Coming in July: Black God, White Devil, Glauber Rocha’s blistering existential western from Brazil; Perfect Days, a serene ode to everyday life in Tokyo directed by Wim Wenders; Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Sam Peckinpah’s blood- and dust-caked elegy for the American West; Farewell My Concubine, a breathtakingly intimate saga in twentieth-century China, directed by Chen Kaige; and Risky Business, Paul Brickman’s sly satire about a suburban Chicago prepster. Plus: Le samouraï, Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece of cool about a contract killer with samurai instincts, now on 4K UHD.
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (#1224) out Jul 2
Sam Peckinpah’s cycle of genre-redefining westerns came to a close with this blood- and dust-caked elegy for the American West, which marries his renegade style with a fatalistic sense of finality. As newly minted lawman Pat Garrett (James Coburn) stalks the outlaw Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) across the plains, their old friendship is twisted into rivalry, and mythic ideals of freedom come up against an emerging ruling-class order—all to the strains of a haunting soundtrack by Bob Dylan (who also appears as the mercurial Alias). Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid—presented here for the first time in three separate versions—stands as perhaps the maverick auteur’s richest, most mature work, a world-weary ballad that bears the solemn weight of history passing into legend. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration of the 50th Anniversary Release, supervised by editors Paul Seydor and Roger Spottiswoode, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New 4K digital restoration of the Original Theatrical Release, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary for the 50th Anniversary Release featuring Seydor, Spottiswoode, and critic Michael Sragow
- Two 4K UHD discs of the films presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the films and special features
- New 2K digital master of director Sam Peckinpah’s Final Preview Cut, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Dylan in Durango, a new interview with author Clinton Heylin about the film’s soundtrack
- Passion & Poetry: Peckinpah’s Last Western, a new program about the making of the film
- Archival interview with actor James Coburn
- Trailer and TV spots
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author Steve Erickson
Le samouraï (#306) out Jul 9
In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, Le samouraï is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture—with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology. The Special Edition Features are:
Buy Le samourai (The Criterion Collection) Blu-ray- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Interviews with Rui Nogueira, editor of Melville on Melville, and Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris
- Interviews with Melville and actors Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon, and Cathy Rosier
- Melville-Delon: D’honneur et de nuit (2011), a short documentary exploring the friendship between the director and the actor and their iconic collaboration on Le samouraï
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar David Thomson, an appreciation by filmmaker John Woo, and excerpts from Melville on Melville
- New cover by Polly Dedman
Black God, White Devil (#1225) out Jul 16
Myth, mysticism, and revolution collide in a blistering existential western from Glauber Rocha, the father of Brazil’s socially committed Cinema Novo movement. After killing his swindling boss, ranch hand Manoel (Geraldo Del Rey) goes on the run with his wife, Rosa (Yoná Magalhães). In the stark hinterlands, they join forces with armed bandits and pledge allegiance to a self-styled holy man who preaches revolt against rich landowners while perpetrating unspeakable acts of violence against the innocent. Suffused with antiauthoritarian fervor and the intensity of life in the desert, this landmark work of radical cinema is a scorched-earth allegory about mindless fanaticism and the allure of dead-end ideologies. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary by restoration producer Lino Meireles
- New interview with film scholar Richard Peña
- Glauber the Movie, Labyrinth of Brazil (2003), a documentary on director Glauber Rocha
- Cinema Novo (2016), a documentary on the Brazilian film movement
- Memória do cangaço (1964), a short documentary on the origins of cangaço, a form of social banditry in northeastern Brazil
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar Fábio Andrade
- New cover based on the original poster by Rogério Duarte
Perfect Days (#1226) out Jul 16
A perfect song that hits at just the right moment, the play of sunlight through leaves, a fleeting moment of human connection in a vast metropolis: the wonders of everyday life come into breathtaking focus in this profoundly moving film by Wim Wenders. In a radiant, Cannes-award-winning performance of few words but extraordinary expressiveness, Koji Yakusho plays a public-toilet cleaner in Tokyo whose rich inner world is gradually revealed through his small exchanges with those around him and with the city itself. Channeling his idol Yasujiro Ozu, Wenders crafts a serenely minimalist ode to the miracle that is the here and now. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
- 4K digital master, approved by director Wim Wenders, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New interview with Wenders
- Interview with actor Koji Yakusho
- Some Body Comes into the Light (2023), a short by Wenders, featuring a new introduction by the director
- Interview with producer Koji Yanai, founder of the Tokyo Toilet project
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Bilge Ebiri
- New cover by Michael Boland
Risky Business (#1227) out Jul 23
A sly piece of pop subversion, this irresistible satire of Reagan-era materialism features Tom Cruise in his star-is-born breakthrough as a Chicago suburban prepster whose college-bound life spirals out of control when his parents go out of town for the week and an enterprising call girl (Rebecca De Mornay) invites him to walk on the wild side. While Cruise boogying in his briefs yielded one of the most iconic pop-cultural moments of the 1980s, it is the film’s unexpected mix of tender romance (enhanced by a moody synth score by Tangerine Dream) and sharp-witted capitalist critique that remains fresh and daring. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restorations of the director’s cut and the original theatrical release, supervised and approved by director Paul Brickman and producer Jon Avnet, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Audio commentary for the original theatrical release featuring Brickman, Avnet, and actor Tom Cruise
- New interviews with Avnet and casting director Nancy Klopper
- New conversation between editor Richard Chew and film historian Bobbie O’Steen
- The Dream Is Always the Same: The Story of “Risky Business,” a program featuring interviews with Brickman, Avnet, cast members, and others
- Screen tests with Cruise and actor Rebecca De Mornay
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film curator and critic Dave Kehr
- New cover illustration by Jeremy Enecio
Farewell My Concubine (#1228) out Jul 23
A breathtakingly intimate romance unfolds against a sweeping backdrop of social upheaval in renowned director Chen Kaige’s sumptuous saga of passion, fate, and the transcendent possibilities of art. Spanning fifty years of twentieth-century Chinese history, Farewell My Concubine follows aspiring actors Dieyi (a heartbreaking Leslie Cheung) and Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) as they emerge from a childhood of brutal training to become Beijing-opera stars, with life mirroring art as Dieyi’s unrequited love for Xiaolou and the country’s changing political tides engulf them in their own personal tragedies of jealousy and betrayal. The first Chinese film to win the Palme d’Or is epic filmmaking of the highest order—visually and emotionally ravishing from frame to exquisite frame. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration of the original director’s cut, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New conversation between Chinese-cultural-studies scholar Michael Berry and producer Janet Yang
- Documentary from 2003 on the making of the film
- Interview from 1993 with director Chen Kaige conducted by journalist Charlie Rose
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by author and scholar Pauline Chen
- New cover by Eric Skillman
