Criterion Continues One of Their Best Years Ever with November Releases

It's been yet another incredible year for the Criterion Collection, which sometimes seems like the only group that still cares about physical media and honoring classic films.

This November sees another solid mix of romantic comedy, brooding drama, British absurdity and landmark cinema.

On November 7, arguably the greatest of all Old Hollywood rom-coms makes its Criterion debut. The Philadelphia Story, which marked Katherine Hepburn's return to stardom, hits shelves. The classic farce finds the legendary actress swooned over by both her ex-husband (Cary Grant) and a reporter (Jimmy Stewart). The film won both Best Actor (for Stewart) and Best Writing (for Donald Ogden Stewart's stellar adaptation) and has been honored in just about every category by the American Film Institute. The Philadelphia Story joins other romantic classics like Woman of the Year and It Happened One Night. Now if they could just get Bringing Up Baby.

The following week sees Le Samouraï, Jean-Pierre Melville's French crime drama, getting a much-awaited upgrade to Blu-ray. The film all but created the "lonely criminal professional" sub-genre that so many later movies would copy, including Walter Hill's The Driver, John Woo's The Killer and Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive.

Desert Hearts, essentially the first mainstream movie to be explicitly about lesbian romance, finally makes its high-definition debut. The 1985 film was shot on a minuscule budget, but received major distribution. Reviews at the time were mixed, but it's now considered a trailblazing classic for LGBT films.

Finally, another Terry Gilliam film is joining the fray. Having already released the (superior) Time Bandits, Brazil, The Fisher King and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the collection adds his first solo film Jabberwocky. Taking its title from the Lewis Caroll poem, but dialing up the nonsense, it's pretty wild. But what would you expect from a Monty Python alum?

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About Kip Mooney

Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.

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