Coming in February: Victor Sjöström’s Hollywood Masterworks, three darkly atmospheric landmarks of early Hollywood cinema; Kung Fu Hustle, an outlandishly entertaining extravaganza from Hong Kong comedy legend Stephen Chow; Jay Kelly, a tour-de-force character study of a Hollywood icon, directed by Noah Baumbach; Ruggles of Red Gap, directed by Leo McCarey, a humanist comedy about the American ideal; The Sweet Hereafter, a panorama of a Canadian town in the aftermath of a tragedy from Atom Egoyan; and—fresh from theaters—Romería, Carla Simón’s graceful reflection on memory and inheritance. Plus: The Irishman, a sweeping, late-career crime sagadirected by Martin Scorsese, now on 4K UHD; and Mala Noche, an important prelude to the New Queer Cinema from Gus Van Sant, now on Blu-ray.
Mala Noche (#407) out Feb 2
With its low budget and lush black-and-white imagery, Gus Van Sant’s debut feature, Mala Noche, heralded an idiosyncratic, provocative new voice in American independent film. Set in Van Sant’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, the film evokes a world of transient workers, dead-end day shifters, and bars and seedy apartments bathed in a profound nighttime, as it follows a romantic deadbeat with a wayward crush on a younger Mexican immigrant. Mala Noche was an important prelude to the New Queer Cinema of the nineties and is a fascinating time capsule from an era that continues to haunt the director’s work. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
Buy Mala Noche (Criterion Collection)- High-definition digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Gus Van Sant, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Interview with Van Sant
- Walt Curtis: The Peckerneck Poet, a documentary about the author of the book Mala Noche, directed by animator Bill Plympton
- Original trailer, edited by Van Sant
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film programmer and critic Dennis Lim
Romería out Feb 2
An orphaned young woman’s search through the shards of her family’s past becomes an encounter with the missing pieces of her identity, in this graceful reflection on memory and inheritance. Marina (Llúcia Garcia), an aspiring filmmaker, visits the luminous seaside city of Vigo in northwestern Spain seeking answers about her biological parents’ turbulent lives and mystery-shrouded deaths. As she gets to know her father’s fractious family, she confronts competing narratives and long-buried secrets. Unfolding with a free-flowing lyricism that tips into dream and fantasy, Romería finds director Carla Simón turning a compassionate gaze on her own complex heritage, reclaiming hidden history through the alchemical magic of cinema.
- Meet the Filmmakers: Carla Simón, a Criterion Channel original interview
- Trailer
- Notes by critic and programmer Giovanni Marchini Camia
Victor Sjöström’s Hollywood Masterworks (#1345) out Feb 9
Having established himself as Sweden’s leading silent-era director, Victor Sjöström was beckoned to America, where he brought daring dramatic intensity, searing expressionistic visuals, and a profound feeling for landscape and the often overwhelming power of the natural world to the three landmarks of early Hollywood cinema gathered here. Built around indelible, startlingly modern performances from Lon Chaney (He Who Gets Slapped) and Lillian Gish (The Scarlet Letter, The Wind), these darkly atmospheric tales of madness, sexual repression, moral hypocrisy, self-annihilation, and human redemption share a vision of the world as ruled by chaos and struggle. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 2K digital restoration of He Who Gets Slapped, with a new score composed and performed by Matti Bye
- New 2K digital restoration of The Scarlet Letter, with score
- New 4K digital restoration of The Wind (1928 theatrical-release version), preserved and digitally restored by the Museum of Modern Art, with original soundtrack
- New 2K digital restoration of The Wind (1983 variable-frame-rate version), with a score by Carl Davis
- New audio commentary on He Who Gets Slapped featuring critic Kenneth Turan
- New video essay on director Victor Sjöström’s work in Hollywood
- New interview with critic Farran Smith Nehme on actor Lillian Gish
- Archival introduction to The Wind by Gish
- New interview with film historian George Feltenstein on the scores for The Wind
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Pamela Hutchinson
Kung Fu Hustle (#1346) out Feb 9
Martial-arts mayhem meets Looney Tunes invention in this outlandishly entertaining extravaganza from Hong Kong comedy legend Stephen Chow. He brings his everyman magnetism to the role of Sing, a wastrel wannabe gangster in prerevolutionary Shanghai, whose destiny is revealed after he becomes embroiled in a war between an axe-wielding gang and the eccentric residents of a tenement complex, who turn out to be formidable adversaries. Soft-shoe-shuffling mobsters, a panoply of martial-arts icons, and a climactic battle that ascends to the heavens: Chow and legendary action choreographer Yuen Wo-ping throw all this and more into a showstopper that was a resounding success both in Hong Kong and internationally. The Special Edition Features are:
Buy Kung Fu Hustle- New 4K digital restoration of the director’s cut, with 5.1 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 featuring director-coscreenwriter-actor Stephen Chow and actors Danny Chan Kwok-kwan, Lam Tze-chung, and Tin Kai-man
- New audio commentary featuring Griffin Newman and David Sims, hosts of the podcast Blank Check
- New interview with film curator La Frances Hui
- Making-of documentary featuring interviews with cast and crew members
- Interview with Chow conducted by author Ric Meyers
- Featurettes on the film’s fight choreography, production design, and costume design
- Outtakes, bloopers, and deleted scenes
- Film-to-storyboard comparison
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by comedian and writer Demi Adejuyigbe
The Irishman (#1054) out Jan 5
