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\u2019re watching.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n PICK OF THE WEEK: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Manchurian Candidate<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/em><\/strong>John Frankenheimer\u2019s Cold War thriller \u2013 both horribly chilling and blackly comic \u2013 has lost none of its blunt force in the fifty-plus years since its original release. Frankenheimer fuses an uncomfortably of-the-moment narrative with matter-of-fact surrealism, creating a nightmarish story of red-baiting and nationalist fear that grippingly captures the dread and paranoia of the period. His compositions are still stunning \u2013 dig the fun-house mirror effects of the frames with the frames of the hearing scene \u2013 and he gets all-time great performances out of his ace cast (particularly Frank Sinatra, whose tough, feverish turn is haunting as hell). It\u2019s a cold, frightening, brilliant film, and KL Studio Classics\u2019 new 4K is a razor-sharp beauty. (Includes audio commentary, outtakes, interviews, and trailer.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n ON AMAZON PRIME:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Armageddon Time<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/em><\/strong>James Gray\u2019s deeply personal coming-of-age drama has the kind of specificity and attentiveness to time and place that are native to autobiography, a desire (an insistence, even) for the details that may not matter to anyone but the author \u2013 but to them, they clearly matter very, very deeply. In telling his circa-1980 story of Queens sixth-grader Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), he\u2019s grappling with issues of race, class, family, religion, and liberal guilt. That\u2019s awfully fertile soil for a thoughtful filmmaker like Gray, and if all of his material doesn\u2019t quite add up, the broad ambition and honorable intentions go a very long way<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n