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A glimpse at upcoming UK DVD and Blu-ray release dates well into 2025: here’s what’s coming to disc and when.

Here, then, are a few of the upcoming dates for new movies on DVD and Blu-ray that may not yet have been officially announced. Note that all dates are for the UK.

Also: We’ve started adding affiliate links. If you click on those, we benefit, and can spend more money paying more people to write more things for this website. No pressure, just hugely obliged.

Obviously in the current climate everything is subject to change, of course…

Just released

First Time On UK Blu-ray: No Way Out (Film Stories Blu-ray #2)

First Time On UK Blu-ray: Bull Durham (Film Stories Blu-ray #3)

Scroll to the bottom of the this list for more releases over the last few weeks.

Last two weeks

17th March: Yojimbo & Sanjuro double set

17th March:...

Four years after launching United Artists with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffiths, Charlie Chaplin distributed his first film through the company. It was a dream project that defied expectations. After making over 50 comic shorts, all of which he starred in, Chaplin not only released a straight romantic drama with A Woman of Paris, but—as he only appeared in it in a brief cameo, and under heavy makeup—it was easy to miss him on screen.

This 1923 film delighted critics, and its narrative and visual sophistication and the highly natural performance style of the actors made it a watershed release during Hollywood’s silent era, influencing countless directors, most notably Ernst Lubitsch. But it was a commercial failure, as audiences only wanted more of the Little Tramp. Still, while neither that iconic character nor anyone like him appears in it, A Woman of Paris is distinctly Chaplinesque,...

Charlie Chaplin remains one of the most important and talented legends of the silver screen, one of the few performers who made a smooth transition from silent film to talkies, one who wore his anti-fascist politics on his sleeve and brought them to the screen. While he still is remembered for his comedic work, he knew and understood the importance of drama as a mode to storytelling. Chaplin's second feature film, A Woman of Paris, received a rather tepid audience response when it was first released in 1923. Despite critical praise, it seems the public wasn't interested in a Chaplin film that wasn't centred on Chaplin....

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

There aren't many films that begin with a disclaimer, but such is the case with Charlie Chaplin's A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate. Whereas William Castle's horror flicks often began by warning audiences that what they were about to see was too scary to handle, Chaplin wanted ticket buyers to know that his 1923 silent drama wasn't a comedy — and also didn't star him. It makes sense, considering he was the most famous comedian alive at the time, and his second feature film was as wild a left swing as you could possibly get. Yet this most anomalous of Chaplin titles paved the way for his greatest works by allowing him to hone the dramatic skills that would enliven his comedies.

When we think of Charlie Chaplin, what often comes to mind is his signature suit, bowler hat and cane look, as well as some of his classic movies, like The Great Dictator and Modern Times. However, we sometimes forget that he was a prolific filmmaker and screenwriter with dozens of movies under his belt and a pretty long career. Next year, Criterion Collection is celebrating one of its lesser known titles by releasing it with a 4K digital restoration. A mandatory title for collectors, A Woman of Paris is being released on March 18, 2025.

One of our favorite times of the month is when the Criterion Collection drops their releases for the months ahead and the batch its announced for March certainly doesn’t disappoint. Ranging from dark rom-coms to monster movies, Criterion is adding some proper deep cuts, as well as 4K restorations of two films that are already part of the collection.

The first film given the Criterion treatment is Alan Rudolph’s “Choose Me,” starring Keith Carradine and Lesley Ann Warren. Set in Los Angeles during the 1980s, the film follows a number of lovers violently weaving in and out of each other’s live, mostly crossing paths at a dive bar. A protégé of Robert Altman, Rudolph’s films, such as “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle” and “Breakfast of Champions,” often carry a balance of absurdity and bite. Next up is the 1989 addition to the Godzilla cannon, “Godzilla vs. Biollante” from Kazuki Omori.

It may have taken a half-century and well after he made films with any consistency, but Alan Rudolph is at last experiencing a verdant season. Just months since a remaster and rerelease of his 1999 Breakfast of Champions, he’s been inaugurated into the Criterion Collection with one of his very greatest films, Choose Me, which arrives on 4K this March.

The month also includes Michael Mann’s Thief, upgrading a Blu-ray from 2014, and early-early Criterion title The Wages of Fear getting a much-overdue make-over. Godzilla vs. Biolante and Night Moves enter the Collection in 4K, while Charlie Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris arrives on Blu-ray.

See cover art below and more at Criterion:

The post The Criterion Collection’s March 2025 Lineup Includes Michael Mann, Alan Rudolph, and The Wages of Fear on 4K first appeared on The Film Stage.

