The Criterion Collection UK November Slate Will Be ' Gripping And Fleeting'

The summer is in it’s final weeks and Autumn is ready cool our days. November UK Slate. A trio of films that are ‘gripping and fleeting’, from Hong Kong to a Oscar winning recent release.

Everything starts on 14th November comes Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love. A masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments, the film has been a major stylistic influence on the past two decades of cinema.

Following on 28th November The Infernal Affairs Trilogy, the explosively stylish, gripping saga of two rival moles that jolted the Hong Kong crime drama to new life – all three films will now be available in one box set.

Also out on 28th November Jane Campion plumbs the darkest recesses of the masculine psyche in the Academy Award–winning film The Power of The Dog, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smit-Mhee.

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000) DRAMA, ROMANCE

Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-Wan (Chungking Express’s TONY LEUNG CHIU-WAI) and Su Li-Zhen (Irma Vep’s MAGGIE CHEUNG MAN-YUK) move into neighbouring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, WONG KAR WAI’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by MARK LEE PING-BING and CHRISTOPHER DOYLE, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past two decades of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

4k Digital restoration with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, both supervised and approved by director Wong Kar Wai
Documentary from 2001 by Wong, chronicling the making of the film
Hua yang de nian hua (2000), a short film by Wong
Interview and cinema lesson from 2001 featuring Wong
Press conference from the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival with actors Maggie Cheung Man-yuk and Tony Leung Chiu-wai
Interview from 2012 with critic Tony Rayns about the soundtrack
Deleted scenes with optional commentary by Wong
Music video
Trailer
PLUS: A new essay by novelist Charles Yu

THE INFERNAL AFFAIRS TRILOGY (2002 – 2003) CRIME, THRILLER
The explosively stylish, gripping saga of two rival moles that jolted the Hong Kong crime drama to new life is now available in one box set.

The Hong Kong crime drama was jolted to new life with the release of the Infernal Affairs trilogy, a bracing, explosively stylish critical and commercial triumph that introduced a dazzling level of narrative and thematic complexity to the genre with its gripping saga of two rival moles—played by superstars TONY LEUNG CHIU-WAI (In the Mood for Love) and ANDY LAU TAK-WAH (As Tears Go By)— who navigate slippery moral choices as they move between the intersecting territories of Hong Kong’s police force and its criminal underworld. Set during the uncertainty of the city-state’s handover from Britain to China and steeped in Buddhist philosophy, these ingeniously crafted tales of self-deception and betrayal mirror Hong Kong’s own fractured identity and the psychic schisms of life in a postcolonial purgatory.

INFERNAL AFFAIRS
Two of Hong Kong cinema’s most iconic leading men, TONY LEUNG CHIU-WAI and ANDY LAU TAK-WAH, face off in the breath-taking thriller that revitalized the citystate’s twenty-first-century film industry, launched a blockbuster franchise, and inspired Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. The setup is diabolical in its simplicity: two undercover moles—a police officer (Leung) assigned to infiltrate a ruthless triad by posing as a gangster, and a gangster (Lau) who becomes a police officer in order to serve as a spy for the underworld—find themselves locked in a deadly game of cat and mouse, each racing against time to unmask the other. As the shifting loyalties, murky moral compromises, and deadly betrayals mount, Infernal Affairs raises haunting questions about what it means to live a double life, lost in a labyrinth of conflicting identities and allegiances.

INFERNAL AFFAIRS II
The first of two sequels to follow in the wake of the massively successful Infernal Affairs softens the original’s furious pulp punch in favour of something more sweeping, elegiac, and overtly political. Flashing back in time, Infernal Affairs II traces the tangled parallel histories that bind the trilogy’s two pairs of adversaries: the young, duelling moles (here played by EDISON CHEN KOON-HEI and SHAWN YUE MAN-LOK), and the ascendant crime boss (ERIC TSANG CHI-WAI) and police inspector (ANTHONY WONG CHAU-SANG) whose respective rises reveal a shocking hidden connection. Unfolding against the political and psychological upheaval of Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China, this elegant, character-driven crime drama powerfully connects its themes of split loyalties to the city-state’s own postcolonial identity crisis.

INFERNAL AFFAIRS III
TONY LEUNG CHIU-WAI and ANDY LAU TAK-WAH return for the cathartic conclusion of the Infernal Affairs trilogy, which layers on even more deep-cover intrigue while steering the series into increasingly complex psychological territory. Dancing back and forth in time to before and after the events of the original film, Infernal Affairs III follows triad gangster turned corrupt cop Lau Kin-ming (Lau) as he goes to dangerous lengths to avoid detection, matches wits with a devious rival in the force (LEON LAI), and finds himself haunted by the fate of his former undercover nemesis (Leung). A swirl of flashbacks, memories, and hallucinations culminates in a dreamlike merging of identities that drives home the trilogy’s vision of a world in which traditional distinctions between good and evil have all but collapsed.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

New 4K digital restorations, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
Audio commentaries for Infernal Affairs and Infernal Affairs II featuring codirectors Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak and screenwriter Felix Chong Man-keung
Alternate ending for Infernal Affairs
New interview with Lau and Mak
Archival interviews with Lau, Mak, Chong, and actors Andy Lau Tak-wah, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Anthony Wong Chau-sang, Kelly Chen Wai-lam, Edison Chen Koon-hei, Eric Tsang Chi-wai, and Chapman To Man-chak
Making-of programmes
Behind-the-scenes footage, deleted scenes, and outtakes
Trailers
New English subtitle translations
PLUS: An essay by film critic Justin Chang

THE POWER OF THE DOG (2021) DRAMA

JANE CAMPION returns to the kind of mythic frontier landscape—pulsating with both freedom and menace— that she previously traversed in The Piano, in order to plumb the masculine psyche in The Power of the Dog. Set against the desolate plains of 1920s Montana and adapted by the filmmaker from Thomas Savage’s novel. After a sensitive widow (The Virgin Suicides’ KIRSTEN DUNST) and her enigmatic, fiercely loving son (The Road’s KODI SMIT-MHEE) move in with her gentle new husband (Friday Night Lights’ JESSE PLEMONS), a tense battle of wills plays out between them and his brutish brother (Doctor Strange’s BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH), whose frightening volatility conceals a secret torment, and whose capacity for tenderness, once reawakened, may offer him redemption or destruction. Campion, who won an Academy Award for her direction here, charts the repressed desire and psychic violence coursing among these characters with the mesmerizing control of a master at the height of her powers.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

4K digital master, approved by director Jane Campion, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
Interview with Campion about the making of the film
Programme featuring interviews with of the cast and crew and behind-the-scenes footage captured on location in New Zealand
Interview with Campion and composer Jonny Greenwood about the film’s score
Conversation among Campion, director of photography Ari Wegner, actor Kirsten Dunst, and producer Tanya Seghatchian, moderated by filmmaker Tamara Jenkins
New interview with novelist Annie Proulx
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
English descriptive audio
PLUS: An essay by film critic Amy Taubin

USA | 2021 | 128 MINUTES | COLOUR | 2.28:1 | ENGLISH