January 2025 could mark a bleak month for very specific reasons, but in that month one can watch a nicely curated collection of David Bowie’s best performances. Nearly a decade since he passed, the iconic actor (who had some other trades) is celebrated with The Man Who Fell to Earth, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Linguini Incident, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Basquiat. (Note: watch The Missing Pieces under Fire Walk with Me‘s Criterion edition for about three times as much Phillip Jeffries.) It’s a retrospective-heavy month: Nicole Kidman, Cameron Crowe, Ethan Hawke, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, Paolo Sorrentino, and Sean Baker are given spotlights; the first and last bring with them To Die For and Take Out‘s Criterion Editions, joining Still Walking, Hunger, and A Face in the Crowd.
“Surveillance Cinema” brings THX 1138, Body Double, Minority Report, and others, while “Love in Disguise” offers films by Lubitsch, Borzage, Sturges, and Wilder. After Nickel Boys and The Brutalist have opened, Hale County This Morning, This Evening and The Childhood of a Leader take you to directors’ origins. I’m personally excited to see Ozu’s underrated Record of a Tenement Gentleman arrive in a restoration, as well as last year’s best film, It’s Not Me, land with a Leos Carax interview.
See the full list of films below and more at the Criterion Channel:
The Anderson Tapes, Sidney Lumet, 1971
Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe, 2000*
Angel Face, Otto Preminger, 1953
Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, 1996
Before Midnight, Richard Linklater, 2013*
Birth, Jonathan Glazer, 2004
Body Double, Brian De Palma, 1984
The Boston Strangler, Tony Curtis, 1968
The Boys from Brazil, Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978
The Childhood of a Leader, Brady Corbet, 2015*
The Consequences of Love, Paolo Sorrentino, 2004
The Conversation, Francis Ford Coppola, 1974
Dead Calm, Phillip Noyce, 1989
Desire, Frank Borzage, 1936*
Don’t Bother to Knock, Roy Ward Baker, 1952
The End of Violence, Wim Wenders, 1997
Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick, 1999
A Face in the Crowd, Elia Kazan, 1957
The Flame of New Orleans, René Clair, 1941*
Frenchman’s Creek, Mitchell Leisen, 1944*
Gattaca, Andrew Niccol, 1997
Hale County This Morning, This Evening, RaMell Ross, 2018
The Hours, Stephen Daldry, 2002*
Hunger, Steve McQueen, 2008
In Name Only, John Cromwell, 1939
The Killers, Robert Siodmak, 1946
The Killers, Andrei Tarkovsky, Marika Beiku, and Aleksandr Gordon, 1956
The Killers, Don Siegel, 1964
The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck, 2006*
Love Me Tonight, Rouben Mamoulian, 1932
The Major and the Minor, Billy Wilder, 1942*
Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach, 2007
Midnight, Mitchell Leisen, 1939
Minority Report, Steven Spielberg, 2002*
Monte Carlo, Ernst Lubitsch, 1930
Night Must Fall, Richard Thorpe, 1937
Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone, 1968
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Miloš Forman, 1975
One Man Up, Paolo Sorrentino, 2001
The Paperboy, Lee Daniels, 2012*
The Portrait of a Lady, Jane Campion, 1996
Prince of Broadway, Sean Baker, 2008
The Princess Comes Across, William K. Howard, 1936*
Red River, Howard Hawks, 1948
Say Anything . . . , Cameron Crowe, 1989
A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater, 2006
Seymour: An Introduction, Ethan Hawke, 2014*
Singles, Cameron Crowe, 1992
Sliver, Phillip Noyce, 1993*
Starlet, Sean Baker, 2012
The Stepford Wives, Frank Oz, 2004*
Still Walking, Hirokazu, Kore-eda, 2008*
Thirty Day Princess, Marion Gering, 1934*
This Is the Night, Frank Tuttle, 1932
THX 1138, George Lucas, 1971
To Die For, Gus Van Sant, 1995
The Truman Show, Peter Weir, 1998*
The Velvet Touch, Jack Gage, 1948
Wildcat, Ethan Hawke, 2023*
*Available in the U.S. only