The lesser-known of Charlie Chaplin’s canon might still place among the finest films ever made, and his greatest scholars and acolytes will tell you A Woman of Paris has always deserved such label. It began the run of feature-length masterpieces that was The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, and The Great Dictator but remains semi-obscure––an oddity perhaps partly explained by Chaplin’s own classification as “the first serious drama written and directed by myself,” and one soon be amended by Janus Films’ U.S. release of a 4K restoration.

Ahead of its December 22 premiere at Film Forum, there’s a new trailer and poster. The former suggests a strong, faithful rendering from Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and Timothy Brock, who has newly conducted Chaplin’s original score; the latter so strongly evokes a 1923 theatrical release that I assumed it was the original one-sheet with new titles attached.

Charlie Chaplin was one of the most influential figures in the early days of cinema, and his feature films represented some of the best that Old Hollywood had to offer. From his onscreen debut in 1914 to his eventual passing in 1977, Chaplin often pushed the boundaries of what was possible in film production, and his work always had an abundance of heart to go along with the laughs. Although he was most remembered for his Tramp character, Chaplin wasn't limited only to silent films and his body of work grew along with the film technology of the time.

Starting with his first feature film, The Kid in 1921, it was obvious that Chaplin was on the cutting edge of film production and every one of his early works often involved visual innovation as well as his signature humor. Charlie Chaplin used VFX long before CGI, and his works were usually only bound...

Agnès Varda, the late New Wave cinema legend, is the subject of “Viva Varda!,” a documentary boasting exclusive archive footage and interviews by filmmakers such as Atom Egoyan and Audrey Diwan. Mk2 Films is co-representing the documentary feature with Cinétévé Sales.

“Viva Varda!” will be first portrait of the Honorary Oscar recipient that’s not directed by Varda herself. The last film she directed was “Varda par Agnes,” a documentary shedding light on her own experiences as a filmmaker. Her sprawling career and legacy will be celebrated this fall at the French Cinémathèque.

Pierre-Henri Gibert, a film buff who’s made several documentaries about filmmakers, including Jacques Audiard, explored different aspects of Varda’s life and body of work and conducted insightful interviews with friends, family, and collaborators, including Varda’s children, Rosalie Varda and Mathieu Demy, along with Sandrine Bonnaire, Patricia Mazuy and Jonathan Romney, among others.

“Viva Varda!

“Icon” is the most overused word in film journalism, but there’s no other word to use when describing Charlie Chaplin. So famous that he all but created the idea of the movie star, he was the first person ever to conquer the entire world with simply a mass-produced image of himself — as his creation, the Little Tramp. See that bowler hat, those charcoal-lined eyes, that too-tight coat, baggy points, wobbly cane, and toothbrush mustache, and you know you’re seeing Charlie Chaplin. You may have never seen a Mickey Mouse cartoon all the way through, but you know Mickey Mouse. You may have never seen a Chaplin film either, and yet you’ll know Charlie Chaplin when you see him. There are many contrasting artistic renderings of Jesus. There is only one singular image of the Little Tramp.

From the title of their new documentary, you may think Peter Middleton...

1 March 1925: This is a remarkable film, an historic film, a film to see and consider

Mr. Charles Spenser Chaplin has been enjoying a holiday from his boots and his hat. It has been a holiday in the true sense, which implies, not idleness, but the doing of a thing long desired in the desired way. His new film A Woman of Paris is the fruit of many years’ consideration, the logical development of that other holiday The Kid, and the fulfilment of his dream.

Like all good comedians, pushing aside a delirious desire to play Hamlet, Chaplin has sought a medium of tragic expression, cast here and everywhere, for an outlet for his serious emotions. His later comedies are shot with the Hamlet quality. But he is bounded by the little hat, and the boots and the cane, and a servant to the public in whose mind these things stand for laughter.

Author and film critic Michael Smith's launched a podcast, discussing Agnès Varda with Chicago writers Ben Sachs and Kat Sachs. More listening: Paul Schrader is in the Projection Booth, discussing Blue Collar (1978). Adam Schartoff's guests on Filmwax Radio include Roger Corman, Stanley Nelson, Oren Moverman and Dwayne Epstein, author of Lee Marvin: Point Blank. Zach Lewis and Kyle Stevens discuss the work of Mike Nichols. Plus a commentary track for Charles Chaplin's A Woman of Paris and a bit of viewing: Launching the A.V. Club’s new video discussion series, Film Club, A.A. Dowd and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky discuss Camille Delamarre's The Transporter: Refueled and the best films of the summer movie season. » - David Hudson...

