Posted Tue Oct 15, 2024 at 09:41 AM PDT by Matthew Hartman
The Criterion Collection is never one to rest for long and after an impressive 2024 slate of Blu-ray and 4K UHD releases, they're ringing in 2025 with style! Winchester '73, Jo Jo Dancer, The Mother and the Whore, Yojimbo/Sanjuro, and The Grifters headline January 2025.
The Criterion Collection has never been one to rest for long. After their impressive run for 2024, you could argue they deserve a little rest and could sluff off some simple drops for January. But if you weren't broke after holiday shopping, you will be come January with Criterion's selection of titles all dropping on 4K UHD. We get a mix of reissues with a whole slew of newcomers to the Criterion closet to help us warm up during the cold winter ahead of us.
Thanks to perhaps the most indelible character in Akira Kurosawa’s oeuvre, Yojimbo surpassed even Seven Samurai in popularity when it was released. The masterless samurai Sanjuro, who slyly manipulates two warring clans to his own advantage in a small, dusty village, was so entertainingly embodied by the brilliant Toshiro Mifune that it was only a matter of time before he returned in a sequel. Made just one year later, Sanjuro matches Yojimbo
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
1973 • 218 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio
After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and the upheavals of May 1968 came the near religiously revered magnum opus by Jean Eustache. In his long-unavailable body of work, ranging from documentaries about his native village to closely autobiographical narrative films, Eustache pioneered a forthright and fearless brand of realism. The pinnacle of this innovative style, The Mother and the Whore follows Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a Parisian pseudo-intellectual who lives with his tempestuous girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), even as he begins a dalliance with the sexually liberated Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), leading the three into an emotionally turbulent love triangle. Through daringly sustained long takes and confessional dialogue, Eustache captures a generation navigating the disillusionment of the 1970s, and in the process achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
1986 • 97 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • 2.39:1 aspect ratio
One of the greatest comedians of all time, Richard Pryor gets raw and real in this brutally funny and lacerating self-portrait. Following the notorious incident in which he caught on fire while high on cocaine, nearly losing his life, Pryor exorcised his inner demons by writing, producing, directing, and starring in this dizzying hall-of-mirrors biopic and backstage drama, which traces a young comedian’s rise to fame, from his childhood growing up in a brothel to the colorful experiences that shaped his edgy comic voice to the addiction struggles that brought him to the brink of death. As he did in his legendary stand-up sets, here Pryor fearlessly turns his soul inside out, revealing the deep vulnerability that made his art so compelling.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
1990 • 110 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
A dark-hearted neonoir comes to a boil under the bright Los Angeles sun, in British director Stephen Frears’s rousing adaptation of the novel by dime-store bard Jim Thompson, a film that raises pulp to the realm of existential tragedy. A possessive mother (Anjelica Huston), her cynical son (John Cusack), and his scheming, seductive girlfriend (Annette Bening) are career swindlers circling one another in an elaborate emotional confidence game that grows increasingly perverse as love and trust turn to betrayal and Oedipal undercurrents rise to the surface. In Frears’s first Hollywood film, the ever-assured director and his trifecta of magnetic actors conjure a moody, unstuck-in-time vision of toxic Americana.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
1950 • 92 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.35:1 aspect ratio
Noirish shadows spread across the frontier in this landmark western, the first of the celebrated collaborations between director Anthony Mann and actor James Stewart that redefined the genre with their moral and psychological intensity. Beginning his midcareer transition into increasingly edgy roles, Stewart portrays an avenging sharpshooter whose stolen rifle becomes a harbinger of death as it is passed from one doomed hand to the next. Featuring a stellar cast that includes a touching Shelley Winters, a sensationally sleazy Dan Duryea, and a pre-stardom Rock Hudson, this elemental tale of violence begetting violence broke new ground with its evocation of the West as a no-man’s-land of antiheroes and villains.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
Now, it'll take a few days for stores like Amazon and Walmart to get their listings up, but as soon as these go live for preorder we'll update our listings ASAP. Happy Collecting and lets hope this is the first of many great things in store for 2025!
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