Criterion's May Releases Are Driven by Thelma & Louise, Wings of Desire and more in 4K & Blu-ray

    Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise hits the Criterion road in May with a Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release. The month's slate also includes Targets as well as Petite Mama on Blu-ray and 4K releases of both Wings of Desire and Branded to Kill.

Once again The Criterion Collection expands its content with a mix of old and new titles seeing some extra TLC on physical media. With Wings of Desire already getting an excellent EU 4K release it was only a matter of time before Criterion would update theirs, but there are some other pleasant surprises for their May slate. Lets take a look at what's getting added to our shelves:

Up first on May 2 is Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Wings of Desire - The Criterion Collection
4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Wings of Desire is one of cinema’s loveliest city symphonies. Bruno Ganz is Damiel, an angel perched atop buildings high over Berlin who can hear the thoughts—fears, hopes, dreams—of all the people living below. But when he falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, he is willing to give up his immortality and come back to earth to be with her. Made not long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, this stunning tapestry of sounds and images, shot in black and white and color by the legendary Henri Alekan, forever made the name of director Wim Wenders' synonymous with film art.

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

• 4K restoration, supervised and approved by director Wim Wenders, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary featuring Wenders and actor Peter Falk
• The Angels Among Us (2003), a documentary featuring interviews with Wenders, Falk, actors Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander, writer Peter Handke, and composer Jürgen Knieper
• Episode of Cinéma cinémas from 1987, featuring on-set footage
• Interview with director of photography Henri Alekan
• Deleted scenes and outtakes
• Excerpts from the film Alekan la lumière (1985) and from Ganz and Sander’s 1982 film about actor Curt Bois
• Notes and photos by art directors Heidi and Toni Lüdi
• Trailers
• PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Atkinson and writings by Handke and Wenders
• Cover by Michael Boland

Seijun Suzuki's 1967 New Wave Branded to Kill will also be available on 4K UHD on May 9

Branded to Kill - The Criterion Collection
4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired. Branded to Kill tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin with a fetish for sniffing steamed rice (the chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) who botches a job and ends up a target himself. This is Suzuki at his most extreme—the flabbergasting pinnacle of his sixties pop-art aesthetic.

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Interviews with director Seijun Suzuki and assistant director Masami Kuzuu
• Interview with Suzuki from 1997
• Interview with actor Joe Shishido
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic and historian Tony Rayns
• Cover by Eric Skillman

Peter Bogdanovich's Targets starring the legendary Boris Karloff arrives on Blu-ray on May 16 

Targets - The Criterion Collection

Old Hollywood collides with New Hollywood, and screen horror with real-life horror, in the startling debut feature from Peter Bogdanovich. Produced by Roger Corman, this chillingly prescient vision of American-made carnage casts Boris Karloff as a version of himself: an aging horror-movie icon whose fate intersects with that of a seemingly ordinary young man (Tim O’Kelly) on a psychotic shooting spree around Los Angeles. Charged with provocative ideas about the relationship between mass media and mass violence, Targets is a model of maximally effective filmmaking on a minimal budget and a potent first statement from one of the defining voices of the American New Wave.

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Peter Bogdanovich, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Audio commentary from 2003 featuring Bogdanovich
• New interview with filmmaker Richard Linklater
• Introduction to the film from 2003 by Bogdanovich
• Excerpts from a 1983 interview with production designer Polly Platt
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Adam Nayman and excerpts from an interview with Bogdanovich from Eric Sherman and Martin Rubin’s 1969 book The Director’s Event: Interviews with Five American Film-Maker
• New cover by Drusilla Adeline/Sister Hyde

Céline Sciamma’s 2021 film Petite Maman is due on Blu-ray on May 23 

Petite Maman - The Criterion Collection

Céline Sciamma’s follow-up to Portrait of a Lady on Fire transcends time and space to weave a delicately emotional fable about grief, family, and connection across generations. In the wake of her grandmother’s death, eight-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) accompanies her distraught mother (Nina Meurisse) to her childhood home. There, Nelly’s encounter with another young girl (Gabrielle Sanz) brings mother and daughter together in a way neither could have ever imagined. Evoking childhood’s perpetual state of wonder through luminous, richly textured images, Petite maman takes viewers on a journey inward for a quietly miraculous tale of emotional time travel.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K digital master, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• New conversation between director Céline Sciamma and filmmaker Joachim Trier
• Trailers
• PLUS: An essay by author So Mayer
• New cover by Carson Ellis

 Lastly on May 29 is Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray.

Thelma & Louise - The Criterion Collection
4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Two women, a turquoise Thunderbird, the ride of a lifetime. With this pop-culture landmark, screenwriter Callie Khouri and action auteur Ridley Scott rewrote the rules of the road movie, telling the story of two best friends who find themselves transformed into accidental fugitives during a weekend getaway gone wrong—leading them on a high-speed Southwest odyssey as they elude police and discover freedom on their own terms. Propelled by irresistible performances from Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis (plus Brad Pitt in a sexy, star-making turn)—and nominated for six Academy Awards, winning one for Khouri—the exhilaratingly cathartic Thelma & Louise stands as cinema’s ultimate ode to ride-or-die female friendship.

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

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director Ridley Scott, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
• Two audio commentaries, featuring Scott, screenwriter Callie Khouri, and actors Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon
• New interviews with Scott and Khouri
• Documentary featuring Davis, Khouri, Sarandon, Scott, actors Michael Madsen, Christopher McDonald, and Stephen Tobolowsky, and other members of the cast and crew
• Boy and Bicycle (1965), Scott’s first short film
• Original theatrical featurette
• Storyboards and deleted and extended scenes, including an extended ending with director’s commentary
• Music video for Glenn Frey’s “Part of Me, Part of You,” from the film’s soundtrack
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: Essays by critics Jessica Kiang and Rachel Syme and journalist Rebecca Traister
• New cover by Sam Hadley

Preorders for Criterion's May releases should be available soon!