Back when Criterion announced their September titles I was pretty sure that was going to be their peak for the year. It’s an incredibly strong lineup, one that is nearly impossible to top and yet here we are. Criterion has released their November lineup and it’s pretty absurd. All five titles in the lineup are fantastic, but I’m just focusing on three – Lone Wolf and Cub, Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams and One-Eyed Jacks. All of these are must-have. Check out the full details below!

LONE WOLF AND CUB

Based on the best-selling manga series, the six intensely kinetic Lone Wolf and Cub films elevated chanbara to bloody, new heights. The shogun’s executioner, Itto Ogami (Tomisaburo Wakayama), takes to wandering the countryside as an assassin-along with his infant son Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikawa) and an infinitely weaponized perambulator-helping those he encounters while seeking vengeance for his murdered wife. Delivering stylish thrills and a body count that defies belief, Lone Wolf and Cub is beloved for its brilliantly choreographed and unbelievably violent action sequences as well as for its tender depiction of the bonds between parent and child.

1972-74 * 506 minutes * Color * Monaural * In Japanese with English subtitles * 2.40:1 aspect ratio

SPECIAL EDITION BOX SET FEATURES

• New 2K digital restorations of all six films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays
• High-definition presentation of Shogun Assassin, the 1980 English-dubbed reedit of the first two Lone Wolf and Cub films
• New interview with Kazuo Koike, writer of the Lone Wolf and Cub manga series and screenwriter on five of the films
• Lame d’un père, l’âme d’un sabre, a 2005 documentary about the making of the series
• New interview in which Sensei Yoshimitsu Katsuse discusses and demonstrates the real Suio-ryu sword techniques that inspired those in the manga and films
• New interview with biographer Kazuma Nozawa about filmmaker Kenji Misumi, director of four of the six Lone Wolf and Cub films
• Silent documentary from 1937 about the making of samurai swords, with an optional new ambient score by Ryan Francis
• Trailers 
• New English subtitle translations
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay and film synopses by Japanese pop culture writer Patrick Macias

AKIRA KUROSAWA’S DREAMS

Unfolding in a series of mythic vignettes, this late work by Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai, Ran) brings eight of the beloved director’s own nighttime visions, informed by tales from Japanese folklore, to cinematic life. In a visually sumptuous journey through the master’s unconscious, tales of childlike wonder give way to apocalyptic visions: a young boy stumbles on a fox wedding in a forest; a soldier confronts the ghosts of the war dead; a power-plant meltdown smothers a seaside landscape in radioactive fumes. Interspersed with reflections on the redemptive power of art, including a richly textured tribute to Vincent van Gogh (played by Martin Scorsese), Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams is both a showcase for its maker’s imagination at its most unbridled and a deeply personal lament for a world at the mercy of human ignorance.

1990 * 120 minutes * Color * 2.0 surround * In Japanese with English subtitles * 1.85:1 aspect ratio

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Masaharu Ueda, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New audio commentary featuring film scholar Stephen Prince
• Making of “Dreams” (1990), a 150-minute documentary shot on-set and directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
• New interview with assistant director Takashi Koizumi
• New interview with production manager Teruyo Nogami
• Kurosawa’s Way (2011), a fifty-minute documentary by director Akira Kurosawa’s longtime translator Catherine Cadou, featuring interviews with filmmakers Theodoros Angelopoulos, Bernardo Bertolucci, Clint Eastwood, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Bong Joon-ho, Abbas Kiarostami, Hayao Miyazaki, Martin Scorsese, Julie Taymor, Shin’ya Tsukamoto, and John Woo
• Trailer 
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Bilge Ebiri and Kurosawa’s script for a never-filmed ninth dream, introduced by Nogami

ONE-EYED JACKS

A western like no other, One-Eyed Jacks combines the mythological scope of that most American of film genres with the searing naturalism of a performance by Marlon Brando (On the Waterfront, The Fugitive Kind), all suffused with Freudian overtones and male anxiety. In his only directing stint, Brando captures the rugged landscapes of California’s Central Coast and Mexico’s Sonoran Desert in gorgeous widescreen, Technicolor images, and elicits from his fellow actors (including Karl Malden and Pina Pellicer) nuanced improvisational depictions of conflicted characters. Though overwhelmed by its director’s perfectionism and plagued by production setbacks and studio re-editing, One-Eyed Jacks stands as one of Brando’s great achievements, thanks above all to his tortured turn as Rio, a bank robber bent on revenge against his one-time partner in crime, the aptly named Dad Longworth (Malden). Brooding and romantic, Rio marks the last, and perhaps the most tender, of the iconic outsiders Brando imbued with such remarkable intensity throughout his career.

1961 * 141 minutes * Color * Monaural * 1.85:1 aspect ratio

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, undertaken with the support of The Film Foundation and supervised by filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New introduction by Scorsese
• Excerpts from voice-recordings director and star Marlon Brando made during the film’s production
• New video essays on the film’s production history and its potent combination of the stage and screen icon Brando with the classic Hollywood western
• Trailer

PLUS: An essay by film critic Howard Hampton