It’s that time of year again, as cinephiles empty their wallets and frantically check their inboxes for gift codes: The Criterion Collection is running a 24-hour flash sale, with all 4Ks, Blu-rays, and DVDs in its sprawling library 50% off.

In the months since their last sale, they’ve been hard at work with months of new releases, 4K upgrades, and brand-new restorations, as well as their Criterion Premieres series that offers barebones releases for newer festival favorites that often end up as Criterion Channel streaming exclusives (if you’re a Criterion-head like the rest of us, you’ve probably got the Channel as well, but it’s always nice to have a physical disk on hand for films you love).

This sale, however, feels a little different, with the release of their sprawling, comprehensive box set of Stanley Kubrick films. No telling how quickly that’ll sell out, so have your carts ready, gang. But if you want more than that, or need guidance on what new releases to look out for and add to your cart, we’ve got you covered.

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Criterion’s always been kind to Martin Scorsese, giving both his early stuff (Mean Streets) and later releases (Killers of the Flower Moon) much-needed love. (The latter, especially, given that Apple really dragged its feet on this release.) But Scorsese’s ultimate rejoinder to the ding that he doesn’t know how to direct women comes in the form of a new restoration of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, his staggering 1974 portrait of a beleaguered waitress (Ellen Burstyn) desperately trying to hold herself together as an independent woman in a world that doesn’t quite know what to do with one of those. On top of the restoration, we have an audio commentary with Scorsese, Burstyn, Jodie Foster, Kris Kristofferson and others, new conversations and interviews with Burstyn and editor Marcia Lucas (aka the woman who saved Star Wars), a making-of, and an essay from Stephanie Zacharek.

Order here.

The Complete Kubrick

The blockbuster release of Criterion’s fall season, this box set presents all thirteen of Stanley Kubrick’s features, along with three of his shorts, in 5.1 surround sound. Like Bergman, Varda, and others before them, Criterion’s clearly trying to make its mark with the definitive set of one of 20th-century cinema’s most acclaimed directors: 2001, Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining (this set also includes Kubrick’s international version), and more are all here, with new audio commentaries for several featuring filmmaker Lee Unkrich and author Michael Benson, both of whom are definitive Kubrick scholars. The packaging looks incredible; the features include archival interviews and four documentaries about Kubrick and his work, dating back to Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001). If you can swing the $600 price tag (well, $300 if you get it today), it’ll be well worth it to capture his work in total like this.

Order here.

Cruel Story of Youth

Nagisa Oshima’s second feature, much like their classic In the Realm of the Senses, throws two hearts against an unyielding world and forces us to watch how they splatter against the wall. In postwar Tokyo, lovesick teenagers Makoto (Miyuki Kuwano) and Kiyoshi (Yusuke Kawazu) make their living extorting middle-aged men who want to sleep with Makoto. But as any Oshima story goes, this life of freewheeling crime and love can’t last forever; alongside its arresting color palette sits a white-hot ball of anger at the corrupt Japan that would chew up and spit out two sweet kids like this. Criterion’s release is almost a double feature, with supplements that include Oshima’s first feature, A Town of Love and Hope, another of his shorts, and an interview with film scholar Tony Rayns to add needed context.

Order here.

Harlan County, USA / American Dream

Barbara Kopple’s documentaries are among the most vital works of pro-labor cinema ever made, and true templates of the documentary form. The most iconic, of course, is 1976’s Harlan County, USA, which charted the trials and tribulations of a coal miners’ strike in rural Kentucky, capturing faces, tension, and violence with remarkable compassion for her subjects. She followed this with the Oscar-winning 1990 doc American Dream, which examined another labor strike, this time at a Hormel Foods plant in Minnesota. Both films work in conversation with one another; Criterion releases them separately, but I’m lumping them together because, well, I just can’t bear to separate them.

Order Harlan County here and American Dream here.

I’ll Remind You of Everything: The Films of Mike Mills

Mike Mills’ works are always studded by the gulf between parents and children — what parents struggle to know about their kids, what kids yearn to know about themselves, and the ever-present understanding that neither will truly understand the other in the way they might like. His three films to date, Beginners, 20th Century Women, and C’Mon C’Mon are all lovingly collected here, illustrations of changing generations and a changing American body politic, from music to sexuality to our thoughts about the future. The set also includes newly remastered versions of each film, audio commentaries from Mills, behind-the-scenes programs, and a bevy of music videos and short films from Mills’ career. (I also interviewed Mills about this set for RogerEbert.com, for further insights.)

Order here.

Three Films by Leos Carax

While he’s known more for his later-career provocations like Holy Motors and my precious Annette, Leos Carax’s first three features offer a triptych of surreal outsider romances, all set amid the gorgeousness of Paris, whose backdrop offers a passionate stage on which these doomed loves are all set. This set contains Boy Meets Girl, Mauvais sang, and the recently restored The Lovers on the Bridge, in which frequent Carax collaborator Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche play, respectively, an unhoused street performer and an artist going blind, who run, kiss, and water-ski across the streets of Paris, soaking up each moment of their newfound connection while they still can. Hypnotic, arresting films all, and beautifully captured in this set, with incredible Cecilia Carlstedt artwork, interviews, deleted scenes, and even Carax’s 2024 self-portrait It’s Not Me.

Order here.

Welcome II the Terrordome

The first theatrical feature in Britain directed by a Black woman, Ngozi Onwurah’s Welcome II the Terrordome is a staggering work of Afrofuturism that sits neatly alongside other great works like Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames. Set in a dystopian Britain in which the titular Terrordome acts as a ghetto for the world’s beleaguered Black population, the film depicts a flashpoint for this future hell when a Black boy is killed, a spark that lights a powder keg of racial anger that is as invigoratingly filmed as it is haunting to watch. In addition to the new restoration, we get an audio commentary, three of Onwurah’s short films, and an original interview with the filmmaker.

Order here.