The Criterion sale at Barnes & Noble starts next week, which means it’s just about time for Criterion to start tempting you with possible sale items. The one most people will probably pick up is Dr. Strangelove, which Criterion has given the red-carpet treatment (especially in regards to packaging), perhaps as a way of combating the fact that it had a perfectly good Blu-Ray from Sony already. But I’d like to shine a light of their other title this week, Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria, a gorgeously-shot meditation on aging, women in films, identity, and blockbuster culture that’s also a really great, really funny hangout movie with Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart where Binoche does an honest-to-god spit take. Aside from Criterion, we get some arthouse heavy-hitters this week, with the releases of the Romanian drama Aferim!, the Icelandic drama Rams, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s latest Cemetery of Splendour. And Arrow continues to put out cult cinema both reputable and… less reputable, bringing both a documentary on Ray Harryhousen and the George Clooney-starring Return of the Killer Tomatoes! to Blu-Ray this week. And also the major studios release some movies this week too, I guess.

Aferim! (Big World)
Cemetery of Splendour (Strand Releasing)
Circus of Fear / Five Golden Dragons (Blue Underground)
Clouds of Sils Maria (Criterion)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Criterion)
Eye in the Sky (Universal)
Fastball (Kino)
Francofonia (Music Box)
Gilda (Criterion, UK-only, Region B)
Ivan’s Childhood (Artificial Eye, UK-only, Region B)
Kung Fu Panda 3 (DreamWorks)
Movie Movie (Scorpion Releasing)
Rabin, the Last Day (Kino)
Rams (Cohen Media Group)
Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan (Arrow)
Return of the Killer Tomatoes! (Arrow)
The Sound and the Fury (Shami Media Group)
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Paramount)