The Criterion Collection has announced five new titles to join the collection on 4K UHD and Blu-Ray in July: The Watermelon Woman (1996), After Hours (1985), Breathless (1960), One False Move (1992) and The Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher (1957-1960). These represent a trailblazing Black lesbian meta-comedy, a Kafkaesque NYC nightmare by Martin Scorsese, a dazzling debut that helped launch the French New Wave, a razor-sharp neonoir by Carl Franklin and a collection of five taut, unexpectedly profound westerns starring Randolph Scott. Details on these films can be found below:

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The Watermelon Woman 

Street Date: July 11, 2023

Synopsis: The wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye stars as Cheryl, a video-store clerk and aspiring director whose interest in forgotten Black actresses leads her to investigate an obscure 1930s performer known as the Watermelon Woman, whose story proves to have surprising resonances with Cheryl’s own life as she navigates a new relationship with a white girlfriend (Guinevere Turner). Balancing breezy romantic comedy with a serious inquiry into the history of Black and queer women in Hollywood, The Watermelon Woman slyly rewrites long-standing constructions of race and sexuality on-screen, introducing an important voice in American cinema.

After Hours (4K UHD + Blu-Ray)

Street Date: July 11, 2023

Synopsis: Desperate to escape his mind-numbing routine, uptown Manhattan office worker Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman (Rosanna Arquette). So begins the wildest night of his life, as bizarre occurrences—involving underground-art punks, a distressed waitress, a crazed Mister Softee truck driver, and a bagel-and-cream-cheese paperweight—pile up with anxiety-inducing relentlessness and thwart his attempts to get home. With this Kafkaesque cult classic, Martin Scorsese—abetted by Michael Ballhaus’s kinetic cinematography and scene-stealing supporting turns by Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, Catherine O’Hara, and John Heard—directed a darkly comic tale of mistaken identity, turning the desolate night world of 1980s SoHo into a bohemian wonderland of surreal menace.

The Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed By Budd Boetticher (4K UHD Blu-Ray)

Street Date: July 18, 2023

Synopsis: The five briskly entertaining, vividly performed westerns made by director Budd Boetticher and strapping star Randolph Scott in the second half of the 1950s transcend their B-movie origins to become rich, unexpectedly profound explorations of loyalty, greed, honor, and revenge. Often grouped under the name Ranown (after producer Harry Joe Brown and Scott’s production company) and colorfully scripted by Burt Kennedy and Charles Lang, these films seem to unfold in a world unto themselves, staking a claim between traditional westerns and the subversive genre revisionism of the 1960s—and representing the crowning achievement of the underappreciated auteur Boetticher.

SIX-DISC 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restorations by Sony Pictures Entertainment, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
• Three 4K UHD discs of the films presented in Dolby Vision HDR and three Blu-rays with the films and special features
• Introductions to the films by filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Taylor Hackford
• New introduction by film critic Farran Smith Nehme on actor Randolph Scott
• Three audio commentaries, featuring film scholar Jeanine Basinger on The Tall T, film critic Jeremy Arnold on Ride Lonesome, and Hackford on Comanche Station
• Archival programs featuring interviews with director Budd Boetticher
• Audio conversation with Boetticher and film scholar Jim Kitses
• Super 8 home-movie version of Comanche Station
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Tom Gunning

Breathless (4K UHD Blu-Ray)

Street Date: July 18, 2023

Synopsis: There was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspired him as a writer for Cahiers du cinéma. With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, anything-goes crime narrative, and effervescent young stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, Breathless helped launch the French New Wave and ensured that cinema would never be the same.

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

One False Move (4K UHD + Blu-Ray)

Street Date: July 25, 2023

Synopsis: A small-town police chief (Bill Paxton) concealing an explosive secret. A pair of ruthless drug dealers (coscreenwriter Billy Bob Thornton and Michael Beach) who leave a bloody trail in their wake as they make their way from Los Angeles to Arkansas. And an enigmatic woman (Cynda Williams) caught in the middle. The way these desperate lives converge becomes a masterclass in slow-burn tension thanks to the nuanced direction of Carl Franklin, whose haunting debut feature travels a crooked road across America’s most fraught divisions—urban and rural, Black and white—while imbuing noir conventions with a wrenching emotional depth.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES