Criterion Collection on DVD. Recommendations please.

Black Narcissus
Branded to Kill
Brazil
Cries and Whispers
High and Low
Monty Python's Life of Brian
Rebecca
The Red Shoes
Rushmore
Seven Samurai
Shock Corridor
Wages of Fear

Also highly recommended--I haven't seen all of these specifically on Criterion, but they're great (or at least very interesting) movies:

Band of Outsiders
Contempt
Diabolique
Double Suicide
Elements of Fear
The Grand Illusion
The Hidden Fortress
I Know Where I'm Going
K(w)aidan
The Lady Vanishes
Last Temptation of Christ
M
Rashomon
The Shop on Main Street
Seventh Seal
Straw Dogs (when it comes out in March)
Time Bandits
The Vanishing (original movie)
Wild Strawberries
Yojimbo

High and Low, one of my favorite s, looks *fantastic*.

I keep thinking about picking up the CC version of 'The Rock' because I wonder WTF every time I see it and my curiosity just keeps growing and growing.

Also: Tokyo Drifter. Fucking GREBT or whatever the kids are saying these days. I wish CC would go back and do all of Wong Kar Wai's flicks. And some anime, too.

I'd also recommend the new Trouble in Paradise Criterion DVD as it is not only a wonderful film, but an additional Lubitsch film (a silent one) is tacked on. Likewise Under the Roofs of Paris: a great film, and the DVD also includes René Clair's Paris qui dort. Really it depends what your tastes are. My favorite Criterion is the Dreyer box set, but I understand many people would find his later films too slow, or what have you.

If you see the three Jacques Tati Criterions, snatch them up. They are not only wonderfully films and nice DVDs (all with additional short Tati films), but they are now '"rare," having recently gone out of print.

Also, be on the lookout for a 2-DVD set of films by Stan Brakhage, coming out in February I believe.

Also love Sullivan's Travels, Hidden Fortress, Le Trou, Le Million and Vagabond. I AM PSYCHED to see that they're releasing Band Of Outsiders

1) Kurosawa's "Ikiru"
2) Bunuels's "Exterminating Angel"
3) Powell & Pressburger's "Tales of Hoffman"

and (not that it will ever happen, but...) Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia".

hmm. why not? I wouldn't be surprised at all if this were Criterion'd.

Pretty much my thought. To my sheer delight, I've been able to find a number of Critierion releases used...at a local outlet of the Wherehouse, no less! (Picked up Black Orpheus there recently.) This is especially important in that the one problem with the company are their ridiculously high prices new -- have they ever offered an explanation as to why? I've seen just as fine discs (mastering, bonus stuff, etc.) from small companies at much cheaper prices.

Because the expense of licensing the films, obtaining the best available prints, doing digital restoration, etc. is very high. Not to mention hiring someone to do new subtitles as they often do, plus all the bonus materials that come with many of their releases. I think their DVDs look and sound on average much nicer than those from such companies as Fantoma, etc. I think Fantoma tends to license more obscure films, and the costs are lower as a result. Anyway, Criterions aren't really much more expensive than, say, Kino's DVDs, which tend to be mastered poorly by comparison.

Believe it or not, Ikiru and Tales of Hoffmann are each set to be released sometime in the next 18 months.

(*crossing fingers* Now, you know I'm hoping my luck holds and I get the job I'm up for, just so I can say I've a budget to break!)

Oh, beyond sweet.

Recheck that catalog again, Nichole -- Sid and Nancy has been OOP for a while. There are a number of DVDs no longer available (the John Woo selections, the original Spinal Tap release)...

my faves are
contempt
band of outsiders
hiroshima, mon amour
discreet charm of the Bourgeoisie
george washington
ratcatcher

i am sure there are more i cant think of

According to the CC discussion board, they might re-release The Seven Samurai as a 2-disc (from better sources), which is both great news and sucky news 'cause I HAVE THE OLD ONE-DISC, DAMMIT.

