With this poignant second feature, David Lynch brought his atmospheric visual and sonic palette to a notorious true story set in Victorian England. When the London surgeon Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) meets the freak-show performer John Merrick (John Hurt), who has severe skeletal and soft-tissue deformities, he assumes that he must be intellectually disabled as well. As the two men spend more time together, though, Merrick reveals the intelligence, gentle nature, and profound sense of dignity that lie beneath his shocking appearance, and he and Treves develop a friendship. Shot in gorgeous black and white and boasting a stellar supporting cast that includes Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, and Wendy Hiller, The Elephant Man was nominated for eight Academy Awards, cementing Lynch’s reputation as one of American cinema’s most visionary talents.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Director David Lynch and critic Kristine McKenna reading from Room to Dream, a 2018 book they coauthored
• Archival interviews with Lynch, actor John Hurt, producers Mel Brooks and Jonathan Sanger, director of photography Freddie Francis, stills photographer Frank Connor, and makeup artist Christopher Tucker
• Audio recording from 1981 of an interview and Q&A with Lynch at the American Film Institute
• The Terrible Elephant Man Revealed, a 2001 documentary about the film
• Joseph Merrick: The Real Elephant Man, a 2005 program featuring archivist Jonathan Evans
• Trailer and radio spots
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: Excerpts from an interview with Lynch from the 2005 edition of filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley’s book Lynch on Lynch, and an 1886 letter to the editor of the London Times concerning Merrick by Francis Culling Carr Gomm, chairman of the London Hospital
  
  Cover by Drusilla Adeline/Sister Hyde

Martin Scorsese infuses the classic maternal melodrama with the brash spirit of the New Hollywood in this zeitgeist-capturing feminist tale of a woman finding her footing in a patriarchal world. An Academy Award–winning Ellen Burstyn shines as Alice Hyatt, a newly widowed mother who, with her precocious son, Tommy, takes off across the Southwest to pursue her dream of becoming a singer, along the way learning to live on her own terms, even as a new romance with a rugged rancher (Kris Kristofferson) tests her growing independence. Boasting vivid supporting turns by Diane Ladd, Harvey Keitel, and Jodie Foster, this irrepressible look at starting anew overflows with warmth and humanity from each bustling frame.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Martin Scorsese, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary featuring Scorsese and actors Ellen Burstyn, Jodie Foster, Kris Kristofferson, Diane Ladd, and Alfred Lutter
• New conversation between Burstyn and film critic Farran Smith Nehme
• New interview with editor Marcia Lucas
• Making-of documentary featuring Burstyn and Kristofferson
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Stephanie Zacharek
  
  New cover by Eric Skillman

Neil Jordan’s emotionally stunning international sensation overcame the barriers between independent and mainstream cinema to become one of the defining films of the 1990s. Set against the turbulence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, The Crying Game is a puzzle box of a film, examining complex questions of loyalty, desire, and identity as it traces the fraught relationship developing between two wounded souls: Fergus (Stephen Rea), a former Irish Republican Army member tormented by guilt, and Dil (the revelatory Jaye Davidson), the enigmatic girlfriend of the hostage whose death haunts him. As the film shape-shifts from political drama to noir-tinged thriller to bruising romance, what emerges is something beyond genre: a profound and indelible vision of human connection across all boundaries.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Neil Jordan, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary featuring Jordan
• New interviews with Jordan and actor Stephen Rea
• Making-of documentary from 2005 featuring interviews with Jordan, Rea, and producer Stephen Woolley
• Alternate ending featuring audio commentary by Jordan
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: Essays by film critics Tasha Robinson and Willow Catelyn Maclay
  
  New cover by Sara Singh

A family’s downfall becomes a stark elegy for the ideals of the American frontier in this quietly subversive reimagining of western myths. In the fourth of his six collaborations with the progressive director Martin Ritt, Paul Newman created his darkest role yet as Hud Bannon, a charismatic but ruthlessly unprincipled rancher. Hud’s ambition to seize control of an ailing cattle business from his tradition-bound father (Melvyn Douglas) drives the family—including his worshipful nephew (Brandon de Wilde) and worldly-wise housekeeper (Patricia Neal)—toward collapse. Winner of Academy Awards for Best Actress (Neal), Supporting Actor (Douglas), and Cinematography—courtesy of James Wong Howe, whose austere black-and-white lensing lends psychological dimension to the desolate western vistas—Hud daringly rewrites the image of the heroic cowboy for a disillusioned generation.

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio excerpts from a 1974 American Film Institute seminar with director Martin Ritt
• New interview with actor Sally Field, conducted by author Isaac Butler, on Ritt and Hud
• New interview with cinematographer Roger Deakins on director of photography James Wong Howe
• Episode of Inside the Actors Studio, hosted by James Lipton, featuring actor Paul Newman
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by author and film scholar Gabriel Miller and a 1963 American Cinematographer interview with Howe
  New cover by Eric Skillman

A scorching tale of toxic love in a toxic world, Nagisa Oshima’s second feature film marked the artistic breakthrough of one of the most radical voices in the history of Japanese cinema. Caught in the dog-eat-dog crucible of postwar Tokyo, teenage lovers Makoto (Miyuki Kuwano) and Kiyoshi (Yusuke Kawazu) turn to a life of crime, entrapping lecherous middle-aged men in order to extort their money. But how long can the wayward youths outrun their fate? Bursting with vivid color, this visually scintillating, furiously nihilistic film howls with rage at a society in which everything—love, sex, and youthful idealism—has been corrupted.