Author and film critic Michael Smith's launched a podcast, discussing Agnès Varda with Chicago writers Ben Sachs and Kat Sachs. More listening: Paul Schrader is in the Projection Booth, discussing Blue Collar (1978). Adam Schartoff's guests on Filmwax Radio include Roger Corman, Stanley Nelson, Oren Moverman and Dwayne Epstein, author of Lee Marvin: Point Blank. Zach Lewis and Kyle Stevens discuss the work of Mike Nichols. Plus a commentary track for Charles Chaplin's A Woman of Paris and a bit of viewing: Launching the A.V. Club’s new video discussion series, Film Club, A.A. Dowd and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky discuss Camille Delamarre's The Transporter: Refueled and the best films of the summer movie season. » - David Hudson...

Adolphe Menjou movies today (This article is currently being revised.) Despite countless stories to the contrary, numerous silent film performers managed to survive the coming of sound. Adolphe Menjou, however, is a special case in that he not only remained a leading man in the early sound era, but smoothly made the transition to top supporting player in mid-decade, a position he would continue to hold for the quarter of a century. Menjou is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Day today, Aug. 3, as part of TCM's "Summer Under the Stars" 2015 series. Right now, TCM is showing William A. Wellman's A Star Is Born, the "original" version of the story about a small-town girl (Janet Gaynor) who becomes a Hollywood star, while her husband (Fredric March) boozes his way into oblivion. In typical Hollywood originality (not that things are any different elsewhere), this 1937 version of the story – produced by...

Above: Swedish one sheet by Gösta Åberg for Broken Lullaby (Ernst Lubitsch, USA, 1932).

This rather unusual Swedish design, a mélange of various type and illustrative styles, is a poster for one of Ernst Lubitsch’s lesser known and most atypical films: Broken Lullaby (a.k.a. The Man I Killed). A dark film about a French soldier tormented by the memory of a German soldier—and fellow musician—whom he killed in Wwi, it screens this weekend and next in New York at Anthology Film Archives as part of "Auteurs Gone Wild," a tantalizing series programmed by Notebook contributor David Phelps.

The series includes nine refreshingly less-than-obvious works—all on 35mm—by such canonical figures as Hitchcock, Chaplin, Cukor, Capra, Lang and Von Sternberg. Phelps has chosen to shine a light on these authors’ least representative films: films that have been overlooked because they don’t fit the mold, because...

A 9-film series of not-quite-classics (on 35mm), "Auteurs Gone Wild" runs at Anthology Film Archives from March 20-30, 2014; what follows are the director's cut of the program notes (with production stills of the auteurs themselves, mid-wild)—

***

If the Hollywood auteurs were the ghosts in the studio machine, what would they look like exorcised? Rather than author, the word "auteur" might have referred to a kind of rhetorician working within genre codes that, once decoded, would only reveal his own commentary on them. But what would happen if this auteur cleared his throat, managed a sip of water, and tried speaking in his own tongue? Typically, the critics who had authored the auteur as a placeholder and retroactive justification for their own generic interpretations would have to snub such attempts to break out of genre molds to go strange, personal places. For the irony is that these works, kind of laboratory...

Celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year, MK2 has figured prominently in the international film business since its creation in 1974 by Marin Karmitz forty years ago. Founded by Marin Karmitz and now managed by his son Nathaniel, MK2 was involved in virtually all aspects of the industry from production, distribution, international sales, restoration, and even owns and manages several arthouse movie theaters that focus on opening spaces for new voices and fresh talent from an independent background. However, today, I was sadly told by a fellow French man, MK2 no longer produces or distributes except for a few films it picks up for international licensing in order to stay in the game. Its revenues from its theaters keep it going.

MK2 does an impressive catalogue of films for distribution in territories across the globe. Among the titles in its collection are films from some of the greatest names in cinema: Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Jacques Doillon, Olivier Assayas, Abdellatif Kechiche, Charlie Chaplin, David Lynch, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Abbas Kiarostami, Gus Van Sant, Michael Haneke, and Walter Salles.

Always present at all major festivals, and often associated with the winning films, ML2 brings to the Efm a new slate of projects in many stages, from completed films to those that are still in production. Their restorations of classic films open new audiences to experience cinema of the highest quality.

Completed Films

Hotell

Directed by: Lisa Langseth

Erika is a beautiful young woman with a perfect life. Until the day it all falls apart. She starts going to group therapy and meets other people suffering from various forms of trauma. One day this eclectic group decides to take matters into its own hands and heads off together in search of a way out. They start checking into hotels – a place of complete anonymity where you can wake up as a different person.

