The Criterion Collection has shared with us the new round of releases coming this July, which boasts an impressive lineup of work from directors Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Mike Nichols, François Truffaut, and Kenneth Lonergan.
Lang’s genre-defining noir film “The Big Heat” is one of the big standouts in the announcement as it featured iconic actor Glenn Ford as the hard-boiled detective and a young Lee Marvin playing the thuggish heavy, a large calling card for these kinds of films is shocking violence and there is plenty to go around in this one. Hard not to see how the film influenced subsequent noir films, including ones made years later like “Chinatown.”
Noir doesn’t get any more hard-boiled than this scorching tale of vice and retribution, a film that finds director Fritz Lang working at the peak of his Hollywood style—stripped to the bone, simmering with outrage, and fatalistic to the core. A tightly wound Glenn Ford stars as a homicide detective whose investigation into a sprawling crime syndicate becomes a shockingly personal, hate-fueled quest for revenge. Co-starring an iconic Gloria Grahame as the mink-coated gangster’s moll with her own axe to grind and featuring a supporting cast led by a sensationally sleazy Lee Marvin, “The Big Heat” hits with raw, unstoppable force.
Kubrick has plenty of beloved films, but his sprawling rags-to-riches epic “Barry Lyndon,” starring Ryan O’Neal (the American actor’s accent is an acquired taste) and Marisa Berenson isn’t talked up as much as it should as we see a poor Irish soldier finding his way during the Napoleonic Wars (Kubrick was trying to put together his own Napoleon film that never got made) by climbing the social ladder via hand-to-hand brawls, duels, gambling, brazen whore-mongering, and ultimately marrying into wealth as he seeks a life of comfort among aristocrats which doesn’t end well. It is based on the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray and should be on anyone’s wishlist looking to complete their Kubrick collection on physical media.
Another big highlight of the summer grouping is Truffaut’s celebrated saga, “The Adventures of Antoine Doinel,” which features a collection of the filmmaker’s Doinel films starring Jean-Pierre Léaud such as “The 400 Blows,” “With Antoine & Colette,” “Stolen Kisses,” “Bed & Board,” and “Love On The Run.” Spanning nearly three decades of work from the legendary director, the box set is likely going to be quite popular for fans of French New Wave cinema, as The Criterion Collection has plenty of options in that genre.
The release of François Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” in 1959 shook world cinema to its foundations. The now-classic portrait of troubled adolescence introduced a major new director in the cinematic landscape and was an inaugural gesture of the revolutionary French New Wave. But “The 400 Blows” not only introduced the world to Truffaut—it also unveiled his most indelible creation, Antoine Doinel. Initially patterned closely after Truffaut himself, the Doinel character (played by the irrepressible and iconic Jean-Pierre Léaud) reappeared in four subsequent films that knowingly portrayed his myriad frustrations and romantic entanglements, from his stormy teens through marriage, children, divorce, and adulthood.
Lonergan’s 2000 effort “You Can Count On Me” that starred actress Laura Linney and a baby-faced Mark Ruffalo, before he had major breakouts later on in the next two decades.
Celebrated playwright Kenneth Lonergan first brought his rich, humanist vision to the screen with this soulful look at the complexities of a sibling relationship whose roots are as knotted as they are deep. Years after Sammy (Linney) and her younger brother, Terry (Ruffalo), lost their parents in a car crash, small-town single mother Sammy is plunged into another crisis when the troubled, adrift Terry comes home for what turns out to be an extended stay—one that could either bring them closer together or tear them apart. With infinite grace and his peerless ear for dialogue, Lonergan offers something all too rare on-screen: beautifully flawed human beings whose journeys offer achingly relatable insight into what changes when you grow up—and what doesn’t.
Last but not least, Nicolas’ fantastic and controversial “Carnal Knowledge,” which stars a young Jack Nicholson, folk singer Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen, Ann-Margret, Rita Moreno, Carol Kane, and Cynthia O’Neal.
Amid the sexual revolution and social upheaval of the early 1970s, acclaimed director Mike Nichols delivered a zeitgeist-defining examination of American mores. Sharply written by Jules Feiffer, this acerbic drama flashes through more than twenty years in the lives of two college buddies (Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel) whose casual chauvinism is all fun and games—until it’s not. As the women who suffer and see through the friends’ insecure posturing, Candice Bergen, Ann-Margret, Rita Moreno, Carol Kane, and Cynthia O’Neal form an extraordinary ensemble that gives the film its soul. So controversial it became embroiled in an obscenity case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, Carnal Knowledge remains startling for its unnervingly frank look at postwar masculinity.
You can also check out trailers for this July lineup of Criterion Collection releases below.
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
![Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://theplaylist.net/criterion-collection-july-2025-releases-20250415/&media=https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/15124419/BARRY-LYNDON_CRITERION-COLLECTION_JULY-2025_.jpg&description=Criterion Collection has announced their July releases, which include 'Barry Lyndon,' 'The Big Heat,' 'Carnal Knowledge," and much more.){kind=link}