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John Cassavetes’ breakthrough picture gets the Criterion treatment, with fine new extras that take us back to a moment when the American Independent movement broke through to the big theaters, with bigger stars. It’s 142 minutes of intense improvisation during which Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk challenge, tease and bully fellow performers into the director’s vision of performance artistry. The full title on-screen raises the bar pretty high: Husbands: A Comedy About Life, Death and Freedom.

Husbands

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1029

1970 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 131 142 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 26, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Jenny Runacre, Jenny Lee Wright, Noelle Kao, John Kullers, Meta Shaw, Leola Harlow.

Cinematography: Victor Kemper

Produced by Al Ruban

Written and Directed by John Cassavetes

Is John Cassavetes coming into style, or is he just being rediscovered for the fifth time? His impassioned films receive strong critical...

Love Streams

Directed by John Cassavetes

Written by Ted Allan and John Cassavetes

USA, 1984

Love Streams, John Cassavetes’ final film as an actor and penultimate film as director, is also one of his most unusual features. While his distinctive work can oftentimes be divisive, it’s easy to see how this film more than most others could be rather off-putting to those not appreciative of, or even accustomed to, his filmmaking technique.

Cassavetes adapted the film with Ted Allan, based on the latter’s play, and the film’s structure is one of the more vexing of its attributes. Dropped into two parallel lives, with little to no backstory, only gradually are we able to piece together certain details. First, there is Robert Harmon (a worn and weary Cassavetes, his failing health evident). Harmon is a writer, a drunk, and a womanizer, and he is supposedly working on a book about nightlife,...

Chicago – It’s rare that I feel comfortable using this kind of hyperbole in a Blu-ray review but here it goes — having watched it again on Criterion Blu-ray, after not seeing it in years, I’m more convinced than ever that John Cassavetes’ “A Woman Under the Influence” is one of the best films ever made. Maybe it’s because I’m older now and have a family of my own, but my most recent viewing of this masterpiece was heartwrenching in a totally different way. It’s stunning.

And the Criterion remaster of it, accompanied by four other of the most important films in the history of the independent film movement in “Cassavetes: Five Films” is a beauty. Oh, yeah, “Shadows,” “Faces,” “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie,” and “Opening Night” are damn good too. This is one of the best possible gifts you could pick up for the...

Blu-ray Release Date: Oct. 22, 2013

Price: Blu-ray $124.95

Studio: Criterion

John Cassavetes—genius, visionary, and the progenitor of American independent film—receives some high-definition respect from Criterion in the John Cassavetes: Five Films collection.

A former theater actor fascinated by the power of improvisation, Cassavetes brought his search for truth in performance to the screen. The five films in this anthology of dramas—all of which the director maintained total control over by financing them himself and making them outside the studio system—are electrifying and compassionate creations, populated by all manner of humanity: beatniks, hippies, businessmen, actors, housewives, strippers, club owners, gangsters, children.

Cassavetes has often been called an actor’s director, but this body of work—even greater than the sum of its extraordinary parts—shows him to be an audience’s director.

Here’s a breakdown of the movies:

Lelia Goldoni and Anthony Ray star in John Cassavetes' 1959 directorial debut Shadows.

Each week we take a look at the good, the bad and the ugly of the home entertainment offerings, reviewing and rating the films and the special features packed onto the discs.

Release of the Week

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Film

The BFI have been working hard on their Masters of Cinema collection, a British equivalent to the Criterion Collection. This is their fifth and final introduction into the John Cassavetes collection which includes Shadows, Faces, A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night. The story of Cosmo Vitelli (Ben Gazzara – mesmerising), a small strip-club owner who gets in too deep with some murky characters because of his consuming gambling addiction which leaves him $23,000 in the red. The mob then use this as a handle to blackmail him into murdering someone to wipe off some of his debt. It goes behind the scenes of a seemingly successful man...

MOSCOW -- The Irish will be out in force at the start of central Europe's leading film festival next week when Karlovy Vary's 39th edition opens with John Irvin's The Boys from County Clare, organizers said Monday. The festival, which runs July 2-July 10, will screen 16 feature films in competition before a jury headed by U.S. producer and filmmaker Al Ruban. American director Lisa Cholodenko's Cavedweller -- a psychological drama focusing on a middle-aged woman's attempts to right wrongs and find contentment as she comes to terms with her life after two unsuccessful marriages -- will compete with a field of mostly European films shot within the past 18 months.