reagan era. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Barbara Kopple, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Interview from 1992 with Kopple
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film programmer Thom Powers
Harlan County USA (#334) out Aug 25
Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award–winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a coal miners’ strike in a small Kentucky town. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners’ sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. With a haunting soundtrack—featuring legendary country and bluegrass artists Hazel Dickens, Merle Travis, David Morris, Sarah Ogan Gunning, and Florence Reece—the film is a heartbreaking record of the thirteen-month struggle between a community fighting to survive and a corporation dedicated to the bottom line. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
Buy Harlan County USA (Criterion Collection)- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Barbara Kopple, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Audio commentary by Kopple and editor Nancy Baker
- Making-of documentary featuring interviews with Kopple, crew members, and strike participants featured in the film
- Outtakes from the film
- Interview with bluegrass singer-songwriter Hazel Dickens
- Interview with filmmaker John Sayles
- Panel discussion from the 2005 Sundance Film Festival featuring Kopple and critic Roger Ebert
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
