Spirit Entertainment has announced the Criterion UHD and Blu-ray releases coming to the UK in March, and this time around they have us salivating in anticipation, being Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg's mind-bending gangster tale Performance, Gus Van Sant's acclaimed second feature Drugstore Cowboy, and the 1989 entry into the long-running Godzilla franchise, Godzilla vs. Biollante.
PERFORMANCE (UK 1970)
4K UHD | Blu-ray | 3 March 2025
The grimy criminal underworld and hedonistic rock-and-roll counterculture of late-1960s London collide in this mind-scrambling, kaleidoscopic freak-out. On the run from his vengeful boss, a ruthless gangster (James Fox) hides out in the Notting Hill home of a reclusive rock star (Mick Jagger) and his companions (Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton), who open the doors of his perception as the lines between reality and fantasy, male and female, persona and self, dissolve in a hallucinogenic haze.
Built around Jagger’s most magnetic narrative-film performance, this visionary collaboration between Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg is a daringly transgressive, endlessly influential journey to the dark side of bohemia.
4K UHD & BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, approved by producer Sandy Lieberson, with uncompressed monaural original-UK-version soundtrack
- [UHD ONLY] One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance (1998), a documentary by Kevin Macdonald and Chris Rodley
- Influence and Controversy: Making Performance (2007), a documentary about the making of the film
- The True Story of David Litvinoff, a new visual essay by Keiron Pim, biographer of dialogue coach and technical adviser David Litvinoff
- Performers on Performance, a documentary featuring actors James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and others
- The Two Cockneys of Harry Flowers, a program on the dialogue overdubbing done for the U.S. version of the film
- Memo from Turner, a program featuring behind-the-scenes footage
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Ryan Gilbey and a 1995 article by filmmaker and scholar Peter Wollen
- New cover by Fred Davis
DRUGSTORE COWBOY (USA 1989)
4K UHD | Blu-ray | 10 March 2025
Gus Van Sant’s dreamy, drifty, deadpan second feature – an addiction drama based on James Fogle’s autobiographical novel – captures the zonked-out textures and almost surreal absurdity of a life lived fix to fix. Swinging between dope-fueled disconnection and edgy paranoia, Matt Dillon plays the leader of a ragtag crew (also featuring Kelly Lynch, Heather Graham, and James Le Gros) that robs pharmacies for pills, coasting across the 1970s Pacific Northwest while trying to outrun sobriety and fate.
With a brilliant supporting turn from counterculture high priest William S. Burroughs and a lyrical feeling for the streetscapes of Van Sant’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, Drugstore Cowboy cemented the director’s status as a preeminent poet of outsiderhood.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD & BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Gus Van Sant and director of photography Robert Yeoman, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
- [UHD ONLY] One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Audio commentary featuring Van Sant and actor Matt Dillon
- The Making of Drugstore Cowboy, featuring interviews with Van Sant and members of the cast and crew
- New interviews with Yeoman and actor Kelly Lynch
- Deleted scenes
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author and screenwriter Jon Raymond
- New cover by F. Ron Miller
GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE [GOJIRA VS. BIORANTE] (Japan 1989)
4K UHD | Blu-ray | 24 March 2025
Diving into delirious realms of imagination, this second film of the Godzilla franchise’s 1980s resurgence showcased the towering beast for a new generation of fans. This time, Godzilla’s foe is one of the series’ most wondrously strange kaiju creations: Biollante – a mutant plant genetically engineered from the cells of a rose, a renegade scientist’s dead daughter, and Godzilla itself.
With a wild plot encompassing spies, psychic children, and bonkers biotechnology – and some of the coolest special effects in the history of Japanese cinema – Godzilla vs. Biollante stands as a high point in the ever-evolving mythology of the King of the Monsters.
4K UHD & BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, with 5.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- [UHD ONLY] One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New audio commentary featuring film historian Samm Deighan, host of the podcast Eros + Massacre and coeditor of the book Revolution in 35mm
- Making-of program from 1993 featuring director Kazuki Omori and special-effects director Koichi Kawakita, among others
- Short documentary from 1993 about the Biollante and Super X2 vehicle concepts
- Deleted special effects
- TV spots and trailers
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by science-fiction and horror film expert Jim Cirronella
- New cover by Eric Powell
|
