Trench Coats & Tighty-Whities

Happy Criterion Announcement Day! Every 15th of the month (or thereabouts) our pals at Criterion announce their slate of releases for an upcoming month -- today's are for July of 2024 (my birthday month, holla) and let's kick them off with their drop of Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 classic Le Samurai starring Alain Delon, in 4K baby! Delon plays a iconically trench-coated hitman who's too cool for school in this -- the set, loaded with Criterion's typical swath of extras, drops on June 9th, pre-order it at the link above. (In related news there is an Alain Delon series happening at Film Forum right now through this week, so if you're in NYC go see this gorgeous man on the big screen stat!)

Next up -- in bold red! -- we have the two-some of Glauber Rocha's Black God White Devil from 1967, an "existential western" out of Brazil, and Chen Kaige's 1993 classic Farewell My Concubine, which won the Palm D'Or at Cannes that year and features a gorgeous performance from the legend Leslie Cheung. This'll be in 4K too -- it's such a deeply gorgeous movie, I cannot wait to see this remaster!

There is a lot this month! Next up is Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid starring James Coburn and Kri Kristofferson from 1973 -- this one is also coming in 4K and it looks loaded as hell with four discs of material, including two cuts of the film. I have never seen this -- I guess a big selling point is the music is by Bob Dylan? And he's in the movie too? I think young hot Kristofferson is my main selling point tbh. And then we have last year's Perfect Days from the great Wim Wneders -- also in 4K. Criterion tripling down on 4K for everything, it seems. I liked this movie but maybe didn't love it like a lot of people seemed to -- that said there's no disputing that Koji Yakusho as the genial bathroom cleaner the movie follows gives a lovely subdued performance. 

And finally, last but hardly least, there is the great 1983 pop classic Risky Business starring one Mr. Tom Cruise  -- and as seen down below they chose the perfect cover, too. I might have to add this to my list of "Hottest Criterion Covers" that I did last month with that Querelle announcement! There's no denying the power of Cruise's gams in thoise tighty0-whities -- they made him a star. That said this movie is a far richer and more emotionally curious than you think it's going to be given the super-80s plot, and Rebecca De Mornay as the call-girl who comes Tom of age has always been my main takeaway from this film. She's fantastic. Well her and that killer Tangerine Dream score. This one lands on July 23rd. Also in 4K!