‘The Big Heat,’ ‘You Can Count On Me,’ ‘Carnal Knowledge,’ ‘All We Imagine as Light,’ Antoine Doinel Collection and ‘Barry Lyndon’ on 4K Join the Criterion Collection for July 2025
We are at the halfway point of the year and yet it is another incredible lineup of films released or re-released within this July for the Criterion Collection. First up this month is The Big Heat, the noir classic from director Fritz Lang, that is known as a scorching tale of vice and retribution. Working at the peak of his powers in the Hollywood system, Lang stripped this thriller down to the bone, building the tension and outrage at the core of the story to its absolute breaking point. Led by Glenn Ford as a homicide detective whose investigation into a crime syndicate becomes too close to his own personal life, thus leading him to seek revenge for those who he’s lost in the crosshairs of this battle for justice. Featuring an all-time sleazy, nasty villainous performance from Lee Marvin, The Big Heat still lands a punch to the gut once the credits roll; an unstoppable force of a picture.
Next up is an all-time classic from director Stanley Kubrick, as Barry Lyndon is the latest re-release to get the 4K upgrade. With the unconventional historical epic, based on the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, Barry Lyndon follows the titular character (Ryan O’Neal) whose opportunism takes him from an Irish farm to the battlefields of the Seven Years’ War and the parlors of high society. Hailed as one of the most gloriously crafted films of all time, evoking the light and texture of eighteenth-century painting with the help of pioneering cinematographic techniques and lavish costume and production design, this is an unequivocal masterpiece that you must own in order to see every detail to this new restoration of Kubrick’s best film. Alongside this re-release is an expansion of director François Truffaut films in the collection with The Adventures of Antoine Doinel, which includes The 400 Blows, Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, and Love on the Run, and the short subject Antoine and Colette. In 1959, The 400 Blows shook the cinematic world, and introduced Truffaut as a master of the craft within the revolutionary French New Wave. This new box set focuses solely on the projects that featured his most indelible creation, Antoine Doinel (played by the iconic Jean-Pierre Léaud), who is a character molded after the director himself. As a piece of film history, this alongside Barry Lyndon are essential titles you should pick up this month.
This month features to fantastic directorial debuts, one from the start of the century and one just released last year. With You Can Count on Me, acclaimed playwright Kenneth Lonergan brought his humanist vision from the stage to the big screen with a tender examination of a complex sibling relationship of a brother and sister that need each other after the loss of their parents. Led by two magnificent performances from Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo and Lonergan’s impeccable, graceful dialogue, You Can Count on Me showcases the beauty found in the flaws of humanity and how we can relate to those we are closest to. Acclaimed as one of the best films of 2000, Lonergan and Linney would go on to get Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress; both well deserved. Speaking of remarkable films, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light enters the collection this month as a Janus Contemporaries selection. Set against the hypnotic backdrop Mumbai, the film follows three different women working at the same hospital—Prabha (Kani Kusruti), Anu (Divya Prabha), and Parvathy (Chhaya Kadam)—each contending with personal struggles amid a modernizing India riven by gentrification and rising Hindu nationalism. Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, All We Imagine as Light is a deep-rooted study centering on the power of friendship, propelled by moving performances and the director’s compassionate, delicate eye. In our review from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, our own Akash Singh proclaimed that the film is “a bit of a miracle” and that “it trusts the audience to form their own bonds with these women and their journeys in a rapidly metamorphosing society.” It remains easily one of the best films of 2024.
The last title of the month in a classic from the genius that was Mike Nichols. After struggling reclaim the glory of his first two films, Nichols followed up his stumble of Catch-22 with his fourth film, Carnal Knowledge, a zeitgeist-defining examination of the American relationship culture of the 1970s. Following two childish college buddies (Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel) over the course of twenty years of their friendship, and their treatment of the various females that enter their lives, featuring the likes of Candice Bergen, Ann-Margret, Rita Moreno, Carol Kane, and Cynthia O’Neal. Unnerving, provocative, brutally honest, Carnal Knowledge is a thorny examination of toxic masculinity that is still fascinating to this day. A timely title to enter the Criterion Collection, as our own Director Watch podcast team covered the film as part of a Mike Nichols series earlier this year, which you can listen to here after you pick up your copy of the film.
