You know what time it is: time for a Criterion Collection update with their newly announced November releases. Two significant highlights anchor November: a six-film Jackie Chan box-set, “Jackie Chan: Emergence Of A Superstar,” and Martin Scorsese’s classic low-level gangster film “Mean Streets.”
“Mean Streets” needs little introduction. While it’s not Marty or Robert De Niro’s first film, it’s a seminal early work from both that eventually launched them into the pantheon of incredible American filmmakers and collaborators.
Chan doesn’t need much more. Initially seen as the heir-apparent to Bruce Lee, Chan quickly became much more, a whimsical, class clown with personality that combined Lee’s impressive martial arts prowess with a mischievous sense of humor and hilarious death-defying stunts that seemingly pulled from the pratfall era of Buster Keaton and other early cinema legends combining together to make Chan highly unique, charming and irresistible. The films in that box set collection include “Half a Loaf Of Kung Fu” (1978), “Spiritual Kung Fu” (1978), “The Fearless Hyena” (1979), “Fearless Hyena II” (1983), “The Young Master” (1980), and “My Lucky Stars.” About the only thing this amazing-looking box set is missing is some kind of tribute from cinephile Edgar Wright, a total Jackie Chan-ophile (and had similarly created a dynamic career mixing high octane humor and laughs).
READ MORE: The Essentials: The Films Of Claude Chabrol
The third new title in this list is just as important, but perhaps far less renowned and known by cinephiles: Claude Chabrol’s forty-ninth feature “La Cérémonie” starring the César Award–winning Isabelle Huppert and the amazing Sandrine Bonnaire. Because his career is so vast—Chabrol made about seventy features in fifty-two years—Chabrol isn’t as well known or regarded as the French New Wave contemporaries he started with, like Godard, etc. Chabrol began to in the late 1950s and is often considered the most mainstream New Wave French filmmaker as he started having relatively big hits in the 1980s and 1990s—like “La Cérémonie” (1995). But in fact, his accessibility makes him a great place to start if you’re first exploring the French New Wave and don’t know where to begin; his career quickly began taking Hitchock-ian thriller overtones, and much of his best work is in that vein (hey, we knew this years ago, check out our Claude Chabrol feature from way back, which we could still add another dozen films to for sure, but I highly recommend “Les Bonnes Femmes” (1960), “Les Biches” (1968) and “Le Boucher” (1970 among many others).
READ MORE: The Essentials: Peter Bogdanovich’s 9 Best Films
Lastly, November’s Criterion releases are rounded out by two old titles getting old director-approved 4K UHD and Blue-Ray combo, including Terrence Malick’s “Days Of Heaven” and Peter Bogdanovich’s landmark film, “The Last Picture Show,” which was initially released in Criterion’s excellent box set. “America Lost and Found: The BBS Story.” Bogdanovich recently passed away, and this is a nice fitting tribute to the legendary filmmaker.
Check out trailers from these releases below.
