Jean-Luc Godard, Gus Van Sant, Paul Thomas Anderson and More Coming to The Criterion Collection February 2025
Coming to the Criterion Collection 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
2002 • 95 minutes • Color • Dolby Atmos • 2.35:1 aspect ratio
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-
DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- 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
Available February 4, 2025
–
KING LEAR
1987 • 90 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • 1.37:1 aspect ratio
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.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- 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
Available February 11, 2025
–
CROSSING DELANCEY
1988 • 97 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
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.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by cinematographer Theo van de Sande, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- In the 4K UHD edition: 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
Available February 18, 2025
–
DRUGSTORE COWBOY
1989 • 102 minutes • Color • Stereo • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
Gus Van Sant’s dreamy, drifty, deadpan second feature—an addiction drama based on James Fogle’s autobiographical novel—captures the zonked-out textures and almost surreal absurdity of a life lived fix to fix. Swinging between dope-fueled disconnection and edgy paranoia, Matt Dillon plays the leader of a ragtag crew (also featuring Kelly Lynch, Heather Graham, and James Le Gros) that robs pharmacies for pills, coasting across the 1970s Pacific Northwest while trying to outrun sobriety and fate. With a brilliant supporting turn from counterculture high priest William S. Burroughs and a lyrical feeling for the streetscapes of Van Sant’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, Drugstore Cowboy cemented the director’s status as a preeminent poet of outsiderhood.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Gus Van Sant and director of photography Robert Yeoman, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
- In the 4K UHD edition: 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
Available February 18, 2025
–
CRONOS
1993 • 93 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • In Spanish and English with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
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.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- 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 co-producer 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
Available February 25, 2025
–
PERFORMANCE
1970 • 105 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
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.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, approved by producer Sandy Lieberson, with uncompressed monaural original-UK-version soundtrack
- In the 4K UHD edition: 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
Available February 25, 2025
Aaron Neuwirth
Writer/Reviewer, Film Lover, Podcaster, Gamer, Comic Reader, Disc Golfer & a Lefty. There are too many films, TV, books, etc. for me to list as favorites, but I can assure that the amount film knowledge within my noggin is ridiculous, though I am always open to learning more. You can follow me on Twitter @AaronsPS4, see what else I am up to at TheCodeIsZeek.com & check out my podcast, Out Now with Aaron and Abe, on iTunes.
