Posted Wed Feb 15, 2023 at 11:56 AM PST by Tom Landy
Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise hits the Criterion road in May with a Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release. The month's slate also includes Targets as well as Petite Mama on Blu-ray and 4K releases of both Wings of Desire and Branded to Kill.
Once again The Criterion Collection expands its content with a mix of old and new titles seeing some extra TLC on physical media. With Wings of Desire already getting an excellent EU 4K release it was only a matter of time before Criterion would update theirs, but there are some other pleasant surprises for their May slate. Lets take a look at what's getting added to our shelves:
Up first on May 2 is Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Wings of Desire is one of cinema’s loveliest city symphonies. Bruno Ganz is Damiel, an angel perched atop buildings high over Berlin who can hear the thoughts—fears, hopes, dreams—of all the people living below. But when he falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, he is willing to give up his immortality and come back to earth to be with her. Made not long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, this stunning tapestry of sounds and images, shot in black and white and color by the legendary Henri Alekan, forever made the name of director Wim Wenders' synonymous with film art.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
Seijun Suzuki's 1967 New Wave Branded to Kill will also be available on 4K UHD on May 9
When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired. Branded to Kill tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin with a fetish for sniffing steamed rice (the chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) who botches a job and ends up a target himself. This is Suzuki at his most extreme—the flabbergasting pinnacle of his sixties pop-art aesthetic.
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
Peter Bogdanovich's Targets starring the legendary Boris Karloff arrives on Blu-ray on May 16
Old Hollywood collides with New Hollywood, and screen horror with real-life horror, in the startling debut feature from Peter Bogdanovich. Produced by Roger Corman, this chillingly prescient vision of American-made carnage casts Boris Karloff as a version of himself: an aging horror-movie icon whose fate intersects with that of a seemingly ordinary young man (Tim O’Kelly) on a psychotic shooting spree around Los Angeles. Charged with provocative ideas about the relationship between mass media and mass violence, Targets is a model of maximally effective filmmaking on a minimal budget and a potent first statement from one of the defining voices of the American New Wave.
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
Céline Sciamma’s 2021 film Petite Maman is due on Blu-ray on May 23
Céline Sciamma’s follow-up to Portrait of a Lady on Fire transcends time and space to weave a delicately emotional fable about grief, family, and connection across generations. In the wake of her grandmother’s death, eight-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) accompanies her distraught mother (Nina Meurisse) to her childhood home. There, Nelly’s encounter with another young girl (Gabrielle Sanz) brings mother and daughter together in a way neither could have ever imagined. Evoking childhood’s perpetual state of wonder through luminous, richly textured images, Petite maman takes viewers on a journey inward for a quietly miraculous tale of emotional time travel.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
Lastly on May 29 is Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray.
Two women, a turquoise Thunderbird, the ride of a lifetime. With this pop-culture landmark, screenwriter Callie Khouri and action auteur Ridley Scott rewrote the rules of the road movie, telling the story of two best friends who find themselves transformed into accidental fugitives during a weekend getaway gone wrong—leading them on a high-speed Southwest odyssey as they elude police and discover freedom on their own terms. Propelled by irresistible performances from Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis (plus Brad Pitt in a sexy, star-making turn)—and nominated for six Academy Awards, winning one for Khouri—the exhilaratingly cathartic Thelma & Louise stands as cinema’s ultimate ode to ride-or-die female friendship.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
Preorders for Criterion's May releases should be available soon!
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