The Criterions Around the Corner

Happy that the Criterion announcements for December 2026 are landing this afternoon before I am whisked away for the next few weeks of New York Film Festival screenings starting tonight -- fortuitous timing for us all. And fortune ahoy because there are a couple of real thrillers here, including as seen above the 4K premiere of Anthony Minghella's Best Picture winner The English Patient! I know opinions are all over the place on this movie but I love every old-fashioned inch of it -- Ralph Fiennes at his most beautiful and romantic, Juliette Binoche winning an Oscar... how can you not love it? This one lands on December 8th so there will be plenty of time to stuff it in some deserving stockings, too. Speaking of...

... I don't know that Werner Herzog's documentary masterpiuece Grizzly Man is exactly "happy holiday" material given what a horror show it is, but I personally am extremely thankful. This doc the true story of the nature-lover Timothy Treadwell, who lived amongst the Alaskan brown bears until they gobbled him up, lands on the same day as The English Patient -- it's only a blu-ray, not 4K, but that's probably as good as we'll get given the source material is mostly old video. If you've never seen this movie good god do you have something in store. (Also that cover is gorg.)

Also ahead is Pietro Germi's 1961 black comedy Divorce Italian Style, which stars Marcello Mastroianni (who else) as a married man who falls in love with his much younger cousin -- oh 1961. Never stop 1961-ing. I've never seen this movie somehow? Those deeply hetero sex-comedies of this time period have never really been my bag but I'm sure it's worth seeing. Then there is December's new entry in Criterion's revived "Eclipse" series of box-sets -- this one tackles Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez who made a series of short films (and one feature) in 1960s and 70s Cuba. Anybody familair with her work? Criterion's final two releases of December are two 4K upgrades -- there's Ernt Lubitsch's classic comedy The Shop Around the Corner with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan, and there's a little something called Nashville by Robert Altman. Now that's a movie.