Below are the special features for each other films from the June 2025 Criterion Collection releases.
THE BIG HEAT Special Edition Features:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New audio commentary by film-noir experts Alain Silver and James Ursini
- New video essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme on the women in the film
- Audio interviews with director Fritz Lang, conducted by film historian Gideon Bachmann and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
- Interviews with filmmakers Michael Mann and Martin Scorsese
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author Jonathan Lethem
BARRY LYNDON Special Edition Features:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
- Interviews with the cast and crew as well as archival audio featuring director Stanley Kubrick on the film’s cinematography, costumes, editing, and production
- Interview featuring historian Christopher Frayling on production designer Ken Adam
- Interview with critic Michel Ciment
- Interview with actor Leon Vitali about the 5.1 surround soundtrack, which he cosupervised
- Interview with curator Adam Eaker about the fine-art-inspired aesthetics of the film
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien and two pieces about the look of the film from the March 1976 issue of American Cinematographer
THE ADVENTURES OF ANTOINE DOINEL Special Edition Features:
- 4K digital restorations of all five films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
- In the 4K UHD edition: Four 4K UHD discs of the films presented in Dolby Vision HDR and four Blu-rays with the films and special features
- New 4K restoration of Les mistons, Truffaut’s 1957 short film, with commentary by Claude de Givray, Truffaut’s then assistant director
- Two audio commentaries for The 400 Blows, one featuring film scholar Brian Stonehill and the other Truffaut’s lifelong friend Robert Lachenay
- Archival interviews with Truffaut and his collaborators, including actors Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claude Jade, and Marie-France Pisier and cowriters de Givray and Bernard Revon
- Video essays by film historian Serge Toubiana for Stolen Kisses and Les mistons
- Introducing My Father, François Truffaut, a 2019 interview with Laura Truffaut by filmmaker Daniel Raim
- Trailers
- PLUS: Essays by Annette Insdorf, Kent Jones, Andrew Sarris, Noah Baumbach, and Chris Fujiwara, and a 1971 piece by Truffaut
CARNAL KNOWLEDGE Special Edition Features:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New audio commentary featuring filmmaker and playwright Neil LaBute
- New program with Mike Nichols biographer Mark Harris and film critic Dana Stevens
- New interview with film-editing historian Bobbie O’Steen
- Conversation from 2011 between Nichols and filmmaker Jason Reitman
- Q&A with screenwriter Jules Feiffer
- Radio spot and trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by scholar Moira Weigel and a 1971 piece from American Cinematographer about the look of the film
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT Special Edition Features:
- Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Payal Kapadia
- Trailer
YOU CAN COUNT ON ME Director Approved Special Edition Features:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Kenneth Lonergan, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Audio commentary featuring Lonergan
- New interviews with Lonergan and actors Matthew Broderick, Laura Linney, and Mark Ruffalo
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by playwright Rebecca Gilman and the script of the original one-act play
- AwardsWatch Podcast Ep. 294 – Director Stock Market Game - July 7, 2025
- Director Watch Podcast Ep. 106 – ‘Total Recall’ (Paul Verhoeven, 1990) with Special Guest Diego Crespo - July 3, 2025
- ‘The Big Heat,’ ‘You Can Count On Me,’ ‘Carnal Knowledge,’ ‘All We Imagine as Light,’ Antoine Doinel Collection and ‘Barry Lyndon’ on 4K Join the Criterion Collection for July 2025 - July 2, 2025
‘Days of Our Lives,’ ‘The Young and the Restless’ Lead First Wave of 2025 Daytime Emmy Nominations 
‘Severance’ Leads 2025 Television Critics Association (TCA) Nominations 
‘Superman’ Review: James Gunn Reinvigorates the DC Hero with a Splashy Comic-Book Verve [B] 
‘Hacks,’ ‘The Pitt,’ ‘The Traitors’ Win Big with LGBTQ Critics Dorian TV Awards