I really love the Brakhage collection, more than I thought I would (though I might never watch The Act of Seeing... ever again, except to gross people out, which actually I did a few days ago). If you take stills from Dog Star Man, then you have a year's worth of 4AD album covers (and that year would be 1984). According to Brakhage, Eye Myth was made over the course of one year. One year! For a 9 second film! The transfer looks great, but maybe some of the source materials could've been in better shape. I mean, Mothlight had all sorts of crud on the film that they didn't sweep off, like grass, insect parts, etc.! (heh. *grin*)

Aside from a few commentaries and making-ofs - especially if it's an in-depth thing, like the Three Colors trilogy - I don't care about extras. I'd much rather have a $24.95 one-disc version of Brazil w/ the Criterion transfer and a commentary or two than the $50+ three-disc box set.

the criterion release i saw most recently (and loved more than anything i've seen lately): band of outsiders

I've had ridiculous luck with a number of Criterion releases turning up used in my neck of the woods -- most recently, Andrei Rublev and The Third Man.

As for prices/extras: keep in mind that Criterion has to license the rights to these films and then does their best to work with the top of the line prints, people, and equipment to make the best transfers possible. This costs a lot of money for discs that generally don't exactly fly off of a standard retailer's shelves. That is why the discs are expensive, not the extras. The extras are added both because the hard-core cineastes appreciate them and because they help justify the price a bit more. But most of those extras cost very little extra to produce or obtain. It's the transfers themselves that are the largest expense. Take Playtime, for example. It's going to be re-released in a few months, but the delay is because they have finally gained access to a 65mm telecine machine - something that is extremely rare and not at all cheap. The transfer will be that much better for it, but if you think that the CC is raking in the dough, I can assure you that they are not.

That all being said, don't trust the prices on the official site. I highly recommend buying through Deep Discount DVD, who generally have the best prices on most titles and offer free US shipping.

Oh, and just as a matter of point, Straw Dogs also just went out of print last week.

My girlfriend gave me Criterion's Band of Outsiders for our 4-year anniversary. Great gift.

xxxp thanks obama

There have been some interesting debates about director intent/desire when it comes to particularly 4k transfers. For example, Wong Kar Wai recolored (all?) his films in the Criterion box set, claiming it's how he originally wanted it. Or Michael Mann, who fiddled with "Heat" with a similar intent, saying the way it looked then is not how he would have made it look now. Or "The Godfather," which Coppola tweaked differently from the last edition, which was overseen by Gordon Willis and restored by Robert Harris (a high bar) to make it look sort of sepia, as it was supposedly intended; now it's more "natural," but Coppola's the director, right? The Criterion 4k of "Trainspotting" apparently looks pretty different from what people were used to, but Danny Boyle has said those previous transfers were outright inaccurate, and at the end of the day, who can remember exactly how a print looked when you first saw it 25 years ago, let alone over 50 in the cast of "The Godfather."

It's all very subjective, very who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? Like, a lot of the HDR stuff seems to imo make transfers look a little darker, maybe because the light can be much more dynamic. Is that good? Bad? Maybe just a matter of taste or preference. Some people prefer the new "Godfather" transfers, some prefer the previous ones, and even Robert Harris ultimately conceded that they both have their attributes. But just as with music, there are bound to be differences due to technical stuff at minimum. We have different rooms, different speakers, different TVs, different ears and eyes. If someone tells you an image is cleaner and brighter and you think it's dirtier and darker, and that's a problem, who can argue? Also, honestly, there's sometimes just the wow factor of seeing a film you've seen a bunch before but only in degraded or poorly projecting conditions, but a condition or color or whatever that you've grown used to, resulting in a sort of uncanny valley effect of seeing something you love somehow more perfect than it's ever been. Sometimes distractingly so, something subtle.

I haven't seen the re-colored Heat, but Mann's Criterion Blu-Ray of Thief is much bluer than the DVD I used to own (Anchor Bay, maybe?).

Very good observations - my belief is that the media industry discovered that “perfect sound forever” was a very effective pitch for replacing existing media - which hadn’t been a thing before that - and they have been pulling that lever hard at ten year intervals since the 80s. A subset of Gen X (e.g. myself) in particular have internalised the role of cultural archivists and somehow view repeated purchases of the canon as somehow preservationist and morally good. I mean, I get to share great films with my partner and daughters in unbelievable quality, so I’m not really complaining.

Apologies for tangled expression there, I slept poorly!

