Today Criterion announced their February slate and any disappointment we might still be suffering over a couple of lackluster months this winter have all but dissipated. Between this and their January titles (which we looked at here), plus all the stuff that hasn’t been officially announced yet but we know will be coming soon (Guillermo del Toro’s “Cronos,” Ang Lee’s “Ride with the Devil,” Alfonso Cuaron’s “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” plus a shitload of IFC titles) and 2010 is looking to be an absolutely dynamite year for our beloved Criterion Collection.
But what’s on the docket for February?
First up is “Revanche” (spine #502, also on Blu-ray), which we’re very excited about. The slow-burning Austrian revenge film, which was nominated for the Best Foreign Language during its brief theatrical stint this year, was pretty phenomenal, but never really got it’s due outside the Oscar nod and a few critics. But this was the first movie that Criterion themselves distributed in roughly a billion years, so you know there’s quality behind it.
Next is Max Ophüls’ sumptuous and opulent final film “Lola Montes” (spine #503, also on Blu-ray), which we’re assuming is struck from the same gorgeous print that screened at the New York Film Festival last year. If so, we’re all in for a treat. And to think that Ophüls’ classic will be available on high definition too, well, it’s very, very exciting indeed.
From the new IFC deal comes their edition of Steve McQueen’s debut feature “Hunger” (spine #504, also on Blu-ray), a movie we also saw back at the New York Film Festival last year. While we’re still sorting out our feelings on this fractured tale of the IRA hunger strike, it’s an unquestionably moving and powerful film (just one that’s very hard to sit through).
Lastly we have Leo McCarey’s “Make Way for Tomorrow” (spine #505, DVD only), which we’ve never heard of but don’t feel too bad about. According to the write-up, the film is “one of the great unsung Hollywood masterpieces, an enormously moving Depression-era depiction of the frustrations of family, aging, and the generation gap.” Sounds good to us.
While there’s nothing new in the catalog-stuff-coming-to-Blu-ray department, it should be noted that this is the closest 1:1 ratio of new Blu-ray titles (three out of the four titles announced with also hit high-definition). Still, we pray every night for a nice Blu-ray of “Mishima” or “All That Heaven Allows.”
On the Eclipse front, there’s a new set (no. 20), George Bernard Shaw on film, which sounds pretty awesome but we’re just going to run what the website is telling us: “The hugely influential Nobel Prize–winning critic and playwright George Bernard Shaw was notoriously reluctant to allow his writing to be adapted for the cinema. Yet thanks to the persistence of Hungarian producer Gabriel Pascal, Shaw finally agreed to collaborate on a series of screen versions of his witty, social-minded plays, starting with the Oscar-winning ‘Pygmalion.’ The three other films that resulted from this famed alliance, ‘Major Barbara,’ ‘Caesar’ and ‘Cleopatra, and Androcles and the Lion,’ long overshadowed by the sensation of ‘Pygmalion,’ are gathered here for the first time on DVD. These clever, handsomely mounted entertainments star such luminaries of the big screen as Vivien Leigh, Claude Rains, Wendy Hiller, and Rex Harrison.” — Drew Taylor