Well, summer is ruined. Pack up your little suitcase and your books and your little basket and your tiny kitten and call it a season. Back in April, Charles shared with us Criterion Collection’s (planned) release schedule for July, which included the July 21 release of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, complete with all sorts of cool, quirky stuff, including my personal favorite, a full map of New Penzance Island. Turns out, mapping a fake (but wonderful) island might have been too big of a job, and the new offering—available on both DVD and Blu-ray—will now arrive on September 22. It will likely be worth the wait, so maybe take your kitten out of that basket now. He can’t breathe.
It appears as if September is going to be an otherwise slim month for Criterion, and in addition to Moonrise Kingdom, we’ll only be seeing five other offerings. Fortunately, they’re good ones.
Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blind Chance will arrive first, on September 15. Billed as the Polish master’s “first work of metaphysical genius,” the 1981 drama imagines a world filled with very different possibilities for its central character. The film pre-dates both The Decalogue and the Three Colors trilogy, and now that it’s been restored to its original version (it was censored by the Polish government in the ’80s), it’s a real must-see for Kieslowski fans. The film will be available on both Blu-ray and DVD, complete with a new 4K restoration.
September 22 will also see the release of a pair of Bruce Beresford films, as both Breaker Morant and Mister Johnson are new to the collection, and both will be available on Blu-ray and DVD. The Australian filmmaker’s features are concerned with issues of colonialism, and though these two were made a decade apart, they serve as compelling counterpoints to each other. Both include 4K digital restoration (approved by Beresford) and a variety of interviews.
On September 29, the Collection unveils two more features, with Leonard Kastle’s The Honeymoon Killers and James Ivory’s A Room With A View the latter hitting the collection for the first time. Two very different love stories, Kastle’s feature tackles the (literally) criminal side of love, told in a clever documentary style that makes the story (a true one) feel even more immediate and urgent. The film will be available on both Blu-ray and DVD, complete with a new 2K restoration and a series of interviews. Ivory’s film—the first Merchant Ivory feature to pull from an E.M. Forster novel—features a young Helena Bonham-Carter choosing between Julian Sands and Daniel Day-Lewis (tough break, lady). Available on both Blu-ray and DVD, the film boasts a new 4K restoration and a ton of interviews.