Coming in February: King Lear, Jean-Luc Godard’s radical anti-adaptation of Shakespeare; Crossing Delancey, a love letter to 1980s Manhattan directed by Joan Micklin Silver; Drugstore Cowboy, Gus Van Sant’s lyrical Pacific Northwest addiction drama; and Performance, a transgressive journey to the dark side of London bohemia, directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg. Plus: Cronos, Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy about the seductiveness of immortality, and Punch-Drunk Love, the giddily off-kilter romantic comedy from Paul Thomas Anderson, now on 4K UHD.
Punch-Drunk Love (#843) out Feb 4
Chaos lurks in every corner of this giddily off-kilter foray into romantic comedy by Paul Thomas Anderson. Struggling to cope with his erratic temper, novelty-toilet-plunger salesman Barry Egan (Adam Sandler, demonstrating remarkable versatility in his first dramatic role) spends his days collecting frequent-flier-mile coupons and dodging the insults of his seven sisters. The promise of a new life emerges when Barry inadvertently attracts the affection of a mysterious woman named Lena (Emily Watson), but their budding relationship is threatened when he falls prey to the swindling operator of a phone sex line and her deranged boss (played with maniacal brio by Philip Seymour Hoffman). Fueled by the careening momentum of a baroque-futurist score by Jon Brion, the Cannes-award-winning Punch-Drunk Love channels the spirit of classic Hollywood and the whimsy of Jacques Tati into an idiosyncratic ode to the delirium of new romance. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
Buy Punch-Drunk Love Criterion Collection Blu-ray- 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Paul Thomas Anderson, 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
- Blossoms & Blood, a short 2002 piece by Anderson featuring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, along with music by Jon Brion
- Interview with Brion
- Program featuring behind-the-scenes footage of a recording session for the film’s soundtrack
- Conversation between curators Michael Connor and Lia Gangitano about the art of Jeremy Blake, used in the film
- Additional artwork by Blake
- Cannes Film Festival press conference from 2002
- NBC News interview from 2000 with David Phillips, the “pudding guy”
- Twelve Scopitones
- Deleted scenes
- Mattress Man commercial
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by filmmaker, author, and artist Miranda July
King Lear (#1249) out Feb 11
Jean-Luc Godard’s first English-language narrative feature is a radical anti-adaptation of Shakespeare’s masterpiece that finds the visionary filmmaker continuing to reinvent the syntax of cinema. In a post-Chernobyl world where culture has been lost, William Shakespeare Jr. V (played by theater director Peter Sellars) attempts to reconstruct his ancestor’s play, abetted by a cast that includes Molly Ringwald, Burgess Meredith, and Godard himself as a crazed avant savant. Through a dense layering of sounds, images, and ideas about everything from language to the economics of filmmaking to the very meaning of art in a ruined world, Godard fashions a puckish and profound metacinematic riddle to be endlessly analyzed, argued over, and savored. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 2K digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- Audio recording of the 1987 Cannes Film Festival press conference, featuring director Jean-Luc Godard
- New interviews with Richard Brody, author of Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard; actor Molly Ringwald; and actor and coscreenwriter Peter Sellars
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by Brody
Crossing Delancey (#1250) out Feb 18
Joan Micklin Silver’s wonderfully affectionate spin on the romantic comedy infuses the genre with a fresh, personal perspective, following an unmarried Jewish woman’s search for fulfillment in New York City. Happily independent bookstore manager Izzy (a luminous Amy Irving) isn’t looking for love, but she’s forced to reevaluate her desires when she catches the eye of two very different men: a self-centered novelist (Jeroen Krabbé) and the mild-mannered Lower East Side pickle seller (Peter Riegert) with whom her old-fashioned bubbie (scene-stealing Yiddish-theater star Reizl Bozyk) sets her up. A love letter to 1980s Manhattan shot in beautifully burnished, autumnal tones, Crossing Delancey gracefully captures the magic of a city where disparate cultures, generations, and traditions both clash and connect. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by cinematographer Theo van de Sande, 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
- New program on the making of the film featuring actors Amy Irving and Peter Riegert and screenwriter Susan Sandler
- Audio interview from 1988 with director Joan Micklin Silver
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Rachel Syme
