Every month I'm caught off-gaurd by it suddenly being the 15th and the new slate of Criterion titles dropping... but not this week! Yesterday I sat around all afternoon waiting for the announcement and it never came. Such is my life! Poor put-upon me -- obviously the worst thing to happen in the world right there, folks. Ahem. Anyway Criterion has released their announcement today, and whaddya know I'm just sitting here again! So let's get to it. These are the April 2026 releases and they kick off with one hell of a neat-o box-set of John SIngleton films! They're calling it his "Hood Trilogy" and it consists of 1991's Boyz N the Hood, 1993's Poetic Justice, and 2001's Baby Boy. It still seems so unbelivable to me that we lost Singleton so young, in 2019 at just 51 years old. That man should've had decades more great movies coming out of him. But this set certainly makes for a spectacular tribute. That lands on April 28th.
Next up there's a new addition to Criterion's renewed "Eclipse" box-set series with "Kinuyo Tanaka Directs", a sextet of films from the famous actress (known for working with Ozu) who decided to go behind the camera to make these six films -- Love Letter, The Moon Has Risen, Forever a Woman, The Wandering Princess, Girls of the Night, and Love Under the Crucifix -- in the decade spanning 1953 and 1962. Anybody seen any of them? I have not but they all sound interesting. And then from there they bring us over to China and right here right now with a blu of Bi Gan's 2025 film Ressurection, which is another semi-incomprehensible dream-experience from the director of Kali Blues and Long Day's Journey Into Night. I'm honestly suprised he's not getting a 4K with this one -- his visuals are always swoon-worthy.
Speaking of swoonworthy visuals -- next up there is John Boorman's hallucigenically technicolor 1967 crime caper Point Blank starring Lee Marvin and this beauty's of course getting a 4K upgrade -- of course it is, since I just bought the blu-ray like two weeks ago lo. That always happens! Because poor me! Anyway I only saw this movie for the first time this past year but it totally lived up to its legend as one kick-ass experience -- hence me running out and buying a copy. But I'll have to upgrade to the 4K because it is SUCH a gorgeous looking film. And in such unexpected ways.
Next on the 4K upgrade front there's the 1946 classic noir Gilda which turned Rita Hayworth into a star and a sex icon with one flip of her hair, and Ernst Lubitch's 1932 masterpiece Trouble In Paradise starring Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall a a pair of con artists trying to out-do one another in a hyper stylish Venice. Now those are some pictures. (And it's rude of me to reduce Gilda to just that hair-flip because the entire movie is a banger.) That said last but hardly leastly we have got Monty Python's Life of Brian, which... well I don't really feel like I have to sell this movie to anybody -- this movie sells itself. To be honest I'm personally not the biggest Python-head -- I've seen them all and they're fun! Don't yell at me! I just don't really re-watch them and quote them feverishly like some people seem to do. That said I do think Brian is probably my favorite of the bunch. What's yours?
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