Noah Baumbach's “Jay Kelly” is joining the Criterion Collection on February 16, 2027. It's one of the headliners of the newly announced February slate, and it's coming out barely a year after Netflix released it. The disc will have a 4K master approved by Baumbach, and Criterion has put together a strong set of extras.
If you missed it, “Jay Kelly” is Baumbach's melancholy look at movie stardom. It's middle-of-the-pack Baumbach, but it's still pleasant and breezy enough. Is it Criterion-worthy? That's debatable, but it's part of an important director's filmography, and Criterion's mandate is, if anything, partly about auteur cinema.
Clooney plays an aging Hollywood star looking back on a life spent in the industry, and if he isn't literally playing himself, he might as well be. He holds the movie together even when it slips into sentimentality. Sandler is stellar as the manager who has spent decades cleaning up whatever messes his client got into. I guess you could complain that Baumbach and Emily Mortimer wrote something too neat and too polished, but the film does sneak up on you. By the time it reaches its moving final stretch about legacy, you kind of give in to its sweetness.
Netflix and Criterion have worked together for years. “The Irishman,” “ROMA,” “The Power of the Dog,” “Okja,” “Frankenstein,” and “Marriage Story” got the deluxe treatment, and Baumbach's two best films, “The Squid and the Whale” and “Frances Ha,” are already in the collection. Conveniently, Scorsese's “The Irishman” gets a 4K UHD upgrade with Dolby Vision and Atmos on the same day.
For me, the big Criterion release for February will be Atom Egoyan's “The Sweet Hereafter.” The 1997 adaptation of Russell Banks's novel follows a small Canadian town after a school-bus accident kills most of its children. A big-city lawyer, played by Ian Holm, arrives to turn the community's grief into a lawsuit. It's one of the best Canadian films ever made, full stop. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes and earned Egoyan Oscar nominations for directing and adapted screenplay. The layered editing is key to how the film works. Egoyan cuts back and forth in time, so the tragedy is always present: before it happens, while it happens, and after.
Other noteworthy February releases include Stephen Chow's “Kung Fu Hustle” (2004), which is still one of the most inventive, kooky action comedies of the century. It mixes Looney Tunes physics with elaborate fight choreography, and somehow it works in spades. It's a very silly movie that is impeccably made.
The same day brings what might be the most ambitious release of the month. “Victor Sjöström's Hollywood Masterworks” is a three-disc Blu-ray set of “He Who Gets Slapped” (1924), “The Scarlet Letter” (1926), and “The Wind” (1928). The Swedish master went to Hollywood and made some of the silent era's most extraordinary films there. The extras include a new Kenneth Turan commentary on “He Who Gets Slapped,” a video essay on Sjöström's Hollywood career, and interviews about Lillian Gish's work and the scores for “The Wind.”
The rest of the February announcements include Gus Van Sant's debut, “Mala Noche,” a slight 78-minute first film that nevertheless hinted at the greatness to come in “Drugstore Cowboy” and “My Own Private Idaho.” Then there's Carla Simón's “Romería,” a personal film that premiered in competition at Cannes last year, though I wasn't particularly taken with it.
With that, Criterion's February lineup is set. It's a strong month that runs from silent-era Hollywood to Stephen Chow's cartoon mayhem, and from Egoyan's quiet devastation to Baumbach's look at fame. There's something here for every corner of the cinephile shelf. As usual, the label has commissioned some gorgeous cover art for each release, and you can check it out below.
Noah Baumbach's “Jay Kelly” is joining the Criterion Collection on February 16, 2027. It's one of the headliners of the newly announced February slate, and it's coming out barely a year after Netflix released it.