Why So Blu?

Anora, Basquiat, Chungking Express 4K, and More Coming to The Criterion Collection April 2025

Coming in April: Anora from The Criterion Collection, a whirlwind anti–Cinderella story, and Prince of Broadway, a moving exploration of the illusory nature of the American dream, from the singular modern auteur Sean Baker; Jean de Florette / Manon of the Spring, a sprawling tale of greed and betrayal amid the French countryside, directed by Claude Berri; and Basquiat, Julian Schnabel’s impressionistic portrait of the celebrated artist. PLUS: Ugetsu, an exquisite ghost story directed by Kenji Mizoguchi; Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express, a defining work of 1990s cinema; and Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, one of the funniest, most beloved films of all time—now on 4K UHD.

–

UGETSU

1953 • 96 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In Japanese with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio 

By the time he made Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi was already an elder statesman of Japanese cinema, fiercely revered by Akira Kurosawa and other directors of a younger generation. And with this exquisite ghost story, a fatalistic wartime tragedy derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant, he created a touchstone of his art, his long takes and sweeping camera guiding the viewer through a delirious narrative about two villagers whose pursuit of fame and fortune leads them far astray from their loyal wives. Moving between the terrestrial and the otherworldly, Ugetsu reveals essential truths about the ravages of war, the plight of women, and the pride of men.

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary by critic, filmmaker, and festival programmer Tony Rayns
• Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director, a 1975 documentary by Kaneto Shindo
• Two Worlds Intertwined, a 2005 appreciation of Ugetsu by Masahiro Shinoda
• Process and Production, a 2005 interview with Tokuzo Tanaka, first assistant director on Ugetsu
• Interview from 1992 with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa
• Trailers
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Phillip Lopate and three short stories that inspired the film

Avaialble April 1, 2025

–

SOME LIKE IT HOT

1959 • 121 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

One of the most beloved films of all time, this sizzling masterpiece by Billy Wilder set a new standard for Hollywood comedy. After witnessing a mob hit, Chicago musicians Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, in landmark performances) skip town by donning drag and joining an all-female band en route to Miami. The charm of the group’s singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe, at the height of her bombshell powers), leads them ever further into extravagant lies, as Joe assumes the persona of a millionaire to woo her and Jerry’s female alter ego winds up engaged to a tycoon. With a whip-smart script by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, and sparking chemistry among its finely tuned cast, Some Like It Hot is as deliriously funny and fresh today as it was when it first knocked audiences out several decades ago.

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Alternate 5.1 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
• Audio commentary from 1989 featuring film scholar Howard Suber
• Program on Orry-Kelly’s costumes for the film, featuring costume designer and historian Deborah Nadoolman Landis and costume historian and archivist Larry McQueen
• Three behind-the-scenes documentaries
• Appearances by director Billy Wilder on The Dick Cavett Show from 1982
• Conversation from 2001 between actor Tony Curtis and film critic Leonard Maltin
• French television interview from 1988 with actor Jack Lemmon
• Radio interview from 1955 with actor Marilyn Monroe
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by author Sam Wasson

Avaialble April 8, 2025

–

CHUNGKING EXPRESS

1994 • 102 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In Cantonese with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio 

The whiplash, double-pronged Chungking Express is one of the defining works of 1990s cinema and the film that made Wong Kar Wai an instant icon. Two heartsick Hong Kong cops (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung Chiu Wai), both jilted by ex-lovers, cross paths at the Midnight Express take-out food stand, where the ethereal pixie waitress Faye (Faye Wong) works. Anything goes in Wong’s gloriously shot and utterly unexpected charmer, which cemented the sex appeal of its gorgeous stars and forever turned canned pineapple and the Mamas & the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” into tokens of romantic longing.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, both supervised and approved by director Wong Kar Wai
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Interview from 2002 with cinematographer Christopher Doyle
• Episode of Moving Pictures from 1996 featuring interviews with Wong and Doyle
• Deleted scenes
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Amy Taubin

Avaialble April 15, 2025

–

JEAN DE FLORETTE / MANON OF THE SPRING: TWO FILMS BY CLAUDE BERRI

A sprawling tale of greed, betrayal, and revenge plays out amid the bucolic splendor of the French countryside in Claude Berri’s masterly two-film adaptation of a literary work by the legendary Marcel Pagnol. Spanning three generations in the lives of two families, Jean de Florette andManon of the Spring vividly recreate the provincial world of an early-twentieth-century village, where an outsider’s arrival sets in motion a devastating chain of events. With gorgeous cinematography, keen insights into human nature, and superb performances from icons of French cinema (Gérard Depardieu, Yves Montand, Daniel Auteuil, and Emmanuelle Béart), these richly absorbing moral tales—at the time of their production, the most expensive French films ever made—are triumphs of epic storytelling in the classical tradition.

JEAN DE FLORETTE

1986 • 121 minutes • Color • 5.0 surround • In French with English subtitles • 2.35:1 aspect ratio 

The sun-dappled beauty of the Provence countryside belies dark motivations, in the first installment of Claude Berri’s monumental pastoral tragedy. When the naively idealistic tax collector Jean Cadoret (Gérard Depardieu) unexpectedly inherits a family farm, he leaves the city for a new life in the agrarian community where his mother, Florette, grew up—though she moved away decades ago. His neighbors, however, the scheming Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) and his proud uncle César Soubeyran (Yves Montand), have plotted to divert the flow of water away from Jean’s land. Brought to extraordinary life by acting legends Depardieu, Auteuil, and Montand, Jean de Florette draws viewers into a fully realized vision of 1920s rural France in which the culture clash between modern ideas and the rustic older codes of the country takes a heartbreaking turn.

MANON OF THE SPRING

1986 • 113 minutes • Color • 5.0 surround • In French with English subtitles • 2.35:1 aspect ratio 

Shot simultaneously with Jean de Florette, this second chapter in the epic story of the intersecting fates of the Cadoret and Soubeyran families unfolds ten years after the events of the first film, as Jean Cadoret’s daughter, Manon (Emmanuelle Béart, in a César-winning performance), now a teenage shepherdess, learns of the circumstances that drove her family to ruin—and seeks revenge on those responsible. A stirring portrait of a young woman’s awakening to her own agency, Manon of the Spring brings to a close Claude Berri’s sweeping Marcel Pagnol adaptation with a devastating power that approaches Greek tragedy.

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restorations, supervised by director of photography Bruno Nuytten, with 5.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
• In the 4K UHD edition: Two 4K UHD discs of the films and two Blu-rays with the films and special features
• Claude Berri: The Card Dealer (2018), a documentary on director Claude Berri’s life and career
• The Force of Destiny (2017), a documentary about the making of the films
• Trailers
• New English subtitle translations
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Sue Harris

Avaialble April 22, 2025

–

PRINCE OF BROADWAY

2008 • 101 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

A raw, disarmingly moving slice of neorealism, this early-career triumph from DIY auteur Sean Baker plunges into the world of West African immigrant Lucky (Prince Adu) and his Armenian Lebanese boss Levon (Karren Karagulian), two unlikely friends who peddle knockoff designer goods in Manhattan’s wholesale district. When a long-forgotten ex forces him to take care of a young son he didn’t even know he had, Lucky must figure out how to become a father without losing his edge in the counterfeit-merch game. Capturing the chaos of urban life through expressive handheld camera work, remarkably naturalistic performances, and flashes of manic humor, Prince of Broadway is one of Baker’s most vivid explorations of the illusory nature of the American dream.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES 

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Sean Baker and restoration supervisor Alex Coco, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Two audio commentaries: one featuring Baker and the other featuring producer and cowriter Darren Dean, associate producer and actor Victoria Tate, and actor Karren Karagulian
• New introduction by Baker
• Two documentaries on the making of the film
• Restoration demonstration featuring Baker and Coco
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Robert Daniels

Avaialble April 29, 2025

–

ANORA

2024 • 139 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In English, Russian, and Armenian with English subtitles • 2.39:1 aspect ratio

Contemporary cinema’s foremost chronicler of American dreamers and schemers hustling on the margins of capitalist promise, Sean Baker, reaches new heights of mastery with this audacious anti–Cinderella story—a whirlwind neorealist screwball comedy with an aching heart. In an electric, star-is-born performance, Mikey Madison soars as Anora, an enterprising, ferociously foulmouthed Brooklyn erotic dancer and sex worker whose Prince Not-So-Charming comes along in the form of a Russian oligarch’s wild-child son (Mark Eydelshteyn). This is the beginning of a fractured fairy tale—also featuring standout performances from Karren Karagulian, Yura Borisov, and Vache Tovmasyan—that turns the cruel realities of class inside out. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, Anora confirms Baker as one of our preeminent auteurs.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital master, supervised by director Sean Baker and producer Alex Coco, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Two audio commentaries: one featuring Baker, Coco, producer Samantha Quan, and cinematographer Drew Daniels, and the other featuring Baker and actors Yura Borisov, Mark Eydelshteyn, Karren Karagulian, Mikey Madison, and Vache Tovmasyan
• New making-of documentary
• New interviews with Baker and Madison
• Cannes Film Festival press conference
• Q&A with Madison and actor-stripper Lindsey Normington
• Deleted scenes
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio
• PLUS: Essays by film critic Dennis Lim and author Kier-La Janisse

Avaialble April 29, 2025

–

BASQUIAT

1996 • 108 minutes • Black & White • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

Julian Schnabel’s tribute to his friend and fellow painter Jean-Michel Basquiat is less a conventional biopic than an impressionistic, sensory immersion into the much-mythologized downtown-Manhattan art world of the 1980s. Jeffrey Wright, in his first lead film role, stars as the visionary artist whose rise from graffiti tagger to art star forces him to confront the glare of sudden fame, along with racism, his own struggles with addiction, and the difficulties of being self-determining and free in America. Bolstered by an ensemble cast that includes a sublime performance by David Bowie channeling Andy Warhol, Schnabel’s directorial debut—presented here in the filmmaker’s own luminous black-and-white remastering—is a profoundly expressive elegy for a radiant life cut short.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration of the 2024 black-and-white version, supervised and approved by director Julian Schnabel, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the 2024 black-and-white version of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary featuring Schnabel and writer and curator Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan
• New 4K digital restoration of the 1996 theatrical version
• New interview with actor Jeffrey Wright
• Interview from 1996 with Schnabel and actor David Bowie
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Roger Durling

Avaialble April 29, 2025