The Criterion Collection has been bringing attention to a slate of films that are worthy of a unique look since 1984. The legendary collection just unveiled its November flicks that will certainly warm up the house as the temperatures start to fall outside.
Fans have been lining up to purchase Criterion VHS, then DVDs and now Blu-Rays for decades and there is something unique that Criterion brings to the home video release that has endeared them to countless souls who share one common thread—their utter adoration of cinema.
Their special edition packages are considered by many to be among the best in the biz. For cinephiles, each monthly announcement is an opportunity to discover new films and become enamored of others films that are new to you.
Without further ado, here is the Criterion Collection for November 2020 and the special features that each will possess.
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Jim Jarmusch combines his love for the ice-cool crime dramas of Jean-Pierre Melville and Seijun Suzuki with the philosophical dimensions of samurai mythology for an eccentrically postmodern take on the hit-man thriller. In one of his defining roles, Forest Whitaker brings a commanding serenity to his portrayal of a Zen contract killer working for a bumbling mob outfit, a modern man who adheres steadfastly to the ideals of the Japanese warrior code even as chaos and violence spiral around him. Featuring moody cinematography by the great Robby Müller, a mesmerizing score by the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, and a host of colorful character actors (including a memorably stone-faced Henry Silva), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai plays like a pop-culture-sampling cinematic mixtape built around a one-of-a-kind tragic hero.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Jim Jarmusch, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Alternate isolated stereo music track
New Q&A with Jarmusch, in which he responds to questions sent in by fans
New conversation between actors Forest Whitaker and Isaach De Bankolé, moderated by film scholar Michael B. Gillespie
New interview with casting director Ellen Lewis
New interview with Shifu Shi Yan Ming, founder of the USA Shaolin Temple
New video essay on RZA’s original score for the film
The Odyssey: A Journey into the Life of a Samurai, a 2000 program on the making of the film
Deleted scenes and outtakes
Archival interviews
Trailer
More!
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Greg Tate and quotations from Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, by the early-eighteenth-century monk Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Girlfriends
When her best friend and roommate abruptly moves out to get married, Susan (Melanie Mayron), trying to become a gallery artist while making ends meet as a bar mitzvah photographer on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, finds herself adrift in both life and love. Could a new job be the answer? What about a fling with a married, older rabbi (Eli Wallach)? A wonder of American independent filmmaking whose remarkably authentic vision of female relationships has become a touchstone for makers of an entire subgenre of films and television shows about young women trying to make it in the big city, this 1970s New York time capsule from Claudia Weill captures the complexities and contradictions of women’s lives and relationships with wry humor and refreshing frankness.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Claudia Weill and director of photography Fred Murphy, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New interview with Weill
New interview with Weill and actors Melanie Mayron, Christopher Guest, and Bob Balaban
New interview with screenwriter Vicki Polon
New interview with Weill and writer and director Joey Soloway
Joyce at 34, a 1972 short film by Weill and Joyce Chopra
Commuters, a 1973 short film by Weill
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: Essays by critic Molly Haskell and scholar Carol Gilligan
Essential Fellini
One hundred years after his birth, Federico Fellini still stands apart as a giant of the cinema. The Italian maestro is defined by his dualities: the sacred and the profane, the masculine and the feminine, the provincial and the urbane. He began his career working in the slice-of-life poetry of neorealism, and though he soon spun off on his own freewheeling creative axis, he never lost that grounding, evoking his dreams, memories, and obsessions in increasingly grand productions teeming with carnivalesque imagery and flights of phantasmagoric surrealism while maintaining an earthy, embodied connection to humanity. Bringing together fourteen of the director’s greatest spectacles, all beautifully restored, this centenary box set is a monument to an artist who conjured a cinematic universe all his own: a vision of the world as a three-ring circus in which his innermost infatuations, fears, and fantasies take center stage.
