Coming in November: Věra Chytilová’s defiant Czechoslovak New Wave provocation Daisies; Jane Campion’s psychologically piercing revisionist western The Power of the Dog; Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak’s gripping saga of two rival moles in Hong Kong’s criminal underworld, The Infernal Affairs Trilogy; and Spike Lee’s visionary monument to an iconic civil rights leader, Malcolm X. Plus: an upgrade for Wong Kar Wai’s ravishing evocation of romantic longing In the Mood for Love. Read on to learn more about them.
Daisies (#1157) out Nov 1
If the entire world is bad, why shouldn’t we be? Adopting this insolent attitude as their guiding philosophy, a pair of hedonistic young women (Ivana Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová), both named Marie, embark on a gleefully debauched odyssey of gluttony, giddy destruction, and antipatriarchal resistance, in which nothing is safe from their nihilistic pursuit of pleasure. But what happens when the fun is over? Matching her anarchic message with an equally radical aesthetic, director Věra Chytilová, with the close collaboration of cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera, unleashes an optical storm of fluctuating film stocks, kaleidoscopic montages, cartoonish stop-motion cutouts, and surreal costumes designed by Ester Krumbachová, who also cowrote the script. The result is Daisies, the most defiant provocation of the Czechoslovak New Wave, an exuberant call to rebellion aimed squarely at those who uphold authoritarian oppression in any form. The Special Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary featuring film scholars Daniel Bird and Peter Hames
- New interview with film programmer Irena Kovarova
- Documentary from 2002 about director Věra Chytilová
- Documentary about the artistic collaboration among Chytilová, cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera, and screenwriter Ester Krumbachová
- Two short films from 1962 by Chytilová: A Bagful of Fleas and Ceiling
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Carmen Gray
In the Mood for Love (#147) out Nov 1
Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping Bing, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past two decades of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career. The Director-Approved Special Features are:
- 4K digital restoration with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, both supervised and approved by director Wong Kar Wai
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Documentary from 2001 by Wong, chronicling the making of the film
- Hua yang de nian hua (2000), a short film by Wong
- Interview and cinema lesson from 2001 featuring Wong
- Press conference from the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival with actors Maggie Cheung Man Yuk and Tony Leung Chiu Wai
- Interview from 2012 with critic Tony Rayns about the soundtrack
- Deleted scenes with optional commentary by Wong
- Music video
- Trailer
- PLUS: A new essay by novelist Charles Yu
The Power of the Dog (#1158) out Nov 8
Jane Campion returns to the kind of mythic frontier landscape—pulsating with both freedom and menace—that she previously traversed in The Piano in order to plumb the masculine psyche in The Power of the Dog, set against the desolate plains of 1920s Montana and adapted by the filmmaker from Thomas Savage’s novel. After a sensitive widow (Kirsten Dunst) and her enigmatic, fiercely loving son (Kodi Smit-Mcphee) move in with her gentle new husband (Jesse Plemons), a tense battle of wills plays out between them and his brutish brother (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose frightening volatility conceals a secret torment, and whose capacity for tenderness, once reawakened, may offer him redemption or destruction. Campion, who won an Academy Award for her direction here, charts the repressed desire and psychic violence coursing among these characters with the mesmerizing control of a master at the height of her powers. The Director-Approved Special Features are:
- 4K digital master, approved by director Jane Campion, 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
- Interview with Campion about the making of the film
- Program featuring interviews with members of the cast and crew and behind-the-scenes footage captured on location in New Zealand
- Interview with Campion and composer Jonny Greenwood about the film’s score
- Conversation among Campion, director of photography Ari Wegner, actor Kirsten Dunst, and producer Tanya Seghatchian, moderated by filmmaker Tamara Jenkins
- New interview with novelist Annie Proulx
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- English descriptive audio
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Amy Taubin
The Infernal Affairs Trilogy (#1159) out Nov 15
The Hong Kong crime drama was jolted to new life with the release of the Infernal Affairs trilogy, a bracing, explosively stylish critical and commercial triumph that introduced a dazzling level of narrative and thematic complexity to the genre with its gripping saga of two rival moles—played by superstars Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau Tak-wah—who navigate slippery moral choices as they move between the intersecting territories of Hong Kong’s police force and its criminal underworld. Set during the uncertainty of the city-state’s handover from Britain to China and steeped in Buddhist philosophy, these ingeniously crafted tales of self-deception and betrayal mirror Hong Kong’s own fractured identity and the psychic schisms of life in a postcolonial purgatory. The Director-Approved Special Features are:
- New 4K digital restorations, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
- Audio commentaries for Infernal Affairs and Infernal Affairs II featuring codirectors Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak and screenwriter Felix Chong Man-keung
- Alternate ending for Infernal Affairs
- New interview with Lau and Mak
- Archival interviews with Lau, Mak, Chong, and actors Andy Lau Tak-wah, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Anthony Wong Chau-sang, Kelly Chen Wai-lam, Edison Chen Koon-hei, Eric Tsang Chi-wai, and Chapman To Man-chak
- Making-of programs
- Behind-the-scenes footage, deleted scenes, and outtakes
- Trailers
- New English subtitle translations
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Justin Chang
Malcolm X (#1160) out Nov 22
One of the most electrifying heroes of the twentieth century receives an appropriately sweeping screen biopic, rich in both historical insight and propulsive cinematic style, courtesy of visionary director Spike Lee. Built around an extraordinary performance from Denzel Washington, Malcolm X draws on the iconic civil rights leader’s autobiography to trace his journey of empowerment, from a childhood riven by white-supremacist violence to a life of petty crime to his conversion to Islam and rebirth as a fearless fighter for Black liberation, whose courage and eloquence inspired oppressed communities the world over. An epic of impeccable craft that was made with Lee’s closest creative collaborators and is buoyed by commanding performances from Delroy Lindo, Angela Bassett, Al Freeman Jr., and others, this is a passionate monument to a man whose life continues to serve as a model of principled resistance. The Director-Approved Special Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
- Audio commentary from 2005 featuring director Spike Lee, Dickerson, editor Barry Alexander Brown, and costume designer Ruth E. Carter
- New conversation between Lee and journalist and screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper
- New interviews with actor Delroy Lindo and composer Terence Blanchard
- Program about the making of the film, featuring Lee, Dickerson, Brown, Blanchard, Carter, filmmaker Martin Scorsese, actor Ossie Davis, Reverend Al Sharpton, former Warner Bros. executive Lucy Fisher, producers Preston Holmes and Jon Kilik, production designer Wynn Thomas, casting director Robi Reed, and Malcolm X’s daughter Ilyasah Shabazz
- Malcolm X (1972), a feature-length documentary produced by Marvin Worth and Arnold Perl and directed by Perl, narrated by actor James Earl Jones
- Deleted scenes with introductions by Lee
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by Cooper, excerpts from Lee’s 1992 book By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of “Malcolm X” . . ., and Davis’s eulogy for Malcolm X
