Jeff Heinrich

Halfway through the 1980s in Minnesota, 1,500 workers went on strike at the Hormel Foods pork-packing plant in the city of Austin. The strike lasted 13 months and was chronicled by New York documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple in a gut-wrenching piece of cinema-verité called American Dream. Released in 1990, the film echoed Harlan County USA, the groundbreaking movie she shot a decade or so earlier about a coalminers' strike in Kentucky. Both documentaries earned Kopple an Oscar, and it's easy to see why. Uncompromising, in-your-face, sympathetic to the plight of the working class without being blind to its weaknesses, she takes an inherently dramatic subject and gives it a human face — hundreds of them. Now, with the director's input, Criterion have restored and re-released the two movies, and you can watch them three different ways: streaming on the Criterion Channel; on two-disc physical media (4K UHD and Blu-ray discs); and on solo Blu-rays. For Harlan, extras are plentiful: culled from Criterion's 2006 DVD, there's an audio commentary by Kopple and editor Nancy Baker, a 22-minute making-of, a half-hour of outtakes, two interviews (with bluegrass singer-songwriter Hazel Dickens and with independent filmmaking veteran John Sayles), and a 15-minute panel discussion from the 2005 Sundance Film Festival featuring Kopple and the late, great Roger Ebert. For American Dream, the extras are limited and date back to 1992: an interview with Kopple and an audio conversation between her and historian Studs Terkel. Both films come with a trailer and optional English subtitles (without them, some of the strong American accents can be hard to understand). The physical media editions come with inserts featuring essays by critic Michael Atkinson and musician Jon Weisberger.

Gérard Depardieu stars in this absurdist murder mystery set in a Paris metro station and ahighrise apartment. Written and directed by the late Bertrand Blier and co-starring his father, Bernard Blier, and Jean Carmet, it's a delightfully deadpan black comedy that also features cameos by Michel Serrault and Carole Bouquet. Extras on the Indicator Blu-ray include an audio commentary by Nick Pinkerton; a half-hour interview with Blier from 2019; an eight-minute TV interview from 1979 with the two Bliers, Depardieu and Carmet; a 38-minute audio podcast from 2025 with Blier biographer Sue Harris; a trailer; and image and script galleries. There are optional English subtitles, and an illustrated booklet accompanies the disc.

Bertrand Blier writes and directs another absurdist satire, this time a revenge-sex fantasy starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Anouk Grinberg. Jumping back and forth in time, Merci la vie spans the German occupation of France in WWII, the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, and Gainsbourg's character's conception in the womb. Gérard Depardieu and Jean-Louis Trintignant have cameos and the soundtrack ranges from Brel to Beethoven (with a lot of Philip Glass, if you like that sort of thing). Extras on the Indicator Blu-ray include a half-hour interview with Blier from 2004, a trailer, an image gallery and the original script. English subtitles are optional, and there's an illustrated booklet.

How best to tart up a down-at-the-heels seaside town? Establish a film festival and invite a sexy French starlet to attend! Well, that's the set-up of this mid-1960s British comedy that stars James Booth and Marisa Mell and marks director Ken Russell's feature-film debut. Extras on the Indicator Blu-ray include a long audio interview with cinematographer Kenneth Higgins from 1991 that can be played as an optional track throughout the film; 12 minutes of Russell introducing the movie at a 2008 film festival; a 1963 newsreel making-of and two contemporary short interviews with Booth and co-star Roy Kinnear; an image gallery; the movie's script; and an illustrated booklet.

British distributor Eureka! caps its Masters of Cinema series of restored Laurel & Hardy silents with this third and final two-disc Blu-ray set, gathering together nine films released in 1929 just before the comedic duo transitioned to talking pictures: Liberty, Wrong Again, That’s My Wife, Big Business, Unaccustomed As We Are, Double Whoopee, Berth Marks, Bacon Grabbers and Angora Love. Shot mostly at Hal Roach Studios, these shorts find Stan and Ollie getting up to all kinds of hijinks: going on the run from the law, returning a lost horse, selling Christmas trees door-to-door; wreaking havoc on a sleeper train; and more. The two discs are region-free and feature 2K HD restorations by Blackhawk Films, musical scores by Robert Israel and others, new audio commentaries by David Kalat and others, a new documentary by David Cairns and Fiona Watson, the alternate sound version of Unaccustomed ..., the alternate dubbed version of Double Whoopee, the 1929 sound shorts They Go Boom! and The Hoose-Gow, an excerpt of 'The Hollywood Revue of 1929', Super-8 versions of Liberty, Big Business, Double Whoopee and Angora Love, and a series of stills galleries. An illustrated booklet accompanies the discs.

Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as the real-life financier Alexandre Stavisky, whose crooked ways and apparent suicide in 1934 at age 47 are legendary in France. Alain Resnais' film dramatizes the Russian Jew's final months, with flashbacks and flash-forwards to his troubled life, the whole underscored by music written by Stephen Sondheim. Extras on the Indicator Blu-ray include a Guardian audio interview with Resnais from 1980 that can be played as an optional track throughout the film; five archival sorts from 1974 (two TV episode excerpts, a location report, an interview with co-star Anne Duperey, and part of the Cannes Film Festival press conference); a trailer and three image galleries. There are optional English subtitles and an illustrated booklet accompanies the discs.

Fans of detective dramas will delight in this 1952 French anthology film directed by Henri Verneuil (aka Ashot Malakian) and starring Michel Simon, Raymond Rouleau, John Van Dreelen (respectively, as Inspector Maigret, Inspector Wens and Agent Lemmy Caution). Shot in Paris and Hamburg, the films draw on short stories (and an excerpt of a novel) by Belgium's Georges Simenon and Stanislas-André Steeman and Britain's Peter Cheyney. Extras on the Indicator Blu-ray are slim: a 15-minute portrait of Simon from 1964 and an image gallery. There are optional English subtitles, and the disc comes with an illustrated booklet featuring a new essay by Eric Smoodin; archival profiles of Verneuil, Steeman and Cheyney; and a full list of credits for each of the films.

Archibaldo wants to be a serial killer, and the women he targets do wind up dead, but always by another man's hand. Ernesto Alonzo stars in Luis Buñuel's black-and-white comedy of the unseemly, set in the world of Mexico's haute bourgeoisie. Released in 1955 and now restored in 4K by Cineteca Nacional México from the original 35mm negative acetate, the film makes its second appearance in four years on region-free Blu-ray (VCI was first, in 2022). The new BD from Britain's Second Run has more extras: three five-minute video essays by writer and filmmaker Cristina Álvarez López from 2015,
a half-hour video essay by critic David Wilt from 2022 (also on the VCI edition), and Buñuel’s 204-page, annotated personal script of the film. There are optional English subtitles and a 24-page booklet with writing by López and Jordi Xifra.

The last of Buster Keaton independently made silent films, The General flopped on release in 1926 but decades later came to be considered one of the greatest comedies ever made. Big-budgeted, with spectacular stunts and elaborate sets, it takes place during the American Civil War and has Keaton playing a train engineer of the Western & Atlantic Railroad whose love for his steam locomotive ('The General' of the title) is rivaled only by his devotion to his lovely Southern belle, Annabelle Lee, played by Marion Mack. Previously available (in varying quality) on home video from a long list of DVD and Blu-ray distributors including Image, Republic, Kino, Kino Lorber, Cohen and Britain's Eureka! Masters of Cinema, The General now gets an upgrade via the latter to 4K UltraHD. New to this Region-B edition in terms of special features are an audio commentary by film historian David Kalat, a half-hour video essay by Keaton scholar Imogen Sara Smith, and an hour-long video essay on locomotives in Keaton's oeuvre by film critic and editor Luke Ryan that culminates in Keaton's titular role in the half-hour 1965 silent "The Railrodder," made by the National Film Board of Canada. Extras reprised here from the distributor's 2017 Blu-ray include: an original score (now in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1) composed and conducted by Carl Davis; a locations featurette; a video tour of the actual locomotive used in The General; home-movie footage; a 40-minute look at Keaton's career by BFI Film Classics author Peter Kramer; an introduction to the film from 1971 by Orson Welles and another from 1960 by Gloria Swanson. The accompanying illustrated booklet has a trove of archival material and essays by critic Philip Kemp and animator Richard Haynes.

Banned shortly after release for its anti-establishment message, Trace of Stones was East German writer-director Frank Beyer's follow-up to his 1963 features Naked Among Wolves and Carbide and Sorrel. It's set in a dysfunctional petrochemical plant whose unruly workers chafe under socialist management. Produced by the official Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA), the film was finally released after the Berlin Wall came down in late 1989. Previously available to English-language audiences on a DVD that First Run distributed in 2007, the movie now comes to Blu-ray as part of Eureka's 'Masters of Cinema' series. Extras on the Region-B disc include three documentaries: on Beyer (1987, 62 minutes), on banning DEFA films (2005, 47 mins.), and on the banned 1978 half-hour doc Heim (Children's Home). English subtitles are optional throughout. An accompanying booklet features a new essay by DEFA expert Michael Wedel on the response of East German audiences to the banning of Trace of Stones.

