The Criterion Collection is closing out 2024 with a handful of new restorations and releases in December. Among them are 4k editions of major works by acclaimed directors and Oscar nominated movies, as well as a new Blu-ray edition of a Hong Kong action classic.
Paris, Texas (directed by Wim Wenders)
From The Criterion Collection: New German Cinema pioneer Wim Wenders brings his keen eye for landscape to the American Southwest in Paris, Texas, a profoundly moving character study written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Sam Shepard. Paris, Texas follows the mysterious, nearly mute drifter Travis (a magnificent Harry Dean Stanton, whose face is a landscape all its own) as he tries to reconnect with his young son, living with his brother (Dean Stockwell) in Los Angeles, and his missing wife (Nastassja Kinski). From this simple setup, Wenders and Shepard produce a powerful statement on codes of masculinity and the myth of the American family, as well as an exquisite visual exploration of a vast, crumbling world of canyons and neon.
The 4k edition of Paris, Texas releases December 3, 2024 from The Criterion Collection and can be pre-ordered here.
No Country for Old Men (directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)
From The Criterion Collection: A deadly game of chance and destiny plays out against the stark backdrop of early-1980s West Texas in Joel and Ethan Coen’s powerful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel. When he happens upon more than two million dollars from a drug deal turned desert massacre, a retired welder and Vietnam veteran (Josh Brolin) sets into motion a wave of senseless, inexorable violence as he’s stalked across the plains by a soul-weary sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) and a psychopathic hit man (Javier Bardem). Winner of four Academy Awards—including Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actor for the indelibly disturbing Bardem—this darkly deadpan borderlands noir keeps both the tension and the existential unease mounting through each cruelly ironic twist of fate.
The 4k edition of No Country for Old Men releases December 10, 2024 from The Criterion Collection and can be pre-ordered here.
8½ (directed by Federico Fellini)
From The Criterion Collection: Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s 8½ turns one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. An early working title for 8½ was The Beautiful Confusion, and Fellini’s masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus, and a magic act. Also featured is Fellini’s rarely seen first film for television, Fellini: A Director’s Notebook (1969). Produced by Peter Goldfarb, this “imagined documentary” of Fellini on Fellini is a kaleidoscope of unfinished projects, all of which provide a fascinating and candid window into the director’s unique creative process.
The 4k edition of 8½ releases on December 10, 2024 from The Criterion Collection and can be pre-ordered here.
Eastern Condors (directed by Sammo Hung)
From The Criterion Collection: Legendary actor-director Sammo Hung delivers a bazooka blast of pure adrenaline in this exemplar of Hong Kong action cinema at its most entertaining. Drawing inspiration from Hollywood war films like The Dirty Dozen, Eastern Condors follows a ragtag band of Asian American prisoners dropped into Vietnam on a secret suicide mission to prevent a cache of weapons from falling into the hands of the Viet Cong, who are more than ready for a fight. Propelled by a dynamic ensemble cast that includes the ever-charismatic Yuen Biao as a black-market trader and a superhuman Yuen Wah as a giggling martial-arts monster, this rip-roaring spectacle offers a nonstop barrage of turbocharged set pieces that defy death, logic, and gravity itself.
The Blu-ray edition of Eastern Condors releases on December 17, 2024 from The Criterion Collection and can be pre-ordered here.
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Movies in The Criterion Collection
