Here’s What’s Coming to The Criterion Channel in August 2025
The Criterion Channel has announced the titles arriving on their platform in August 2025, including collections featuring the films of Sammo Hung, Bigas Luna, Maurice Pialat, and Michael Roemer. Plus, a fantastic collection of films from the 90s with hit soundtracks (Pump Up the Volume, Trainspotting, Grosse Pointe Blank, Singles).
Here’s the full list:
*Indicates programming available only in the U.S.
TOP STORIES
’90s Soundtrack Movies
In the 1990s, underground music—from punk and hip-hop to indie rock and electronica—exploded into the pop-culture consciousness through some of the defining films of the era. Movies like Pump Up the Volume didn’t just capture the social and aesthetic codes of disaffected Gen Xers; they also delivered the soundtracks that became their personal mixtapes. In that fleeting, miraculous moment, weirdos actually scored studio budgets and turned them into anthemic works that spoke directly to the zeitgeist. Trainspotting made heroin chic sound existential. Grosse Pointe Blank made ska feel like therapy. Singles anticipated the grunge boom. Good Will Hunting earned Elliott Smith an Oscar nomination. Judgment Night practically minted a new rap-rock crossover genre. Taken together, these films form a must-listen playlist from the era when indie and mainstream cultures converged, allowing genuinely strange and exciting art to flourish on multiplex screens and Walkman headphones alike.
Coprogrammed by Yasi Salek
FEATURING: Pump Up the Volume (1990), Until the End of the World (1991), Deep Cover (1992), Singles (1992), Judgment Night (1993), So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993), Mallrats (1995)*, SubUrbia (1996), Trainspotting (1996), Good Will Hunting (1997)*, Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), Lost Highway (1997), Velvet Goldmine (1998), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
COMING SEPTEMBER 1: The Crow (1994)
Bigas Luna’s Outrageous Passions
Few filmmakers navigate the libidinal and the lyrical quite like Spanish sensualist Bigas Luna, a provocateur with a painter’s eye, whose films are lush with eroticism, surrealist flourishes, delirium, and grotesquery. His films—including the Iberian Trilogy comprising the international sensation Jamón jamón (which launched the careers of superstars Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem), Golden Balls, and The Tit and the Moon—are celebrations of the carnal pleasures of both sex and food, laced with trenchant critiques of Spanish identity, culture, and machismo.
FEATURING: Jamón jamón (1992), Golden Balls (1993), The Tit and the Moon (1994), Volavérunt (1999), Sound of the Sea (2001)
Sammo Hung Kicks Ass
Featuring a new interview with Hung, part of Criterion’s Meet the Filmmakers series
A one-of-a-kind performer, choreographer, and director, Hong Kong superstar Sammo Hung reinvented action cinema as a space of exuberant physicality and unexpected grace. Trained at the same Beijing-opera academy as Jackie Chan (with whom he costarred in films like My Lucky Stars), Hung deployed the skills he learned there in cinema, combining athleticism with impish humor. In full-throttle martial-arts extravaganzas like the off-the-wall horror comedy Encounters of the Spooky Kind; the thrillingly kinetic, tonally audacious action melodrama Pedicab Driver; and the absolutely jaw-dropping jungle adventure Eastern Condors, Hung reaches heights of acrobatic transcendence while keeping the spectacle grounded via his down-to-earth screen presence.
FEATURING: The Magnificent Butcher (1979), Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980), My Lucky Stars (1985), Eastern Condors (1987), Pedicab Driver (1989), The Bodyguard (2016)
Directed by Maurice Pialat
Featuring Maurice Pialat: Love Exists (2007), a feature-length documentary on Pialat’s life and career
“What I mean by realism goes beyond reality,” declared French master Maurice Pialat, whose at once raw and rigorous films capture all the intensity, vivid humanity, brutality, and tenderness of life itself. Born one hundred years ago this August, Pialat was a contemporary of the nouvelle vague, but always stood apart from the movement, pursuing an uncompromising personal vision that had more in common with his artistic forebear Jean Renoir. In masterpieces like We Won’t Grow Old Together, The Mouth Agape, À nos amours, and Van Gogh, Pialat refined a hard-hitting, elliptical style in which searing emotional realism and cutting human truth are prized above all else. Though he may not be as well known internationally as many of his contemporaries, Pialat had an incalculable effect on a generation of post–New Wave directors like Catherine Breillat, Leos Carax, Philippe Garrel, and Arnaud Desplechin, who has said, “The filmmaker whose influence has been the strongest and most constant on the young French cinema isn’t Jean-Luc Godard but Maurice Pialat.”