Josh’s post reminded me of a gathering at a friend’s place last year where, for reasons I won’t get into, he put one of the Star Wars prequels on the tv. I tried the same thing at home, via the same streaming service, and it seemed as fine as Episode I is ever going to get

At the friend’s place, he had one of the tv motion compensation options turned on. It wasn’t glaringly obvious when watching other things, but for some reason _it treated the live action parts differently than the animated ones_. Jar Jar did.. not move right

xxxpost Apparently the old Criterion "Thief" blu ray and new 4K/blu ray combo were taken from *different* 4k masters? It's all so confusing, but (from screen shots I've seen) they do look different. Per Mann's wishes, for sure. Now whether he was going for how he originally envisioned the film or how he wanted it to look now, dunno. Mann has tweaked (or retweaked) just about every one of his movies.

luckily in a lot of these cases I haven't seen the movie before so color grading variances aren't an issue (like Thief, which I bought and watched last year and quite liked, and thought looked really good)

The first version I owned was the MGM DVD from 2006; I replaced that with the Criterion Blu-Ray from 2014. I don't think I need a new version.

between the ‘yi yi’, ‘high & low’, ‘eyes wide shut’ 4K remasters and now this, I might need to get something that can play these things

Our new 4K edition of Jacques Tati’s PLAYTIME (1967) enters the Criterion Collection in February! https://t.co/gf62jB5JoZ

Tati's gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apotheosis with this classic. pic.twitter.com/eHPRtJJqzx

— Criterion Collection (@Criterion) November 17, 2025

I don't have an actual 4K player, I modded the firmware of my computer blu-ray drives so I could rip them and watch them on my media server. They're actually kind of irritating, aside from the giant file size they tend to have TrueHD audio that makes my Plex lock up and some Dolby Vision formats also make it fail.

Funnily enough one of the most visually striking 4Ks I have is the Goonies!

Dang, the Wes Anderson box is already unavailable. Hope they get some more in before the sale is over.

B&N sale? Looks like it's still at Amazon for the sale price.

Apparently back at B&N:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dvd-the-wes-anderson-archive-ten-films-twenty-five-years-criterion-collection/1147505197

Thanks! That just became my xmas present from my wife and daughter, with me placing the order so they can hand it to me on the 25th. :-/

New March batch announced. I'm especially impressed Testament is in there.

A Man and A Woman comes with this as an extra:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMTGA37gAYA

I've only seen a fraction of a fraction of Tsui Hark's output, but every movie of his I have seen has been like Sam Raimi if every single shot or cut was some weird angle or kinetic camera stunt. Wild, dizzying stuff.

https://i.ibb.co/gMY8G0h2/IMG-5716.jpg

Couple of good announcements today, some expected, like Point Blank. But I was really pleasantly surprised to see Life of Brian making a return. I can't imagine that film *ever* looked particularly good, given the low budget and quality of the film stock (iirc). But the current blu ray version did its best, so I am curious what a new restoration will look like. I mean, if Spinal Tap can get a 4K release, then sure, why not this one.

I might need to upgrade from my old DVD of Point Blank. And I'm kinda eyeing that John Singleton set. I don't love Boyz N The Hood, but Baby Boy is a very underrated/overlooked movie.

Rumor mill is they may also do Deliverance later this year.

I'm going for the Lubitsch, Resurrection, which I very much enjoyed the other week, and the Tanaka set in particular. I only just saw Tanaka as an actress for, I believe, the first time when the other day I watched my copy of Dragnet Girl from the earlier Silent Ozu crime movie set on Eclipse. She really carried the film very well and I was damn curious to know more so I noted her later career as a director and kept that in mind -- and then this arrives!

Yeah my Point Blank DVD has seen a lot of action. What I want to know is when a boutique label is going to pick up Petulia, that's never even had a blu-ray release.

Speaking of Vintage LA Films and Soderbergh commentaries, apparently Warners is sitting on a track Sods recorded for Zabriskie Point 15 or so years ago. Their DVD also only includes the studio ending with the Roy Orbison song instead of Pink Floyd, which they had already restored for rep prints. FWIW, it has recently been added to MAX, so perhaps that bodes well for a reissue from somebody.

excited for the Kinuyo Tanaka set, hooray for the Eclipse rebirth

Are Eclipse sets still no features except cover essays? The Tanaka set was released on blu in France a year or so ago with tons of bonus features (no english subs tho).

