Criterion gives Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Sam Peckinpah’s final, unfinished Western, stellar treatment in a two-disk Blu-ray set (also in a 4K UHD edition) with three different cuts plus extensive extras. The original theatrical release is presented alongside Peckinpah’s final preview cut and a more polished 50th Anniversary edit which restores and refines much of the material originally removed after the director walked away from the project.
Japanese New Wave filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda uses a range of styles and registers to evoke Japan’s tumultuous Twentieth Century history in the allegorical fantasy Demon Pond (1979), newly restored in 4K and released in dual formats by Criterion.
The cultural climate has changed in the quarter-century since the theatrical release of Tod Solondz’s second feature and it’s virtually impossible to imagine Happiness (1998) being made today. Controversial at the time, it seems even more explosive now. Its comedy of dysfunctional relationships is still pertinent, but its cool, even empathetic treatment of paedophilia and mass shootings forces the audience to engage in ways which bypass habitual responses and recognize the human element in monsters.
Criterion’s two-disk Blu-ray release of Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil (1964) not only presents and impressive restoration of a key film in Brazilian cinema; it anchor’s an impressive survey of the Cinema Novo movement which transformed that cinema in the early 1960s, with two feature-length documentaries – on Rocha himself and the larger movement – a commentary by the film’s restoration supervisor, and a 1964 documentary about the cangaceiro outlaws who formed a crucial element in the background of Rocha’s feature.
Emilio Fernández’s Victimas del pecado (Victims of Sin, 1951), newly restored in 4K from the original nitrate negative, is a Mexican musical melodrama loaded with tragedy punctuated with ecstatic dance numbers from star Ninón Sevilla, who plays a cabaret dancer whose life is upended when she takes responsibility for an abandoned baby. Taut direction by Fernández and stunning photography by the masterful Gabriel Figueroa provide a remarkable showcase for Sevilla’s considerable talent.
Criterion follow their 2021 edition of Ousmane Sembène’s Mandabi (1968) with a three-disk set showcasing the features he made in the 1970s, works which continued his exploration of African identity in the shadow of centuries of colonial oppression. Emitaï (1971), Xala (1975) and Ceddo (1977) range across two centuries, from the pre-colonial incursions of Christianity and Islam to the brutality of French colonial oppression and on to the political corruption of the post-colonial era.
Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba (1964) uses the striking cinematography of Sergei Urusevsky to create a fever dream version of the Cuban Revolution, a series of archetypal moments of oppression and resistance leading to an ecstatic explosion of justified communal violence. Filled with heightened emotions rendered in breathtaking images and seemingly impossible camera movements, the film looks gorgeous in a 4K restoration on Criterion’s Blu-ray.
Criterion’s two-disk Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers showcases three of the director’s best movies, including the peak of his long collaboration with Lon Chaney in The Unknown (1927) and Browning’s masterpiece Freaks (1932) along with the lesser-known The Mystic (1925). Fine 2K transfers and some illuminating extras leave you hoping that more of Tod Browning’s work will turn up on disk in restored versions.
William Dieterle’s All That Money Can Buy aka The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) mixes self-aggrandizing national myth with a dark allegory of Capitalism in which a desperate New England farmer sells his soul to the Devil for wealth and power which he learns too late doesn’t bring happiness. Criterion’s new 4K restoration is visually stunning.
Before attaining international critical success with a series of cool, formally precise thrillers, Johnnie To made a pair of wildly inventive superhero movies fraught with anxiety about the approaching hand over of Hong Kong to Chinese control in 1997. The Heroic Trio and Executioners (both 1993) mix fantasy, science fiction, traditional martial arts and modern action into a potent dystopian stew centred on three of Hong Kong’s biggest female stars – Anita Mui, Michelle Yeoh and Maggie Cheung. Criterion’s three-disk dual-formal edition showcases stunning restorations by L’Immagine Ritrovata.