FEATURES: L’enfance nue (1968), We Won’t Grow Old Together (1972), The Mouth Agape (1974), Graduate First (1978), Loulou (1980), À nos amours (1983), Under the Sun of Satan (1987), Van Gogh (1991), Le garçu (1995)
SHORTS: L’amour existe (1960)
DIRECTOR SPOTLIGHTS
Celebrating Michael Roemer
With the passing of Michael Roemer earlier this year, American cinema lost one of its most eloquent voices, a long-unsung independent trailblazer whose profoundly humanist, unfailingly truthful vision had only in recent years come to be properly appreciated. A Jewish refugee who escaped Nazi Germany as a child, Roemer made only a handful of features, but each—including the landmark portrait of Black American struggle Nothing but a Man, the wryly offbeat gangster comedy The Plot Against Harry, and the slow-burn domestic drama Vengeance Is Mine—is a small miracle of personal, defiantly anticommercial filmmaking, rich in feeling for character and place and graced with a vérité authenticity that reveals deep insights into human relationships.
FEATURING: Nothing but a Man (1964), The Plot Against Harry (1969), Dying (1976), Pilgrim, Farewell (1980), Vengeance Is Mine (1984)
CRITERION COLLECTION EDITIONS
The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse
Criterion Collection Edition #1200
Everyday life becomes an adventure in the wide-eyed fables and fantasies of the beloved French children’s filmmaker.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Interviews with Lamorisse and his son Pascal; My Father Was a Red Balloon, a 2008 documentary featuring Pascal Lamorisse and his daughter Lysa; and more.
Prince of Broadway (Sean Baker, 2008)
Criterion Collection Edition #1258
This early-career triumph from Sean Baker (Anora) plunges into the world of an immigrant counterfeit-merch salesman who must take care of a son he didn’t even know he had.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentaries by Baker and cast and crew members, an introduction by Baker, documentaries on the making of the film, and more.
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (François Girard, 1993)
Criterion Collection Edition #1268
A rare film biography as boldly unconventional as its subject, François Girard’s pointillist portrait of the iconoclastic pianist explodes the conventions of the form to illuminate the brilliant mind and innermost obsessions of a singular artist.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by Girard and cowriter-actor Don McKellar, a conversation between Girard and filmmaker Atom Egoyan, two programs on Gould, and more.
Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996)
Criterion Collection Edition #1268
A jolt of pure adrenaline shot straight to the heart of 1990s British indie cinema, Danny Boyle’s edgy, darkly funny portrait of addiction chooses life in all its ugly, beautiful, terrifying, strange exhilaration.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald, screenwriter John Hodge, and actor Ewan McGregor; documentaries on the making of the film; deleted scenes; and more.
Eastern Condors (Sammo Hung, 1987)
Criterion Collection Edition #1244
Hong Kong genre cinema at its most explosively entertaining, this rip-roaring action spectacle from director-star Sammo Hung offers up a nonstop barrage of turbocharged stunt pieces that defy death, logic, and gravity itself.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by film critic Tony Rayns, interviews with Hung and actor Yuen Wah, a digital restoration of the English-dubbed “export cut” of the film, and more.
Deep Cover (Bill Duke, 1992)
Criterion Collection Edition #1086
Film noir hits the mean streets of 1990s Los Angeles in this stylish and subversive underworld odyssey from veteran actor-director Bill Duke.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: An interview with Duke; a conversation among Duke, actor Laurence Fishburne, and critic Elvis Mitchell; a conversation between film scholars Racquel J. Gates and Michael B. Gillespie; and more.
REDISCOVERIES AND RESTORATIONS
The Hungry Ghosts
The directorial debut from Sopranos star Michael Imperioli is an intense, emotionally raw portrait of lost souls attempting to fill the spiritual voids at the center of their lives. Over the course of a kinetic thirty-six hours in New York City, a group of desperate, damaged individuals—including a late-night radio DJ on the verge of a breakdown (Steve Schirripa), his severely alienated teenage son (Emory Cohen), and a young woman (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) dealing with the aftermath of a turbulent relationship—chase meaning through drugs, sex, and moments of fleeting human connection. Capturing live-wire performances from his virtuoso ensemble cast, Imperioli gradually brings the story’s disparate strands together into a searing vision of life on the existential edge.