FIFTEEN-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION COLLECTOR’S SET FEATURES
New 4K restorations of 11 theatrical features, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks for all films
New digital restorations of the short film Toby Dammit (1968) and the television film Fellini: A Director’s Notebook (1969), with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
Feature documentaries Fellini: I’m a Born Liar (2002) and Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember (1997), the latter presented in its 193-minute version
Two-hour, four-part 1960 interview with director Federico Fellini by filmmaker André Delvaux for Belgian television
Four behind-the-scenes documentaries: Reporter’s Diary: “Zoom on Fellini” (1965), Ciao, Federico! (1969), The Secret Diary of “Amarcord” (1974), and Fellini racconta: On the Set of “And the Ship Sails On” (1983)
Fellini racconta: Passegiatte nella memoria, a 2000 documentary featuring interviews with a late-in-life Fellini
Giulietta Masina: The Power of a Smile, a 2004 documentary about Fellini’s wife and frequent collaborator
Once Upon a Time: “La dolce vita,” a French television documentary about the film
Audio commentaries on six of the films
Program from 2003 on Fellini’s 1980s television advertising work
Archival interviews with Fellini stars and collaborators, including Mastroianni, Sandra Milo, Anouk Aimée, and Magali Noël
Archival audio interviews by film critic Gideon Bachmann with Fellini, Mastroianni, and Fellini’s friends and family
Video essays, trailers, and more
PLUS: Deluxe packaging, including two lavishly illustrated books with hundreds of pages of content: notes on the films by scholar David Forgacs, essays by filmmakers Michael Almereyda, Kogonada, and Carol Morley; film critics Bilge Ebiri and Stephanie Zacharek; and novelist Colm Tóibín, and dozens of images spotlighting Don Young’s renowned collection of Fellini memorabilia
Moonstruck
A full moon, a New York City night, and love and music in the air . . . One of the most enchanting romantic comedies of all time assembles a flawless ensemble cast for a tender and boisterously funny look at a multigenerational Italian American family in Brooklyn, wrestling with the complexities of love and marriage at every stage of life. At the center of it all is a radiant Cher as Loretta, an unlucky-in-love bookkeeper whose feelings about her engagement to the staid Johnny (Danny Aiello) are thrown into question after she meets his hot-blooded brother, Ronny (Nicolas Cage), and one night at the opera changes everything. Winner of the Academy Awards for best actress (Cher), supporting actress (Olympia Dukakis), and original screenplay (by playwright John Patrick Shanley), this modern-day fairy tale is swept along on passionate Puccini melodies, and directed by master storyteller Norman Jewison with the heightened emotion to match.
SPECIAL FEATURES
New 4K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New interview with screenwriter John Patrick Shanley
New interview with scholar Stefano Albertini about the use of opera in the film
Introduction from 2013 featuring Cher
Interviews from 1987 with director Norman Jewison and actors Cher, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, and Olympia Dukakis
Interview from 2002 with actor Danny Aiello
Audio interview from 1989 with Shanley about screenwriting and the development of Moonstruck
At the Heart of an Italian Family, a 2006 program about the making of the film
The Music of “Moonstruck,” a 2006 program featuring interviews with Jewison and composer Dick Hyman
Audio commentary from 1998 with Cher, Jewison, and Shanley
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Emily VanDerWerff
The Irishman
Martin Scorsese’s cinematic mastery is on full display in The Irishman, a sweeping crime saga, which serves as an elegiac summation of his six-decade career. Left behind by the world, former hitman and union truck driver Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) looks back from a nursing home on his life’s journey through the ranks of organized crime: from his involvement with Philadelphia mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) to his association with Teamsters union head Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) to the rift that forced him to choose between the two. An intimate story of loyalty and betrayal writ large across the epic canvas of mid-twentieth-century American history, The Irishman (based on the real-life Sheeran’s confessions, as told to writer Charles Brandt for the book I Heard You Paint Houses) is a uniquely reflective late-career triumph that balances its director’s virtuoso set pieces with a profoundly personal rumination on aging, mortality, and the decisions and regrets that shape a life.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 4K digital master, approved by director Martin Scorsese, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Newly edited roundtable conversation among Scorsese and actors Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, originally recorded in 2019
New documentary about the making of the film featuring Scorsese; the lead actors; producers Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Jane Rosenthal, and Irwin Winkler; director of photography Rodrigo Prieto; and others from the cast and crew
New video essay written and narrated by film critic Farran Smith Nehme about The Irishman’s synthesis of Scorsese’s singular formal style
The Evolution of Digital De-aging, a 2019 program on the visual effects created for the film
Archival interview excerpts with Frank “the Irishman” Sheeran and International Brotherhood of Teamsters trade union leader Jimmy Hoffa
Trailer and teaser
PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien