King Of The Hill: The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray + DVD Combo)

King Of The Hill: The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray + DVD Combo)

For his first Hollywood studio production, Steven Soderbergh (whose independent debut, sex, lies, and videotape, had won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival a few years earlier) crafted this small jewel of a growing-up story. Set in St. Louis during the Great Depression, King of the Hill follows the daily struggles of a resourceful and imaginative adolescent who, after his younger brother is sent to live with a relative and his tubercular mother to a sanitarium, must survive on his own in a run-down hotel during his salesman father's long business trips. This evocative period piece, faithfully adapted from the A.E. Hotchner memoir, is among the versatile Soderbergh's most touching and surprising films.