Tuesday’s have always been a DVD / CD / Blu-ray collectors day to treasure. Being a fan of Criterion, their new release Tuesdays are even sweeter. Its triply sweet today, getting GÃ¶tz Spielmann’s Revanche, Max Ophuls’ Lola Montes, and Steve McQueen’s Hunger.

Of the three released today, I’d throw my weight towards Revanche, as it was my favorite of the three, it being the one I want to watch again, no questions asked. You can hear me discuss Revanche on the last couple of podcasts, our episode on The 400 Blows, yesterday’s episode 24, and last week’s Disc 2. Something I mentioned in one of the podcasts, was that I immediately found myself attracted to Spielmann’s use of the camera, and lack of music found within the film. While I’m usually one who demands a commentary track, I found all of the bonus materials a perfectly enjoyable alternative, where I was able to learn all about the directors thoughts on filmmaking in general, and a look behind the making of Revanche. [Note from the Editor: today, Netflix Watch Instantly added Revanche to it’s streaming lineup!]

While I did enjoy Steve McQueen’s Hunger, it is certainly a challenging film to get through. You can hear some of my thoughts on the film in a Disc 2 from last November, just after the release was officially announced. Hunger was also one of the films from the initial announcement in September, that IFC and Criterion would be joining forces.

The Lola Montes release has to be the most surprising of the three made available today. This is mostly because I went into my viewing of the film having not seen any of Max Ophuls films, and was warned early on by Travis’ experience with his previous Criterion discs. I think what really intrigued me was the trailer. It is masterfully cut together as well as showcases just how gorgeous this remastered print is on DVD and Blu-ray. You can find the trailer below, and I’d highly recommend you click on the “view in HD” button, just to get an idea of what’s in store for the Blu-ray.

502_box_348x490 — Buy Revanche on DVD from Amazon

502_BD_box_348x490 — Buy Revanche on Blu-ray from Amazon

Revanche

GÃ¶tz Spielmann, Criterion # 502

A gripping thriller and a tragic drama of nearly Greek proportions, Revanche is the stunning, Oscar-nominated international breakthrough of Austrian filmmaker GÃ¶tz Spielmann. In a ragged section of Vienna, hardened ex-con Alex (the mesmerizing Johannes Krisch) works in a brothel, where he falls for Ukrainian hooker Tamara. Their desperate plans for escape unexpectedly intersect with the lives of a rural cop and his seemingly content wife. With meticulous, elegant direction, Spielmann creates a tense, existential, and surprising portrait of vengeance and redemption, and a journey into the darkest forest of human nature, in which violence and beauty exist side by side.

Add Revanche to your Netflix Queue.

Disc Features

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION

New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director GÃ¶tz Spielmann (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
New video interview with Spielmann
The Making of ‘Revanche,’ a half-hour documentary shot on the set
Foreign Land (Fremdland), Spielmann’s award-winning student short film, with an introduction by the director
U.S. theatrical trailer
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Armond White

Warning: the Revanche trailer does spoil a key plot moment.

503_box_348x490 — Buy Lola Montes on DVD from Amazon

503_BD_box_348x490 — Buy Lola Montes on Blu-ray from Amazon

Lola MontÃ¨s

Max Ophuls, Criterion # 503

Lola MontÃ¨s is a visually ravishing, narratively daring dramatization of the life of the notorious courtesan and showgirl, played by Martine Carol. With his customary cinematographic flourish and, for the first time, vibrant color, Max Ophuls charts the course of MontÃ¨s’s scandalous past through the invocations of the bombastic ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) of the American circus where she has ended up performing. Ophuls’s final film, Lola MontÃ¨s is at once a magnificent romantic melodrama, a meditation on the lurid fascination with celebrity, and a one-of-a-kind movie spectacle.

Add Lola Montes to your Netflix Queue.

Disc Features

New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
Audio commentary featuring Max Ophuls scholar Susan White
‘Max Ophuls ou le plaisir de tourner,’ a 1965 episode of the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps, featuring interviews with many of Ophuls’s collaborators
Max by Marcel, a new documentary by Marcel Ophuls about his father and the making of Lola MontÃ¨s
Silent footage of actress Martine Carol briefly demonstrating the various glamorous hairstyles in Lola MontÃ¨s
Theatrical rerelease trailer from Rialto Pictures
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Gary Giddins

504_box_348x490 — Buy Hunger on DVD from Amazon

504_BD_box_348x490 — Buy Hunger on Blu-ray from Amazon

Hunger

Steve McQueen, Criterion # 504

With Hunger, British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen has turned one of history’s most controversial acts of political defiance into a jarring, unforgettable cinematic experience. In Northern Ireland’s Maze prison in 1981, twenty-seven-year-old Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands went on a hunger strike to protest the British government’s refusal to recognize him and his fellow IRA inmates as political prisoners. McQueen dramatizes prison existence and Sands’s final days in a way that is purely experiential, even abstract, a succession of images full of both beauty and horror. Featuring an intense performance by Michael Fassbender, Hunger is an unflinching, transcendent depiction of what a human being is willing to endure to be heard.

Add Hunger to your Netflix Queue.

Disc Features

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION

New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Steve McQueen (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
Video interviews with McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender
A short documentary on the making of Hunger, including interviews with McQueen, Fassbender, actors Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, and Brian Milligan, writer Enda Walsh, and producer Robin Gutch
‘The Provo’s Last Card?,’ a 1981 episode of the BBC program Panorama, about the Maze prison hunger strikes and the political and civilian reactions across Northern Ireland
Theatrical trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Chris Darke