Jason Bailey
Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on demand, vintage and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalogue titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This twice-monthly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.
PICK OF THE WEEK:
A Woman Under the Influence: John Cassavetes’s most-acclaimed (and most commercially successful) indie effort gets a 4K upgrade from Criterion, so that you can appreciate the warts-and-all intensity of one of the greatest performances in movie history: Gena Rowlands as the title character, an over-stressed wife and mother whose tenuous hold on reality finally tips over. Peter Falk co-stars as her husband, whose short fuse does much to contribute to her shaky state, and his presence is a major component of the picture’s skill; this is no simple story of a lady goin’ crazy, but of the aspects of a seemingly “normal” life that can drive even the calm, cool, and collected off the deep end. As is his style, Cassavetes takes no shortcuts — scenes play out at full, uncomfortable length, overwhelmed by long, awkward silences and impenetrable crosstalk. And at the center of it all is Rowlands, as dangerous as a stick of dynamite and as vulnerable as an open wound. (Includes audio commentary, archival interviews, trailer, and essay by Kent Jones.)
ON HBO MAX:
If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You: I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a film so vividly capture the moment-to-moment feeling of living with anxiety (and living around people with it) — which makes it a nerve-rattling, sometimes harrowing sit. But it’s putting a real state of being on screen, anchored by a jaw-dropping performance by Oscar nominee Rose Byrne; writer/director Mary Bronstein opens with a close-up of Byrne’s face, listening, stressed, already fuming, and as she listens, flinches, and reacts, it pushes in closer, and closer, and somehow closer still. And that’s a pretty apt visual representation of the entire movie.
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
Sisu: Road to Revenge: The original Sisu was an unexpected hit back in 2022, though box office experts may have been underestimating the degree to which moviegoers wanted to watch Nazis getting brutally, gorily dispatched. Last year’s follow-up was a comparative disappointment, which is a shame, because writer/director Jalmari Helander and star Jorma Tommila have really cracked a code here; about halfway through, it occurred to me that these movies are live-action Road Runner cartoons, just as relentlessly paced, disinterested in the realities of the physical world, and willing to go to great lengths for big, absurd laughs. And, bonus, they clock in at 90 minutes or less — a brevity that other makers of grindhouse homages would be wise to bear in mind. (Includes featurette and alternate ending.)
ON 4K:
3:10 to Yuma: The first film adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s short story, this 1957 Western from director Delmer Daves checks every box for a good ‘50s oater, starting from its opening credits, which are accompanied by a heartily-sung theme song. Halsted Welles’s admirably efficient screenplay sets up the characters and stakes with clarity: Van Heflin is Dan Evans, a struggling farmer and family man who can make some quick, much-needed cash by guarding the notorious criminal Ben Wade (an oilily charming Glenn Ford) while he awaits the titular train to his doom. Of course, Wade’s gang isn’t gonna let that happen, and like the best of Leonard’s Western, it works as both a plot-driven action movie and an existential meditation, this time on the place of honor and duty in a lawless world. The tension of its ticking clock is palpable, the cinematography by Charles Lawton Jr. is gorgeous (Criterion’s 4K upgrade is a beauty), and its ending is one of the most satisfying in the genre. (Includes interviews and essay by Kent Jones.)
PlayTime: This 1967 French comedy (another 4K upgrade from Criterion) was famously the movie that basically ended Jacques Tati, a spectacular production that flopped upon its initial release, though it has subsequently found an audience for its singular style, which presents social satire and slapstick comedy on a massive scale, on giant sets, in wide shots, all shot in 70mm. Tati turns up occasionally as his signature character, the bumbling Monsieur Hulot, but it’s not really a comedy personality vehicle like his earlier hits; it’s a picture far more experimental in its approach, and its detail-driven aesthetic rewards multiple viewings. (Includes introduction, audio commentaries, featurettes, archival interviews, short films, and essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum.)
Bullet in the Head: The next release for Shout’s Hong Kong Cinema Classics was John Woo’s follow-up to the one-two-three punch of A Better Tomorrow, A Better Tomorrow II, and The Killer, and it feels like Woo was anxious to stretch himself a bit — there are still shoot-outs and chases a-plenty, beautifully done, but with a more personal and powerful story, style at the service of substance. The main shift here is tonal; this isn’t fun, like his previous action movies, but a grim, hard, tough movie, an Asian riff on The Deer Hunter, right down to the wedding opening and the one friend who succumbs to the darkness. The scope of this thing is just mind-boggling — the combat sequences are as spectacular as anything in Apocalypse Now — but Woo stays on-message, crafting a sharp indictment of the bloodlust engendered (necessitated, really) by combat. (Includes alternate cut, alternate ending, interviews, and trailers.)
Once a Thief: For his next feature (also new to 4K from HKCC), Woo continued to bend the sides of his box, while making a movie that almost feels like a purging after the serious business of Bullet — an exercise in pure pleasure, a fun and stylish combination of action movie, heist picture, and light love triangle. (The late appearance of a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid poster is extremely telling.) He’s never been lighter on his feet than he is here, and the same goes for Chow Yun-fat, absent and missed in Bullet, looking as close to Cary Grant as anyone not named Clooney. The heist sequences are tip-top, the sheer acrobatics of the final shoot-out are awe-inspiring (in a comedy, Woo can pay even less attention to gravity, physics, and common sense), and it has one of the all-time great late-movie character reveals. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, and trailer.)
Let’s Spend the Night Together: One of the nice things about the longevity of the Rolling Stones is how many great directors have had the chance to make a concert film and/or documentary about them, from Scorsese to Robert Frank to the Maysles Brothers to Brett Morgan; in 1981, Hal Ashby got his turn, helming not only a pay-per-view live concert but this theatrically-released concert film, now out on 4K from KL Studio Classics. Neither Ashby nor the Stones were at their peak exactly, but they were close enough to their golden eras to create something memorable and exciting, particularly when Mick Jagger just goes for broke and Ashby’s cameras go there with him. Picture and sound quality are excellent, and the set list is an acceptable mixture of standards and deeper cuts. (Includes audio commentaries and trailer.)
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: Vinegar Syndrome launches Iconoscope, its new sub-label focusing on TV movies, series, and mini-series, in the smartest possible way: with a sparkling 4K of one of the best of all ‘70s Movies of the Week. (It’s so beloved that no less than Guillermo del Toro produced and co-wrote a 2010 theatrical remake.) Kim Darby is terrific as a young wife who inherits her grandmother’s dusty old mansion, and discovers something sinister hiding in its walls. The monsters and effects are surprisingly sophisticated, but more than that, they’re haunting; it’s very easy to imagine curious kids watching this one Sunday night and having quite a difficult time falling asleep after. (Includes audio commentaries, location featurette, and essay by Amanda Reyes.)
ON BLU-RAY:
Shaw Brothers Classics Vol. 8: Shout Factory’s latest Shaw collection is, as usual, an eye-bulging bounty of movies: 12 titles on as many discs, including two Sentimental Swordsman movies and a Bastard Swordsman sequel. Like the most recent Shawscope set, the emphasis here is on the studio’s ‘80s output, when straight-up kung fu or wuxia wasn’t cutting it anymore, and their directors were encouraged to insert sci-fi, fantasy, and horror elements to keep pace with American blockbusters. Not all of them work (the tonal shifts of the broad comedy aspects are a real problem), but several do; my favorite is The Enchantress, featuring a marvelously cackling villainess, wire-fu galore, and a vibrant color scheme that’s crisply captured by Shout’s as-per-usual top-notch restoration work. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, and trailers.)
Christina Lundberg: The Original Eyepatch Wearing Butt-Kicking Movie Babe: This new documentary from Vinegar Syndrome partner label Klubb Super 8 focuses on one of the all-time exploitation movie icons: Christina Lundberg, the gorgeous Swedish model-turned-actress who took center stage in such classics (of a sort) as Thriller: A Cruel Picture, Sex and Fury, and Anita: Swedish Nymphet. The filmmaking is slightly shoddy, but it barely matters; Lundberg is such a fascinating subject, so good-humored, good-natured, and tuned in to who and what she is, that you just want to hang out with her for the picture’s brisk 72 minutes, and the surprising presence of her thoughtful Anita co-star Stellan Skarsgård makes for one of the doc’s most enlightening passages. (Includes short film, featurette, and Lundeberg trailers.)
Blast-Off Girls / The Girl, the Body, and the Pill: Before he established himself as the king of gory horror with 1963’s Blood Feast, Herschel Gordon Lewis was making “nudie cuties” — and even after the monster success of that film, he continued to fill his pipeline with non-horror efforts, roughies like Scum of the Earth and children’s movies like Jimmy the Boy Wonder and oddities like this AGFA-released double feature from 1967. The box copy claims Blast-Off Girls was his attempt to do a Hard Day’s Night Riff, but suffice it to say that Chicago-based garage rock band The Faded Blue are no Beatles (as singers or actors), though Dan Conway is utterly convincing as their slimy, no-good manager. The Girl is more successful, an odd but captivating mixture of sexploitation and stern warning, with Pamela Rhea as a liberal high school teacher whose attempts at sex education don’t go exactly as planned. (Includes audio commentaries, interview, alternate opening credits, short, 51 minutes of Lewis trailers, and essays by Janna Jones and Gentry Austin.)
