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 Mute Witness<\/a><\/em>: <\/strong>This bravado 1995 indie thriller from first-time writer\/director Anthony Waller was, seemingly, stuck in DVD-only purgatory forever, so kudos to Arrow Video for stepping up with not only the Blu-ray but the 4K UHD upgrade. The premise is simple but ingenious: Billy (Marina Zudina) is a mute woman working as a make-up artist on a low-budget horror flick, who stumbles upon an after-hours shoot for a snuff film. When she\u2019s discovered, she spends the rest of the picture basically running for her life, attempting to evade her murderous pursuers. It\u2019s tense, scary, chilling stuff, enlivened by a deeply empathetic lead performance, monstrously vile villains, and some of the cleverest looky-here debut directing this side of Blood Simple<\/em>. (Includes audio commentaries, video essays, promo reel, behind-the-scenes footage, and trailers.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n ON NETFLIX: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hit Man<\/a><\/em>: <\/strong>Richard Linklater adapted a story by Texas journalist Skip Hollandsworth to make one of his best films,\u00a0Bernie,<\/em>\u00a0back in 2011; his latest adapts another Hollandsworth piece<\/a> into, per the opening titles, the \u201csomewhat true story\u201d of schoolteacher Gary Johnson (Glenn Powell, who also co-wrote), whose electronics surveillance work for the New Orleans Police Department turned him into an undercover operative, posing as a contract killer to catch would-be clients. The first act is broadly comic, especially as the disguises and identities become more intricate;\u00a0Fletch<\/em>\u00a0vibes abound. But Linklater shifts gears when Gary meets a potential client (Adria Arjona) and sparks fly \u2014 their heat is off the charts, but their genuine affection for each other is also believable. Linklater nimbly navigates the tonal shifts from cop comedy to romance to thriller, and both Powell and Arjona come out of this thing looking like razzle-dazzle movie stars.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n ON MUBI:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Gasoline Rainbow<\/a><\/em>: <\/strong>Bill and Turner Ross (Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets<\/em><\/a>) love to blur the line between documentary and narrative filmmaking; their latest is improvised, we are told, but it feels more like an overheard documentary than the desperate grasping and overacting of too much improvised cinema.\u00a0Their focus is on a quintet of graduating seniors in Wiley, Oregon who embark on a post-graduation trip to Portland, of uncertain ends; \u201cDo you guys know what you\u2019re gonna do when you get into the city?\u201d one asks the others. \u201cOr are you just winging it?\u201d They\u2019re just winging it, and so are the Rosses, but their gift for gorgeous found imagery and observed human behavior (both in plentiful supply in a road movie) give the picture its undergirding.\u00a0Gasoline Rainbow<\/em>\u00a0beautifully captures the freedom specific to this moment in their lives, and makes one long to feel it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n