Gerontophilia

Directed by: Bruce Labruce

18-year-old Lake has a sweet activist girlfriend, but one day discovers he has an unusual attraction for the elderly. Fate conspires to land him a summer job at a nursing home where he develops a tender relationship with Mr. Peabody. Discovering that the patients are being over-medicated to make them easier to manage, Lake decides to wean him off his

medication and help him escape, resulting in a humorous and heartfelt road trip that strengthens their bond.

Tom at the Farm

Directed by: Xavier Dolan

Tom, a young advertising copywriter, travels to the country for a funeral. There, he’s shocked to find out no one knows who he is, nor who he was to the deceased, whose brother soon sets the rules of a twisted game. In order to protect the family’s name and grieving mother, Tom now has to play the peacekeeper in a household whose obscure past bodes even greater darkness for his «trip» to the farm. Long ways, long lies…

In Post-production

Clouds of Sils Maria

Directed by: Olivier Assayas

At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders ( Juliette Binoche) is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. But back then she played the role of Sigrid, an alluring young girl who disarms and eventually drives her boss Helena to suicide. Now she is being asked to step into the other role, that of the older Helena. She departs with her assistant ( Kristen Stewart) to rehearse in Sils Maria; a remote region of the Alps. A young Hollywood starlet with a penchant for scandal (Chloë Grace Moretz) is to take on the role of Sigrid, and Maria finds herself on the other side of the mirror, face to face with an ambiguously charming woman who is, in essence, an unsettling reflection of herself.

Still the Water

Directed by: Naomi Kawase

On the subtropical Japanese island of Amami, traditions about nature remain eternal. During the full-moon night of traditional dances in August, 14-year-old Kaito discovers a dead body floating in the sea. His girlfriend Kyoko will attempt to help him understand this mysterious discovery. Together, Kaito and Kyoko will learn to become adults by experiencing the interwoven cycles of life, death and love.

In Production

Argentina

Directed by: Carlos Saura

Argentina plunges us into the heart of traditional Argentine music, via a succession of choreographed tableaux retracing a history rich in métissage. With a unique approach to its mise en scene, documentary images from different regions of Argentina gracefully mixed with awe-inspiring traditional songs, performed by the greatest singers in the country. Both poetic and fascinating, Carlos Saura calls on the entire history of the country set to the tune of guitars and accordions.

Charles Chaplin: The Legend of a Century

Directed by: Frédéric Martin

On February 7th 1914, Charlie Chaplin wore for the first time the costume, the hat and the cane that made him one of the most famous movie characters in the history of cinema: the little Tramp. One hundred years later, this documentary was granted the privilege by MK2 to use extensively personal footage of Chaplin with his family and all documents, letters and personal belongings available. Archive material that count for more than 15 minutes in the 52 minutes version and up to 25 minutes in the 90 minutes version.

2K Restorations

MK2 has several restored classics to commemorate Charles Chaplin 125th Birthday and the 100th birthday of his most iconic character "The Tram". The restored films include The Kid, A Woman of Paris, The Gold Rush, The Great Dictator, among others. The company's latest batch of timeless works in HD also includes many films by French master François Truffaut, and 3 emblematic French New Wave Films by Marin Karmitz.

There is a terrific exhibition of Soviet Revolutionary Movie Posters currently running, through next Friday, at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York. Of the 95 posters on display (many of which are the sole surviving examples and have never been publicly exhibited before) almost half are by Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg, my choices for the two greatest movie poster designers of all time.

Back in 1997, MoMA mounted a retrospective of the Stenberg Brothers’ work which is what turned me on to them. The catalogue, a must-have for anyone interested in movie posters and graphic design, is out of print but used copies can still be found.

Born in 1899 and 1900 to a Swedish father and a Russian mother, the brothers initially studied engineering and fine arts. Pioneers of Constructivism, they worked as sculptors, architects and designers of everything from railway carriages to theater sets to women’s shoes, always working in collaboration with each other.

  A Woman of Paris (1923) Direction & Screenplay: Charles Chaplin Cast: Edna Purviance, Adolphe Menjou, Carl Miller, Lydia Knott Edna Purviance (left), A Woman of Paris I must admit that I'm not a fan of Charles Chaplin's comedies. Heresies aside, I did very much enjoy Chaplin's dramatic A Woman of Paris, an attempt to turn his frequent leading lady Edna Purviance into a star. Despite rumors to the contrary, A Woman of Paris was a box-office success; even so, Purviance's career never took off. That is unfortunate, as she gives a moving, subtle performance in this nonjudgmental tale of lost love and single motherhood. Purviance is with Carl Miller in the photo on the right. Things are obviously not going very well for the couple, but the actress is surely suffering in style.