Ma mère*
Sex, death, and forbidden desires merge in Christophe Honoré’s daring, controversial adaptation of the novel by transgressive eroticist Georges Bataille. Amid the sun-splashed resorts of the Canary Islands, newly widowed mother Hélène (the ever-fearless Isabelle Huppert) initiates her moody teenage son Pierre (Louis Garrel) into her hedonistic world of kinky sex, launching them on an erotic journey that pushes their relationship to the extreme. Honoré surveys the increasingly startling proceedings with a coolly dispassionate gaze that emphasizes not steamy sensuality but the existential dread underlying it all.
Moving
When her parents split and her father (Kiichi Nakai) moves out of their family home, Renko (Tomoko Tabata), a bright and energetic sixth-grade girl, is left alone with her mother, Nazuna (Junko Sakurada), in Kyoto. As Nazuna sets out new rules for their life together, Renko makes plans of her own, and sees to it that any changes happening in her family happen on her terms. Filled with indelible images, this beloved coming-of-age film from Shinji Somai is a poignant family drama that transcends the tropes of divorce stories to bring us an emotionally layered portrait of a complex teenage girl who encounters the unknown and refuses to succumb to it.
Psycho Beach Party
Adapted from the play by camp icon Charles Busch, this wickedly satirical genre mash-up combines the Gidget-style beach movie of the ’60s with the ’80s teen slasher for a wildly outrageous, surf-tastic schlockfest bursting with kinky innuendo. Chicklet (Lauren Ambrose), a wannabe surf girl with a split personality, becomes the primary suspect after a string of humorously gruesome murders terrifies the teen set. When the clues take her to the beach, the fun and suspense begin as she crosses paths with a burnt-out surf guru (Thomas Gibson), a dreamy surf boy (Nicholas Brendon), and a stylish homicide detective (played by a glam Busch in drag).
Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project
Featuring introductions to each film by Martin Scorsese
Restored by the The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, these rediscovered classics from around the world include a foundational proto-Bollywood musical (Kalpana), a hypnotic Iranian mystery (Chess of the Wind), and a hard-hitting landmark of Argentine social realism (Prisioneros de la tierra).
FEATURING: Prisioneros de la tierra (1939), Two Girls on the Street (1939), Kalpana (1948), Muna moto (1975), Chess of the Wind (1976)
ANIMATION
Anime
Look out for a new section on the Channel highlighting restlessly creative, stylistically flamboyant gems from Japan’s juggernaut animation industry. This month’s featured films include the visionary cyberthriller Ghost in the Shell, the high-octane car-race spectacle Redline, Satoshi Kon’s mind-bending Paprika, and the cult fever dream Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space.
FEATURING: Ghost in the Shell (1995), Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space (2002), Paprika (2006)*, Redline (2009)
DOCUMENTARIES
Documentaries by Brett Story
Tackling some of the most urgent questions of our time with a formidable formal and intellectual sophistication, the richly observed documentaries of Brett Story invite us to see, with fresh eyes, the social and political structures that shape our lives. In The Hottest August, interviews with a wide array of New Yorkers reveal the pervasive anxieties underlying everyday life in an age of climate catastrophe and rising social tensions, while The Prison in Twelve Landscapes is an at once devastating and poetic meditation on the ways in which an unjust carceral system touches almost every aspect of American society.
FEATURING: The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016), The Hottest August (2019)
The Competition
Acclaimed documentarian Claire Simon offers a funny, penetrating, and surprisingly suspenseful look at the inner workings of France’s most prestigious film school.
MUSIC FILMS
Dig! XX
The ultimate indie-sleaze documentary—charting the rival paths of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols—returns in a bigger, crazier expanded reimagining.
Queens of the Stone Age: Alive in the Catacombs
The alternative-rock legends stage their most unforgettable show yet: a darkly atmospheric concert from the depths of the Paris Catacombs.
AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS
Variety
Featuring an interview with director Bette Gordon, part of Criterion’s Meet the Filmmakers series
Bette Gordon’s independent landmark is both an evocatively seedy time capsule of pregentrification Times Square and a provocative exploration of female erotic fantasy from a woman’s point of view.
Coming to The Criterion Channel in August 2025…