Most people mark the seasons by the changing of leaves and the rise of temperatures; I mark them by the arrival of The Criterion Collection’s biannual flash sale. Twice a year, the beloved imprint marks all of its 4Ks, Blu-rays, and DVDs 50% off, and cinephiles flock to the site to spend their hard-earned cash (and the heaps of gift codes Criterion happily sends to Criterion Channel subscribers) on some of their latest releases.
Today, the Flash Sale runs from 9am PST March 18th to 9am PST March 19th; during that time, you can grab just about any Criterion you see at half off. And the last several months have seen them release quite a few must-buy releases, from 4K upgrades to existing titles to new entries in the canon, both classic and contemporary. So whether you’re shoring up your collection or dying to grab some new favorites (including their Janus Contemporaries line), here are a few titles you might do well to grab.
Crossing Delancey
Joan Micklin Silver is the master of probing, acerbic, gently funny tales of womanhood and Jewishness in New York City, and her greatest is probably Crossing Delancey. An affectionate rom-com that looks long and hard at the twists of modern romance, Silver’s film hones in on the twin pulls of culture and eros that bewitch Izzy (Amy Irving, tremendous), a bookstore manager torn between a handsome author (Jeroen Krabbe) and the picky man next door (an approachable, adorable Peter Riegert). Manhattan’s never looked more lived-in and charming, and Silver builds a winsome ensemble to fill it with books, life, and love.
Features include a making-of featurette and an audio interview with Silver from 1988, but those sparse features are more than made up with the gorgeousness of its 4K presentation (those golden hues of the Manhattan skyline!) and the lovely cover art.
Order here.
Drugstore Cowboy
Gus Van Sant’s works in the ’90s were odes to teenage rebellion, whether queer or otherwise. Drugstore Cowboy, his sophomore feature, adapts James Fogle’s autobiographical novel into a dreamlike crime drama/counterculture surrealist epic. Matt Dillon, never hotter and in deeper James Dean mode, shambles from drugstore to drugstore robbing cash registers to fuel the next fix for him and his cohorts (a young Heather Graham and James Le Gros). William S. Burroughs turns up as an old drug fiend, if that gives you an inkling of the metatextual hijinx on display.
Features include a commentary with Van Sant and Dillon, a making-of doc, new interviews with the cinematographer and actress Kelly Lynch, deleted scenes, and trailers.
Order here.
Eastern Condors
One of the wackiest Vietnam movies ever made, Sammo Hung’s outrageous Chinese action-comedy Eastern Condors is a delightful slice of Golden Harvest cheese that’s entertaining from start to finish. A riff on The Dirty Dozen, where Hung leads a team of prisoners behind enemy lines in Vietnam, the thing starts at a 10 and never really lets up. Hung kills someone with a leaf, people get knifed in the crotch, and that’s only a couple of the perverse delights that await you.
Features include a new audio commentary from Tony Rayne, a restoration of the “export cut” dubbed in English, interviews with Hung and Yuen Wah, an onstage performance of the film’s story at the 1987 Miss Asia Pageant, and an essay from Letterboxd darling Sean Gilman.
Order here.
Funny Girl
Don’t rain on your parade — along comes one of Barbra Streisand’s most beloved musicals, the fateful tale of Fanny Brice and her stumbling shuffle to stardom, accompanied by her con man beau (Omar Sharif). While the story leaves a bit to be desired in its last half hour (yes, please, let’s focus on Omar for the last act of this Barbra movie!), you’d be hard pressed to find a more impactful musical for both the 1960s and Streisand’s career. A beautiful showcase for one of our finest divas.
Features include audio interviews with Babs, conversations between TCM’s Alicia Malone and William Wyler’s son, David, a doc on Wyler’s career, interviews with Sharif, and deleted scenes and featurettes aplenty.
Order here.
Godzilla vs. Biollante
Fans of Criterion’s kaiju-sized Showa era set fear not; there’s more of the big green guy coming with their new 4K of the most acclaimed of the ’80s Heisei era, Godzilla vs. Biollante. A fine return to form for ol ‘Zilla, this one sees him doing battle against a mutant plant that’s part Godzilla, part human daughter, and part rose (and all carnage). See rubber suits smash against each other with delirious aplomb.
The features include a new audio commentary from film historian Samm Deighan, making of programs and docs about the creature and vehicle designs, and deleted special effects.
Order here.
King Lear
If you think Jean-Luc Godard tackling Shakespeare is a tall order, well, you’d be right; one of the director’s final films, and his only one in English, King Lear is as much about the Bard’s play as the contents of my stomach are to last night’s dinner. That’s not a bad thing, mind; Godard starts by playing a phone convo between him and Cannon producers Golan-Globus about the thorny process behind making this film, then features a scene between Norman Mailer and his daughter about writing a screenplay for this anti-adaptation that never materializes. Then the film keeps going, in all its Godardian whimsy and transgressiveness. It’s a film about trying to get, well, anything made in this day and age, and fans of the filmmaker should appreciate it.
Features include an audio recording of the 1987 Cannes Film Festival press conference, a new interview with Richard Brody, Molly Ringwald, and Peter Sellars, and an essay by Brody.
Order here.
The Mother and the Whore
Jean Eustache’s thorny, autobiographical three-and-a-half-hour opus The Mother and the Whore, long thought lost to time, is now finally back in circulation thanks to a gorgeous Criterion transfer. A loping piece of Parisian bohemian life, Eustache puts his own jagged relationship drama to the screen, as a twentysomething intellectual (Jean-Pierre Léaud) begins a dalliance with a young, sexually open woman (Françoise Lebrun), and tries to make that work with his live-in girlfriend Marie (Barnadette Lafont). Cue nearly four hours of conversational battle between three souls working out what love, sex, and revolution even means — all while the sexual revolution rages outside their door.
The set is gorgeous, including interviews with Lebrun, Jean-Pierre Gorin and Rachel Kushner, and a comprehensive program on the film’s painstaking restoration, among others.
Order here.
No Country for Old Men
The Coen Brothers’ Best Picture-winning crime drama moves with all the droll tragedy of their best works (Blood Simple, Raising Arizona), a bleak, wry West Texas thriller about a Vietnam vet (Josh Brolin) running off with stolen money, and the black-eyed killer (Javier Bardem, in a role as iconic as his floppy hairdo) chasing after him.
The 4K UHD presentation looks phenomenal (if a little bright, though that’s a minor complaint), and the disk itself is packed with extras, from conversations with the Coens and cinematographer Roger Deakins to archival interviews with the cast. A host of other documentaries and a couple of great essays also accompany the film.
Order here.
Paper Moon
The long-standing Film Twitter meme can finally rest; Criterion finally put Peter Bogdanovich’s charming, bittersweet Paper Moon in the collection. The Depression-era adventure throws a huckster Bible salesman (Ryan O’Neal) into the path of a precocious nine-year-old girl (Ryan’s real-life daughter Tatum) who becomes his erstwhile partner in crime. It’s a real charmer, a slice of father-daughter melancholy charted along the lonely roads and desolate plains of the Midwest during the Great Depression.
Criterion pulled out all the stops with this release; the artwork and accompanying packaging is gorgeous, with incredible inserts that include a facsimile of the photo taken in the film and features that include an audio commentary and intro from the late Bogdanovich, a video essay by Bogdanovich biographer Peter Tonguette, making of documentaries and archival interviews, and even a Johnny Carson segment with Bogdanovich and the O’Neals.
Order here.