Things are heating up this summer for followers of the Criterion Collection. Hot on the heels of a June release that announced the likes of John Waters’ Pink Flamingos and Gordon Parks’ Shaft, July will be no different in the way of top tier films getting the Criterion treatment. Stunning audiences with its terrific special effects, Bong Joon Ho’s Okja will be resurfacing for the July edition. Along with the star-studded film about one girl’s connection with a GMO created “superpig,” viewers will step behind the curtain and hear about the film’s visual effects and cinematography from those closest to the production. Sofia Coppola’s breakthrough film The Virgin Suicides is also going to be a non-miss for your collection. Fans of the legendary director’s work will be delighted to know that along with the feature, they’ll receive her 1998 short film titled Lick the Star, as well as a featurette about making the iconic Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett led film.
Like in previous months, everyone is getting a restoration upgrade! Filmmaker Carl Franklin’s 1995 neo-noir thriller Devil in a Blue Dress will be getting a 4K digital restoration alongside Martin Scorsese’s boxing drama, Raging Bull, for which Robert De Niro nabbed the Academy Award for Best Actor. Meanwhile, critically acclaimed 2021 drama Drive My Car will come with a new 2K digital master to be accompanied by several bonus features, including behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. Rounding it all out is David Lean’s 1955 romantic drama, Summertime. Also receiving a 4K restoration, its special features include a 1963 interview with Lean.
And there you have it! The Criterion Collection announcements for July 2022. With all the films combined, the star power is enough to blow the roof off of your next movie night. Keep reading to learn more about all the new entry’s special features as well as their synopsis. For even more information, including how to get your hands on this incredible lineup, head to the Criterion website.
Okja (July 5)
Master genre exploder Bong Joon Ho swirls pathos, dark satire, action, and horror into an exhilarating twenty-first-century fairy tale. An all-star cast including Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Steven Yeun, and Jake Gyllenhaal is led by An Seo Hyun as Mija, a South Korean girl growing up on an Edenic mountainside with her grandfather and best friend: Okja, a giant, empathetic “superpig” created as part of a secret GMO experiment. When Okja is abruptly torn away from her, Mija embarks on a perilous rescue mission that places her at the center of a sinister corporate conspiracy. While Bong’s trademark virtuosic set pieces dazzle, Okja’s beating heart is the connection between a girl and her superpig, made all the more poignant by the brilliant special effects that bring the animal star to unforgettable life.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- 4K digital master, approved by director Bong Joon Ho, with Dolby Atmos sound on the Blu-ray and 4K UHD editions
- In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New conversation between Bong and producer Dooho Choi
- New interviews with actors An Seo Hyun and Byun Heebong
- New interviews with members of the crew about the film’s cinematography, visual effects, and costume and production design
- Short programs including a director’s video diary, featuring Bong; actors Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal, Tilda Swinton, and Steven Yeun; and others
- Teaser, trailer, and web promos
- English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Karen Han
- New cover by Michael Boland
The Virgin Suicides (July 5)
With this debut feature, Sofia Coppola announced her singular vision, exploring the aesthetics of femininity while illuminating the interior lives of young women. An adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s highly acclaimed first novel, The Virgin Suicides conjures the ineffable melancholy of teenage longing and ennui in its story of the suicides of the five Lisbon sisters, stifled by the rules of their overprotective religious parents—as told through the collective memory of a group of men who were boys at the time and still yearn to understand what happened. Evoking its 1970s suburban setting through ethereal cinematography by Ed Lachman and an atmospheric score by Air, and featuring a magnetic performance by Kirsten Dunst, the film secured a place for its director in the landscape of American independent cinema and has become a coming-of-age touchstone.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Sofia Coppola and supervised by cinematographer Ed Lachman, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the 4K UHD and Blu-ray
- Interviews with Coppola, Lachman, actors Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett, novelist Jeffrey Eugenides, and writer and actor Tavi Gevinson
- Making of “The Virgin Suicides,” a 1998 documentary directed by Eleanor Coppola and featuring Sofia Coppola; Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola; actors Dunst, Hartnett, Scott Glenn, Kathleen Turner, and James Woods; Eugenides; and others
- Lick the Star, a 1998 short film by Sofia Coppola
- Music video for Air’s soundtrack song “Playground Love,” directed by Coppola and her brother Roman Coppola
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by novelist Megan Abbott
- New cover by Naomi Hirabayashi
Raging Bull (July 12)