Martin Scorsese’s cinematic mastery is on full display in this sweeping crime saga, which serves as an elegiac summation of his six-decade career. Left behind by the world, former hit man and union truck driver Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) looks back from a nursing home on his life’s journey through the ranks of organized crime: from his involvement with Philadelphia mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) to his association with Teamsters union head Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) to the rift that forced him to choose between the two. An intimate story of loyalty and betrayal writ large across the epic canvas of mid-twentieth-century American history, The Irishman (based on the real-life Sheeran’s confessions, as told to writer Charles Brandt for the book I Heard You Paint Houses) is a uniquely reflective late-career triumph that balances its director’s virtuoso set pieces with a profoundly personal rumination on aging, mortality, and the decisions and regrets that shape a life. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
Buy The Irishman (Criterion Collection)- 4K digital master, approved by director Martin Scorsese, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the special features
- Roundtable conversation from 2019 featuring Scorsese and actors Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci
- Making “The Irishman,” a program featuring Scorsese; the lead actors; producers Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Jane Rosenthal, and Irwin Winkler; director of photography Rodrigo Prieto; and others from the cast and crew
- Gangster’s Requiem, a video essay by film critic Farran Smith Nehme about The Irishman’s synthesis of Scorsese’s singular formal style
- Anatomy of a Scene: “The Irishman,” a 2020 program featuring Scorsese’s analysis of the Frank Sheeran Appreciation Night scene from the film
- The Evolution of Digital De-aging, a 2019 program on the visual effects created for the film
- Excerpted interviews with Frank “the Irishman” Sheeran and Teamsters trade-union leader Jimmy Hoffa from 1999 and 1963
- Trailer and teaser
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio
- PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien
Ruggles of Red Gap (#1347) out Feb 16
Directed by renowned Hollywood humanist Leo McCarey, Ruggles of Red Gap is one of the great comedies about the American ideal. Charles Laughton leads a delightful ensemble cast as Marmaduke Ruggles, an English valet who, while accompanying his employer on a trip to Paris, finds himself gambled away to a new-money American couple. The bewildered butler’s tradition-bound world is upended when the couple bring him back to their frontier outpost in Washington State, but there he eventually discovers a newfound sense of self-determination in a land “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Balancing relaxed physical humor with a heart-swelling affection for everyday people, McCarey fashions a comedy of rare effortlessness and poignancy. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New interview with critic Farran Smith Nehme
- Three radio adaptations
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearin
- PLUS: An essay by critic Mark Harris
Jay Kelly (#1348) out Feb 16
In this rueful comic drama from acclaimed director Noah Baumbach, George Clooney delivers a richly nuanced performance as Jay Kelly, a Hollywood icon who embarks on an incident-filled journey from Los Angeles to Paris to Tuscany. While confronting the choices that have left him unmoored from any true sense of self and estranged from his daughters and friends, he remains willfully oblivious to the sacrifices of his devoted manager (a soulful Adam Sandler) and his publicist (Laura Dern), who try to maintain the bubble around him. Featuring a brilliant ensemble cast, virtuoso production design, and dynamic cinematography, this tour-de-force character study weaves past and present into a memory piece, exploring the hard truth that we get only one shot at this life. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital master, approved by director Noah Baumbach, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New programs featuring interviews with Baumbach; actor-cowriter Emily Mortimer; actors George Clooney, Laura Dern, and Adam Sandler; and composer Nicholas Britell
- Documentary on the making of the film
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio
- PLUS: An essay by critic Nicolas Rapold
The Sweet Hereafter (#1349) out Feb 23
Atom Egoyan pieces together the shards of a tragedy that has left a community shattered in this ethereal, emotionally arresting film, an Oscar-nominated adaptation of the Russell Banks novel. Drifting between past and present, The Sweet Hereafter offers an intimate panorama of a snowbound Canadian town reckoning with the fallout of a school-bus crash that claimed the lives of fourteen children—a fresh wound that’s further inflamed when a big-city lawyer, who is contending with his own personal tragedy, arrives to assemble a lawsuit on behalf of the victims’ families. Achieving an almost incantatory intensity through the mesmerizing performances of an ensemble cast led by Ian Holm and Sarah Polley, this winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival is a devastatingly clear-eyed vision of the ways in which trauma can ripple through our lives. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration supervised and approved by director Atom Egoyan, with 5.1 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
- Two audio commentaries, one from 1998 featuring Egoyan and author Russell Banks, and the other from 2012 featuring Egoyan
- New interview with Egoyan
- Interview with Egoyan and actor Sarah Polley“Egoyan to the Oscars,” a 1998 segment from the Canadian television program The National
- Episode of the Criterion Channel series Observations on Film Art about the use of associative editing, featuring scholar Jeff Smith
- Isolated track featuring Mychael Danna’s score
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic César Albarrán-Torres and an introduction by Egoyan
