Forget Prime Day, Criterion's 50% off sale is the real steal today

(Image credit: Criterion)

Forgive me, PC gamers, for bringing a deal to your attention that has nothing to do with PC gaming. I've spent much of the day browsing Amazon to find the Prime Day PC deals that are actually worth your attention, but what I wanted to be doing was scrolling through the Criterion Collection library, because today is a special day: for 25 hours, everything Criterion sells is 50% off. It's a 24 hour flash sale, so these deals won't last long.

The Criterion Collection is known for producing pricey, but lavish, disc releases of acclaimed movies, usually with tons of extras that movies rarely come with anymore. They often include new and archival interviews, audio commentary from film scholars or directors, and film-to-digital restorations that look far better than older transfers.

Most exciting, Criterion recently started updating its library to include 4K Blu-rays. There are only 24 so far, but there are some greats on that list already. Why spend time arguing about the Citizen Kane of videogames when you could watch the Citizen Kane of movies in 4K UHD?

Everything in the Criterion Collection is 50% off, from 4K discs down to old DVDs. This strikes me as an especially good time time grab some of Criterion's extra deluxe collections, like:

World of Wong Kar Wai ($99.97): As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, 2046
Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954-1975 ($112.47): 15 classic Godzilla movies, including battles against King Kong, Mothra, Ghidorah and Mechagodzilla.
Lone Wolf and Cub ($49.97): All five Lone Wolf & Cub samurai films, beautiful '70s schlock.

If you have a Blu-ray drive in your PC or run your own Plex server, this is kinda sorta a PC-related sale. But honestly, I think Criterion is missing a trick by not having a single videogame movie in its collection. The Super Mario Bros. live action film starring Bob Hoskins? That's art, man. The Castlevania Netflix series? Okay, not a movie, but still: Criterion-worthy. Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture? Not a masterpiece, but I guarantee you it's better than Armageddon, and that's somehow in the Collection. Games will get their artsy film collection due someday.

The Criterion Collection 50% off flash sale is running now, and ends at 9 am PST on Wednesday.

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).