With this stunningly visceral portrait of self-destructive machismo, Martin Scorsese created one of the truly great and visionary works of modern cinema. Robert De Niro pours his blood, sweat, and brute physicality into the Oscar-winning role of Jake La Motta, the rising middleweight boxer from the Bronx whose furious ambition propels him to success within the ring but whose unbridled paranoia and jealousy tatter his relationships with everyone in his orbit, including his brother and manager (Joe Pesci) and gorgeous, streetwise wife (Cathy Moriarty). Thelma Schoonmaker’s Oscar-winning editing, Michael Chapman’s extraordinarily tactile black-and-white cinematography, and Frank Warner’s ingenious sound design combine to make Raging Bull a uniquely powerful exploration of violence on multiple levels—physical, emotional, psychic, and spiritual.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 4K digital master, approved by director Martin Scorsese, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New video essays by film critics Geoffrey O’Brien and Sheila O’Malley on Scorsese’s mastery of formal techniques and the film’s triumvirate of characters
- Three audio commentaries, featuring Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker; director of photography Michael Chapman, producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler, casting director Cis Corman, music consultant Robbie Robertson, actors Theresa Saldana and John Turturro, and sound-effects supervising editor Frank Warner; and boxer Jake La Motta and screenwriters Mardik Martin and Paul Schrader
- Fight Night, a making-of program featuring Scorsese and key members of the cast and crew
- Three short programs highlighting the longtime collaboration between Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro
- Television interview from 1981 with actor Cathy Moriarty and the real Vikki La Motta
- Interview with Jake La Motta from 1990
- Program from 2004 featuring veteran boxers reminiscing about La Motta
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: Essays by poet Robin Robertson and film critic Glenn Kenny
- New cover by Eric Skillman
Summertime (July 12)
With this sublimely bittersweet tale of romantic longing, director David Lean left behind the British soundstage to capture in radiant Technicolor the sun-splashed glory of Venice at the height of summer. In a tour de force of fearless vulnerability, Katharine Hepburn embodies the conflicting emotions that stir the heart of a lonely, middle-aged American tourist who is forced to confront her deep-seated insecurities when she is drawn into a seemingly impossible affair with a charming Italian shopkeeper (Rossano Brazzi) amid the ancient city’s canals and piazzas. Lean’s personal favorite among his own films, Summertime is an exquisitely tender evocation of the magic and melancholy of a fleeting, not-quite-fairy-tale romance.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with film historian Melanie Williams
- Interview with director David Lean from 1963
- Audio excerpts of a 1988 interview with cinematographer Jack Hildyard
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Stephanie Zacharek
- New cover by Lauren Tamaki
Drive My Car (July 19)
Only Ryusuke Hamaguchi—with his extraordinary sensitivity to the mysterious resonances of human interactions—could sweep up international awards and galvanize audiences everywhere with a pensive, three-hour movie about an experimental staging of an Anton Chekhov play, presented in nine languages and adapted from Haruki Murakami stories. With Drive My Car, the Japanese director has confirmed his place among contemporary cinema’s most vital voices. Two years after his wife’s unexpected death, Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) arrives in Hiroshima to direct a production of Uncle Vanya for a theater festival and, through relationships with an actor (Masaki Okada) with whom he shares a tangled history and a chauffeur (Toko Miura) with whom he develops a surprising rapport, finds himself confronting emotional scars. This quietly mesmerizing tale of love, art, grief, and healing is ultimately a cathartic exploration of what it means to go on living when there seems to be no road ahead.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 2K digital master, approved by director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with Hamaguchi
- Program about the making of the film, featuring behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with actors Reika Kirishima, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Masaki Okada, Yoo-rim Park, Dae-Young Jin, and others
- Press conference footage from the film’s premiere at the 2021 Cannes International Film Festival
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author Bryan Washington
- New cover by Jason Hardy
Devil in a Blue Dress (July 19)
The bone-deep disillusionment of postwar film noir becomes a powerful vehicle to explore America’s racial injustices in Carl Franklin’s richly atmospheric Devil in a Blue Dress, an adaptation of the hard-boiled novel by Walter Mosley. Denzel Washington has charisma to burn as the jobless ex-GI Easy Rawlins, who sees a chance to make some quick cash when he’s recruited to find the missing lover (Jennifer Beals) of a wealthy mayoral candidate in late-1940s Los Angeles—only to find himself embroiled in murder, political intrigue, and a scandal that crosses the treacherous color lines of a segregated society. Featuring breakout work by Don Cheadle as Rawlins’s cheerfully trigger-happy sidekick, this stylish mystery both channels and subverts classic noir tropes as it exposes the bitter racial realities underlying the American dream.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Carl Franklin, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- In the 4K UHD edition: 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 Franklin
- New conversation between Franklin and actor Don Cheadle
- New conversation between Walter Mosley, author of the novel on which the film is based, and novelist and screenwriter Attica Locke
- On-stage conversation between Franklin and film historian Eddie Muller, recorded at the 2018 Noir City Film Festival in Chicago
- Screen test for Cheadle
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Julian Kimble
- New cover by James Ransome