An Inspector Maigret whodunnit based on the Georges Simenon novel, Cécile is Dead was produced in 1944 under Nazi occupation at the German-controlled Continental Films studio in Paris. Directed by Maurice Tourneur, it stars Albert Préjean as Maigret, tracking down leads in the case of a headless female corpse found in a rooming house. On the 'Masters of Cinema' Blu-ray , there's a new audio commentary by crime-cinema expert Sergio Angelini, host of the "Tipping My Fedora" podcast. Extras on the Region-B disc include a 17-minute introduction to the film from 2015 by Christine Leteux, author of "Maurice Tourneur: réalisateur sans frontières;" and "My Friend Maigret," a new discussion with film historian Martin Hall on translating Simenon's famous detective from page to screen (16 mins.) There are optional English subtitles throughout. The accompanying booklet has new writing by Andrew Watts on Cécile is Dead and the many other wartime adaptations of French literature done under German oversight.

In Moravia at the end of the Second World War, 12-year-old Piňda, aka Oldřich Vařeka (played by (Zdeněk Lstibůrek), survives a cruel father and bullying playmates as he awaits the inevitable German defeat. Directed by Karel Kachyňa (The Ear, Coach to Vienna), the film has now been transferred in high-definition by the Czech National Film Archive. Extras on Second Run's region-free Blu-ray include a half-hour interview Kachyňa gave in 1998 to CUNY TV, as well as "A Memory of the Present," a 10-minute war-themed film from 1963 directed by Kachyňa's compatriot Jan Němec. English subtitles throughout are optional. The accompanying 20-page booklet has new writing by Czechoslovak cinema expertPeter Hames.

A WWII French horror movie adapted from a Gérard de Nerval novel, La main du diable stars Pierre Fresnay as an impoverished painter whose luck changes for the better when he acquires a gruesome talisman: a severed left hand. Jacques Toruneur directs. The new British Blu-ray, code-locked to Region B, features a new audio commentary by film critic James Oliver, a new video essay by film historian Samm Deighan called "The Devil's in the Details: Fantastic French Cinema Under Occupation" (19 minutes), and a 2010 documentary called "'La Continental' : French cinéma in La Main du Diable" (46 mins.) English subtitles throughout are optional. The accompanying booklet has new writing by Barry Nevin.

A Holocaust drama written and directed by East Germany's Frank Beyer and based on the novel by co-screenwriter Jurek Becker, Jacob the Liar stars Czech actor Vlastimil Brodský as a Pole trying to hoodwink his fellow Jews into believing that the Russians are on their way to liberating them from the ghetto. The new Blu-ray, part of British distributor Eureka!'s 'Masters of Cinema' collection that are all code-locked to Region B, features a 4K restoration from the original camera negative and interpositive by the DEFA Foundation. There are two new extras: an interview with Jewish studies scholar Sue Vice (16 minutes) and a video essay by film and literature scholar Mary Going (25 mins.). Also offered up is "A Diary for Anne Frank," a 1958 DEFA documentary by Joachim Hellwig (19 mins.) English subtitles are optional throughout. An accompanying illustrated booklet has new writing on Jakob the Liar by Sebastian Heiduschke, author of the scholarly book East German Cinema: DEFA and Film History.

Monsieur Hulot returns — discreetly — in this 70mm masterpiece, a pied-de-nez to the poseur mores of modern society and the beginnings ofmass tourism, released in 1967 at great expense and ultimately bankrupting its creator and star, France's Jacques Tati. Criterion's new 4K UHD edition of Playtime features a 4K digital restoration of the film, with the original French soundtrack in 3.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio and an alternate English-language soundtrack also offered. A companion Blu-ray has all the (previously available) extras: an introduction by Monty Python actor and comedian Terry Jones; three selected-scene commentaries; a visual essay and a short film by Stéphane Goudet; archival on-set interviews and behind-the-scenes footage; an interview with script supervisor Sylvette Baudrot, a 1972 audio interview with Tati , a 1976 TV program on the Hulot character, and Tati's 1967 short "Cours du soir." There's a foldout leaflet, too, with an essay by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum.

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