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 Princess Bride<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>Rob Reiner\u2019s exquisite adaptation of William Goldman\u2019s novel was previously issued by Criterion as a Blu-ray, but the double-dip seems somehow acceptable; this is an endlessly rewatchable picture, the cinematic equivalent of an old record you never get tired of playing. And it has an undeniably timeless quality- our basic precepts of love and romance are all rooted in storybooks and fairy tales anyway, which is part of why The Princess Bride<\/em> remains so close to our hearts. There\u2019s a purity to it, a simplicity to the (literally) undying love of Westley and Buttercup that grounds the rest of the movie\u2019s sly genre send-ups and self-aware gags. It is, as advertised, True Love, and is so good-natured and lovely that by the end of the tale, even little Fred Savage doesn\u2019t mind the kissing parts. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, featurettes, behind-the-scenes footage, audiobook excerpt, and trailers.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n ON AMAZON PRIME:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Batman<\/em><\/strong><\/a>:<\/strong> <\/strong>Warner Bros head David Zaslav is apparently feeling the pinch of the strike and selling off his company\u2019s parts again; you\u2019d think if there\u2019s one thing the home of DC would want to retain exclusivity on, it\u2019s DC movies. And this is their best in at least a decade. The look and feel of Matt Reeves\u2019 take on the Dark Knight isn\u2019t exactly fresh, and you can play \u201cspot the influence\u201d pretty easily. But he\u2019s doing some genuinely inventive things with his camera (both in terms of framing and focus), and he\u2019s willing to engage with the character specifically as a vigilante; particularly in his early scenes, we have a real sense of how he\u2019s using violence (brutal violence, often) to work out his issues. Robert Pattinson\u2019s emo take is surprisingly effective, Paul Dano\u2019s Riddler is properly creepy, and Zoe Kravitz hits all the right notes as Catwoman \u2013 it\u2019s a (gasp) sexy superhero movie, if you can imagine such a thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Judas and the Black Messiah<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>Director Shaka King\u2019s dramatization of the murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton transcends (most of) the traps of the staid bio-drama, thanks to the easy connections to contemporary events, the pulsing urgency of the filmmaking, and the jaw-dropping performances of Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton as LaKeith Stanfield as Panther associate and FBI informant Bill O\u2019Neal. It\u2019s the kind of historical film where the narrative is so propulsive, and the characters so compelling, that you get lost in what\u2019s known and not; the ending is the reason it exists, yet by the time it gets there, this viewer was shocked anew by those events. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Women Talking<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>Sarah Polley\u2019s latest is based on the novel by Miriam Toews, but it feels more like a theatrical adaptation, from its audition-friendly dramatic monologues to its (mostly) single setting to its traditional three-act structure. But Polley doesn\u2019t let things bog down in the torrent of talk (not that the title doesn\u2019t warn us); there are moments that are cinematically intimate, poetic even, and occasionally she\u2019ll burst away from the central locale with harrowing flashes of what\u2019s been done to them, and thus what brought them there. Some of her tableaux are breathtaking, which makes Polley\u2019s decision to use such a muddy, muted color palette all the more baffling \u2013 it gives a drab sameness to the images, and diluting the color of the blood dilutes its power. But that\u2019s the only serious complaint; the performances are top-notch across the board, and boy is it nice to have this gifted filmmaker back in the saddle<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n