Amongst the things I learned from these extras is that when she decided to turn to directing, good guys Ozu and Naruse actively supported her, while Mizoguchi, who considered her his muse, crowed in the press that she "lacked the intelligence" to direct and later had her basically blacklisted. Makes all those epics on female suffering hit different.

Eclipse sets are pretty no-frills, designed to be mini cinematheque retrospectives in a box, with the essays working as opening remarks or a complementary handout. That made more sense in the DVD days when they had less competition handling esoteric titles.

Del Toro's "Frankenstein" was just announced (no surprise) but so was "KPop Demon Hunters" (yes surprise).

criterion needs to make money too

Weirdly unclear, though -- I'm guessing they mean more Criterion Contemporaries or something since they did the usual May announcement last week.

I think it's less newsworthy for the novelty and more for proof of continued dedication to producing physical releases of otherwise exclusive Netflix/streaming titles?

Yeah, they've had a deal with Netflix for a number of years now, but it's been slow going in producing titles compared to other setups they've had in the past (IFC, for example). They still haven't released a few of the announced/mooted titles from the initial announcement back in 2019(?).

What are some others we might see? The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Train Dreams, Lost Daughter, Mank, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Society of the Snow, Wake Up Dead Man, May December ...

Maybe Happy as Lazzaro, Da 5 Bloods, and I'm Thinking of Ending Things.

The Welles twofer of The Other Side of The Wind & They'll Love Me When I'm Dead.

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/kpop-demon-hunters-frankenstein-criterion-collection-1236670172/

Criterion also recently announced that it was adding other awards season favorites from 2025, including Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident” and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent,” to its roster.

Sentimental Value already announced as part of the regular collection. I wonder if they're doing the same for the others, or if they'll just be "Criterion Premieres?"

"Criterion Premieres" are Janus licenses, with that range originally called "Janus Contemporaries".

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fleaked-cover-of-the-k-pop-demon-hunters-criterion-v0-xr5rzonqfclg1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1080%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dba189d006be5ecf5ebb41d3962dfda52c1d3b85b

Ah crap. See it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Letterboxd/comments/1rd0fzf/leaked_cover_of_the_kpop_demon_hunters_criterion/

Flash sale tomorrow!

Criterion already announced that "The Elephant Man" is coming back to the collection in 4K. In the meantime, though, I've been reading some weird contradictions about the transfer. StudioCanal released the movie in 4K a couple of years back, with a Lynch-approved Fidelity in Motion transfer. Now in the months leading up to the Criterion release the movie has popped back into a few theaters for screenings of what is being blurbed a "new 4K restoration." So ... newer than the one a couple of years ago (which looked great)? Similarly confusing, the (new?) transfer being released by Criterion is *also* being advertised as director approved, but lacks Dolby Vision (for those that care about such things), which means that whether or not there was a new restoration, it's still a slightly different from the *previous* Lynch-approved StudioCanal 4k transfer. Apparently Criterion corrected a slight/subtle error in the original negative, maybe that's what makes it "new"? I imagine the new disc will look exactly the same, lol, but who knows.

Just watched my Criterion Last Train to Munich this past weekend, and now I need to get the Lady Vanishes which Munich is apparently a riff on (including a couple characters who show up in both, which is entertaining)

re: Elephant Man, the world of 4K physical releases is exhausting... releases that use the same "4k scan" do all kinds of other shit so you never know what you're gonna get until someone online does a comprehensive comparison

re: Elephant Man, the world of 4K physical releases is exhausting... releases that use the same "4k scan" do all kinds of other shit so you never know what you're gonna get until someone online does a comprehensive comparison

Your remastered post looks the same to me.

the second one is in Dolby Vision, your browser must not support it

Maybe they got James Cameron’s people to yassify the Elephant Man.

Elephant Man, now with 100% more rotoscoping

Pleased to see Stray Dog in 4K! The Shochiku release has only Japanese subtitles. I hate Criterion’s cover art but the film is fantastic.