Spirit Entertainment has announced the UK releases from The Criterion Collection for July, which consist of The Beatles' debut feature A Hard Day's Night and William Friedkin's Sorcerer on 4K UHD and Blu-ray, and screwball comedy Midnight on Blu-ray only. Details below.
A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (UK/USA 1964)
4K UHD | Blu-ray | 7 July 2025
Meet the Beatles! Just one month after they exploded onto the U.S. scene with their Ed Sullivan Show appearance, John, Paul, George, and Ringo began working on a project that would bring their revolutionary talent to the big screen. This film, in which the bandmates play slapstick versions of themselves, captured the astonishing moment when they officially became the singular, irreverent idols of their generation and changed music forever.
Directed with raucous, anything-goes verve by Richard Lester (The Knack . . . and How to Get It) and featuring a slew of iconic pop anthems – including the title track, Can’t Buy Me Love, I Should Have Known Better, and If I Fell – A Hard Day’s Night, which reconceived the movie musical and exerted an incalculable influence on the music video, is one of the most deliriously entertaining movies of all time.
4K UHD & BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Richard Lester, with three audio options—a monaural soundtrack as well as stereo and 5.1 surround mixes supervised by sound producer Giles Martin at Abbey Road Studios—presented in uncompressed monaural, uncompressed stereo, and DTS-HD Master Audio
- 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 cast and crew
- In Their Own Voices, a program featuring 1964 interviews with the Beatles and behind-the- scenes footage and photos
- “You Can’t Do That”: The Making of A Hard Day’s Night, a 1994 documentary by producer Walter Shenson including an outtake performance by the Beatles
- Things They Said Today, a 2002 documentary about the film featuring Lester, music producer George Martin, screenwriter Alun Owen, and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor
- Picturewise, a program about Lester’s early work, featuring a 2014 audio interview with the director
- The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1960), Lester’s Oscar-nominated short
- Anatomy of a Style, a 2014 program on Lester’s methods
- Interview from 2014 with Beatles biographer Mark Lewisohn
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Howard Hampton and excerpts from a 1970 interview with Les
- Cover by Rodrigo Corral
MIDNIGHT (USA 1939)
Blu-ray | 14 July 2025
Screwball comedy doesn’t get any more effortlessly elegant and gleefully irreverent than this roulette wheel of romantic deception, gleaming with cunning wit and Continental élan. A couture-clad Claudette Colbert is divine as a penniless American chorus girl who crashes Parisian high society by posing as a wealthy Hungarian baroness—but both a scheming nobleman (John Barrymore) and a smitten taxi driver (Don Ameche) are soon on to her game.
Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett’s sophisticated script—a typically subversive blend of fairy-tale escapism and caustic social observation—and the pitch-perfect direction of master craftsman Mitchell Leisen yield a topsy-turvy Cinderella story with a cynical bite.
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New audio commentary featuring author and film critic Michael Koresky
- New program featuring audio excerpts of a 1969 interview with director Mitchell Leisen
- Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1940
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film critic David Cairns
SORCERER (USA/Mexico 1977)
4K UHD | Blu-ray | 7 July 2025
A hallucinatory journey into the heart of darkness, William Friedkin’s pulse-pounding reimagining of the suspense classic The Wages of Fear was dismissed upon its release, only to be recognized decades later as one of the boldest auteur statements of the New Hollywood.
In a remote Latin American village, four desperate fugitives—a New Jersey gangster (Roy Scheider), a Mexican assassin (Francisco Rabal), an unscrupulous Parisian businessman (Bruno Cremer), and an Arab terrorist (Amidou)—take on a seemingly doomed mission: transporting two trucks full of highly explosive nitroglycerin through the treacherous jungle.
Aided by Tangerine Dream’s otherworldly synth score, Friedkin turns each bump in the road into a tour de force of cold-sweat tension—conjuring a hauntingly nihilistic vision of a world ruled by chance and fate.
4K UHD & BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack approved by director William Friedkin, and alternate original theatrical 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- [UHD ONLY] One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
- Friedkin Uncut (2018), a documentary by Francesco Zippel featuring interviews with Friedkin, screenwriter Walon Green, filmmakers Wes Anderson and Francis Ford Coppola, and others
- New conversation between filmmaker James Gray and film critic Sean Fennessey
- Conversation from 2015 between Friedkin and filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn
- Archival audio interviews with Green and editor Bud Smith, from the collection of Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, author of William Friedkin (2003)
- Behind-the-scenes footage
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Justin Chang
- New cover by Nessim Higson
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