A complete guide to everything coming to The Criterion Collection in March 2024
The Criterion Collection has announced their release schedule for March 2024. The physical media distributor is focusing in on a couple relatively new movies, as well as the classic selection of restorations we’re used to. Among the selection is a Nicole Kidman movie from 1995, two films distributed by Neon, and an Iranian classic by Amir Naderi.
I was a soft admirer of the two new movies entering the Collection in March, but I may pick them up to give them another try. I’m unfamiliar with the Gus Van Sant release, so I’ll try to seek that out sometime before the physical copy releases. Same goes for the other two movies releasing during that month.
Here is what’s coming to The Criterion Collection in March 2024:
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed – Directed by Laura Poitras
Per The Criterion Collection: Fearless documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’s career-long pursuit of truth and justice finds powerful expression in an epic story of art, activism, and survival. Made in collaboration with renowned artist Nan Goldin, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed entwines the mission of PAIN—an advocacy group she founded to raise awareness about the billionaire Sackler family’s integral role in the ongoing crisis of opioid overdoses—with an intimate journey through Goldin’s life, from her rebellious adolescence and immersion in New York City’s thriving underground arts scene to her personal experiences of addiction and the AIDS epidemic. Through it all, her indelible photographs and candid reflections on memory and trauma reveal her unyielding solidarity with marginalized communities that refuse to remain silent.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed releases on March 12, 2024 and can be pre-ordered here.
All That Money Can Buy (a.k.a. The Devil and Daniel Webster) – Directed by William Dieterle
Per The Criterion Collection: Jabez Stone is a hardworking farmer trying to make an honest living, but a streak of bad luck tempts him to do the unthinkable: bargain with the devil himself. In exchange for seven years of good fortune, Stone promises “Mr. Scratch” his soul. But when the troubled farmer begins to realize the error of his choice, he enlists the aid of the one man who might save him: the legendary orator and politician Daniel Webster. Directed with stylish flair by William Dieterle, All That Money Can Buy brings the classic short story by Stephen Vincent Benét to life with inspired visuals, an unforgettable, Oscar-winning score by Bernard Herrmann, and a truly diabolical performance from Walter Huston as the devil.
All That Money Can Buy (a.k.a. The Devil and Daniel Webster) releases on March 12, 2024 and can be pre-ordered here.
The Runner – Directed by Amir Naderi
Per The Criterion Collection: Childhood takes on mythic dimensions in one of the defining works of postrevolutionary Iranian cinema. Inspired by director Amir Naderi’s own boyhood, The Runner is lit from within by Madjid Niroumand’s electrifying performance as a young orphan fending for himself on the streets of a port city, determined to rise above his circumstances—working odd jobs, passing time with friends, learning to read—and running, always running, toward the future. Water, fire, the human body in motion: in hypnotic images of lyrical power, Naderi finds unexpected glory in the world of a boy suspended between modernity and elemental natural forces as he chases his own path forward.
The Runner releases on March 19, 2024 and can be pre-ordered here.
Saint Omer – Directed by Alice Diop
Per The Criterion Collection: Bringing a documentarian’s sense of open-ended inquiry to her first narrative feature, writer-director Alice Diop constructs a morally and emotionally layered courtroom drama unlike any other. When she travels to Saint-Omer, France, to attend the trial of a young Senegalese woman (Guslagie Malanda) accused of murdering her infant daughter, novelist Rama (Kayije Kagame) finds herself shaken to the core by a case that proves to have profound resonances with her own life. Interweaving complex themes of mother-daughter bonds, immigrant alienation, and postcolonial trauma into a piercing portrait of two mysteriously connected women, Diop forgoes mere questions of guilt and innocence in order to plumb the unsettling unknowability of the human soul. Read Cinephile Corner’s review of Saint Omer
Saint Omer releases on March 26, 2024 and can be pre-ordered here.
To Die For – Directed by Gus Van Sant
Per The Criterion Collection: The all-American obsession with celebrity turns monstrous in this deliciously subversive (and disturbingly prescient) satire of our television-mediated, true-crime-obsessed age. In a career breakthrough, Nicole Kidman delivers a diabolical deconstruction of the girl next door as a local TV weather reporter whose perfectly perky facade belies a murderous heart, as her ruthless pursuit of fame ensnares three disaffected teens in a sordid, tabloid-ready scandal. Deftly deploying shifting perspectives, faux-documentary interviews, and a supporting cast featuring Joaquin Phoenix, Matt Dillon, and Casey Affleck, director Gus Van Sant adds provocative layers of meaning to this darkly funny examination of suburban sociopathy.
To Die For releases on March 26, 2024 and can be pre-ordered here.
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