Deliver Us To Criterion

While we're still recovering from the swollen holiday schedule robbing us blind, the January load from Criterion usually runs light -- and it's no different for 2027, as they've just announced their releases and it's a small batch indeed. One third of it is 4K upgrades -- those would be John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy and Bong Joon-ho's Parasite (kind of surprised the latter wasn't already 4K, I hadn't noticed) -- and then there's a new set of Martin Scorsese's long running "World Cinema Project" series. That leaves just three standalone releases for the month, but they're pretty darn exciting -- first up there is John Boorman's masculinity thriller Deliverance with Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and Burt Reynolds at his highest Sex God peak. Great movie (now squeal, piggy.) Then second is Mike Leigh's Career Girls, one of the Leigh movies I've never seen -- any fans? It's Mike Leigh so obviously I'll see it at some point -- now that he's retiring I can finally catch up! (I'd gladly remain behind if he wanted to keep working though.) Anyway the final title for Criterion's January haul is another one I haven't seen, Claire Denis' debut film Chocolat starring the great and gorgeous Isaach de Bankolé. Look how pretty he is on the cover below! Good grief.