- New cover by Samantha Dion Baker
Drugstore Cowboy (#1251) out Feb 18
Chaos lurks in every corner of this giddily off-kilter foray into romantic comedy by Paul Thomas Anderson. Struggling to cope with his erratic temper, novelty-toilet-plunger salesman Barry Egan (Adam Sandler, demonstrating remarkable versatility in his first dramatic role) spends his days collecting frequent-flier-mile coupons and dodging the insults of his seven sisters. The promise of a new life emerges when Barry inadvertently attracts the affection of a mysterious woman named Lena (Emily Watson), but their budding relationship is threatened when he falls prey to the swindling operator of a phone sex line and her deranged boss (played with maniacal brio by Philip Seymour Hoffman). Fueled by the careening momentum of a baroque-futurist score by Jon Brion, the Cannes-award-winning Punch-Drunk Love channels the spirit of classic Hollywood and the whimsy of Jacques Tati into an idiosyncratic ode to the delirium of new romance. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Gus Van Sant and director of photography Robert Yeoman, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Audio commentary featuring Van Sant and actor Matt Dillon
- The Making of “Drugstore Cowboy,” featuring interviews with Van Sant and members of the cast and crew
- New interviews with Yeoman and actor Kelly Lynch
- Deleted scenes
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author and screenwriter Jon Raymond
- New cover by F. Ron Miller
Cronos (#551) out Feb 25
Guillermo del Toro made an auspicious and audacious feature debut with Cronos, a highly unorthodox tale about the seductiveness of the idea of immortality. Kindly antiques dealer Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi) happens upon an ancient golden device in the shape of a scarab, and soon finds himself the possessor and victim of its sinister, addictive powers, as well as the target of a mysterious American named Angel (a delightfully crude and deranged Ron Perlman). Featuring marvelous makeup effects and the haunting imagery for which del Toro has become world-renowned, Cronos is a dark, visually rich, and emotionally captivating fantasy. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
Buy Cronos Criterion Collection Blu-ray- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Guillermo del Toro, 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
- Optional original Spanish-language voice-over introduction
- Two audio commentaries, one featuring del Toro, the other producers Arthur H. Gorson and Bertha Navarro and coproducer Alejandro Springall
- Geometria, an unreleased 1987 short horror film by del Toro, finished in 2010, alongside an interview with the director
- Welcome to Bleak House, a tour by del Toro of his home office, featuring his personal collections
- Interviews with del Toro, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, and actors Ron Perlman and Federico Luppi
- Stills gallery captioned by del Toro
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Maitland McDonagh and excerpts from del Toro’s notes for the film
- Cover by Mike Mignola
Performance (#1252) out Feb 25
The grimy criminal underworld and hedonistic rock-and-roll counterculture of late-1960s London collide in this mind-scrambling, kaleidoscopic freak-out. On the run from his vengeful boss, a ruthless gangster (James Fox) hides out in the Notting Hill home of a reclusive rock star (Mick Jagger) and his companions (Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton), who open the doors of his perception as the lines between reality and fantasy, male and female, persona and self, dissolve in a hallucinogenic haze. Built around Jagger’s most magnetic narrative-film performance, this visionary collaboration between enigmatic artist Donald Cammell and first-time director Nicolas Roeg is a daringly transgressive, endlessly influential journey to the dark side of bohemia. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, approved by producer Sandy Lieberson, with uncompressed monaural original-UK-version soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance (1998), a documentary by Kevin Macdonald and Chris Rodley
- Influence and Controversy: Making “Performance” (2007), a documentary about the making of the film
- The True Story of David Litvinoff, a new visual essay by Keiron Pim, biographer of dialogue coach and technical adviser David Litvinoff
- Performers on “Performance,” a documentary featuring actors James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and others
- The Two Cockneys of Harry Flowers, a program on the dialogue overdubbing done for the U.S. version of the film
- Memo from Turner, a program featuring behind-the-scenes footage
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Ryan Gilbey and a 1995 article by filmmaker and scholar Peter Wollen
- New cover by Fred Davis