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• A Town of Love and Hope (1959), director Nagisa Oshima’s first feature film
• Tomorrow’s Sun (1959), a short film by Oshima
• Interview with film scholar Tony Rayns
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Chris Fujiwara
  
  New cover by Mariam El-Reweny

The legacies we inherit, and the ones we pass on, form the heart of writer-director Mike Mills’s family portraits, inspired by his own experience. Both personal and panoramic, the films collected here—Beginners, 20th Century Women, and C’mon C’mon—set their stories of parents and children against the backdrop of a changing America, from the 1970s to the present. Anchored by performances of depth and wit from the likes of Christopher Plummer, Ewan McGregor, Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning, Joaquin Phoenix, and Gaby Hoffmann, these three films compose a mosaic of Mills’s own life, from boyhood to fatherhood, and of the people, places, music, and memories that marked him along the way.

BEGINNERS (2010)

Filmmaker Mike Mills was inspired by his own father’s coming out late in life to shape a clear-eyed look at how our family histories quietly inform all of our relationships. When Hal (Christopher Plummer, in an Academy Award–winning performance) reveals he is gay at the age of seventy-five, his son, Oliver (Ewan McGregor), gets the chance to know a more vulnerable version of his father. In the second of the film’s two interwoven time periods, Oliver meets Anna (Mélanie Laurent) soon after his father’s death, beginning a romance that is informed by the risks and honesty of Hal’s final years. Balancing dry humor and DIY charm, Beginners extends an uncommon generosity to its characters—still figuring themselves out at all stages of life.

20th Century Women (2016)

Filmmaker Mike Mills was inspired by his own father’s coming out late in life to shape a clear-eyed look at how our family histories quietly inform all of our relationships. When Hal (Christopher Plummer, in an Academy Award–winning performance) reveals he is gay at the age of seventy-five, his son, Oliver (Ewan McGregor), gets the chance to know a more vulnerable version of his father. In the second of the film’s two interwoven time periods, Oliver meets Anna (Mélanie Laurent) soon after his father’s death, beginning a romance that is informed by the risks and honesty of Hal’s final years. Balancing dry humor and DIY charm, Beginners extends an uncommon generosity to its characters—still figuring themselves out at all stages of life.

C’mon C’mon (2021)

Having excavated his past in Beginners and 20th Century Women, Mike Mills looks toward the future with this compassionate, cathartic story about listening to and learning from the next generation. Shot by acclaimed cinematographer Robbie Ryan in luminous monochrome, C’mon C’mon follows radio journalist Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) as he volunteers to look after his sensitive nine-year-old nephew, Jesse (Woody Norman), while his mother, Viv (Gaby Hoffmann), Johnny’s sister, deals with a personal crisis. As Johnny’s work takes him across the country—from Los Angeles to New York to New Orleans—he forges a bond with Jesse that proves surprisingly transformative. Turning his own experience of fatherhood into soul-enriching art, Mills offers a graceful meditation on caretaking and the connections that sustain us.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital masters of Beginners and 20th Century Women, supervised and approved by director Mike Mills, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
• New 4K digital master of C’mon C’mon, supervised and approved by Mills, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: Three 4K UHD discs of the films presented in Dolby Vision HDR and three Blu-rays with the films and special features
• Audio commentaries on all three films featuring Mills
• New documentary featuring Mills in conversation with filmmaker Kirsten Johnson
• Making-of programs for each film
• Music videos directed by Mills for Air’s “All I Need” and Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”
• Additional films by Mills: Deformer (1996), Eating Sleeping Waiting and Playing (1999), The Architecture of Reassurance (2000), A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought Alone (2013), and I Am Easy to Find (2019)
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An appreciation by filmmaker Joachim Trier and an interview with Mills about his work outside of feature filmmaking
  
  New cover by Mike Mills and Osk

Suffused with tenderness and deadpan humor, The Love That Remains asks: What happens when a relationship ends but the bonds of caring endure? Moving unpredictably through four seasons in the lives of a separating couple—artist Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) and fisherman Magnus (Sverrir Guðnason)—and their three children, Hlynur Pálmason’s fourth feature is as vibrantly attuned to the ebb and flow of domestic routine as it is to the stark, spectacular landscape of coastal Iceland. Juggling intimate scenes of adults at work and children at play with wild intrusions of surrealism, this strange and poignant film is a rare study of family life in all its beauty and confusion.

INCLUDES

• Meet the Filmmakers: Hlynur Pálmason, a Criterion Channel original interview
• Joan of Arc (2025), a companion film by Pálmason
• Trailer
• Notes by film programmer and critic David Schwartz