May’s Criterion Collection lineup plays like a grab bag in the best way—seven titles that all, in their own registers, trap people in systems: desire, poverty, fame, family history, late-capitalist rot. The month swings from classic Hollywood heat and postwar Japanese grit to downtown New York memory and an early-internet-era warning siren that now feels painfully on time.
The biggest headline for many collectors will be “Body Heat,” Lawrence Kasdan (“The Big Chill”)’s debut feature and one of the defining erotic thrillers of the modern studio era. Set on a sultry South Florida coast, it locks a lawyer and an unhappily married woman into an affair that quickly curdles into a murder scheme—then keeps tightening the screws with hard-boiled dialogue and sharp turns. Criterion’s edition leans into the craft: a new 4K digital restoration supervised by editor Carol Littleton and approved by Kasdan, an alternate 5.1 track, a new interview with the filmmaker, a Littleton conversation with historian Bobbie O’Steen, archival programs with William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Ted Danson, cinematographer Richard H. Kline, and composer John Barry, plus deleted scenes and an essay by Megan Abbott. It’s available as a 4K UHD/Blu-ray combo and a standalone Blu-ray.
If Kasdan’s film is all sweat and seduction, “Stray Dog” is sweat as survival. Akira Kurosawa (“Seven Samurai”) takes a simple premise—a young detective’s gun is stolen on a bus—and turns it into a street-level plunge through postwar Tokyo, where the hunt for a “stray dog” becomes a mirror for the cop’s own darkness. Criterion spotlights the central pairing of Toshiro Mifune as the rookie and Takashi Shimura as the steadier mentor figure. The release includes a new 4K restoration, an audio commentary by author Stephen Prince, a documentary from the “It Is Wonderful to Create” series featuring interviews including Kurosawa and production designer Yoshiro Muraki, and a booklet anchored by an essay from Terrence Rafferty alongside an excerpt from Kurosawa’s Something Like an Autobiography. It comes in both a 4K UHD combo and Blu-ray.
Then there’s “Lenny,” Bob Fosse (“Cabaret”) turning the life of Lenny Bruce into a nervy, black and white showbiz fever dream: the stage and the courtroom as twin arenas where performance becomes a kind of public trial. Dustin Hoffman plays Bruce as a live wire, and Valerie Perrine gives the film its bruised center as Honey. Criterion’s edition features a new 4K restoration, a 4K UHD combo option, a 2015 commentary with historians Nick Redman and Julie Kirgo, archival interviews with Hoffman and Perrine, an interview with editor Alan Heim, and a package of writing that includes an essay by Mark Harris and a 1975 interview with Fosse.
May also becomes, quietly, an Ira Sachs month. Criterion brings “The Delta,” his strikingly raw 1996 debut feature about race, class, sexuality, and the power imbalance that seeps into intimacy, with a director-approved Blu-ray featuring a new 2K restoration supervised and approved by Sachs, a 2001 commentary, a new interview conducted by critic Keith Uhlich, two early shorts, and an essay by Michael Koresky. And in a very different key, the new Criterion Premieres title “Peter Hujar’s Day” re-creates a real 1974 conversation between photographer Peter Hujar and writer Linda Rosenkrantz, played by Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall, as a warm, graceful hangout that doubles as a portrait of a vanished New York. The disc includes a Criterion Channel original Meet the Filmmakers interview with Sachs and notes by Koresky.
For newer-world emotional devastation, “Sentimental Value” brings Joachim Trier (“The Worst Person in the World”) back to the family minefield: two sisters dealing with grief and the return of their estranged father, a celebrated filmmaker with his own agenda. The ensemble includes Stellan Skarsgård, Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, and Elle Fanning. Criterion’s director-approved edition features a new 4K master, a conversation between Trier and filmmaker Mike Mills, selected-scene commentaries, cast interviews, deleted scenes, and an essay by Karl Ove Knausgård, available in 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD.
And for the month’s most bracing left turn, “Fresh Kill” is a 1994 cyberpunk ecofeminist parable from new-media pioneer Shu Lea Cheang, set in a “dystopian-chic” New York where toxic waste and consumer sheen share the same block. A lesbian couple—Sarita Choudhury and Erin McMurtry—turns to the hacker underground to find their missing daughter and expose corporate greenwashing and tainted fish. Criterion’s director-approved Blu-ray includes a new 4K restoration supervised and approved by Cheang and cinematographer Jane Castle, interviews, and a substantial set of contextual programs, plus an essay by Mindy Seu.
