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 Pandora\u2019s Box:<\/em><\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>Filmmaker G.W. Pabst lured Hollywood contract player Louise Brooks away from the States to star in this raw, lurid, and powerful story of a seductive young woman and the men who crumble around her. Her fierce sexuality is dramatized with a frankness that\u2019s still rare in cinema, and Brooks is a remarkable performer, her off-hand sensuality and naturalistic acting style years ahead of its time. Though it may date to the silent era, Pandora\u2019s Box<\/em> maintains its power to shock and bewitch, and this long-overdue Blu-ray upgrade from the Criterion Collection is a banner occasion for horny movie geeks. (Includes audio commentary, four musical scores, Brooks documentaries, interviews, and essays by J. Hoberman, Kenneth Tynan, and Brooks.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n ON NETFLIX:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Will & Harper<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: There\u2019s nothing terribly groundbreaking about two old pals taking a cross-country road trip, looking for laughs and truth, except that in this case the pals are comedy superstar Will Ferrell and his longtime friend and collaborator Harper Steele, who very recently came out as a trans woman. Director Josh Greenbaum achieves a perfect balance of laughs and pathos\u2014these two have the kind of comic shorthand that can\u2019t be faked, while their moments of vulnerability and confession are backed with genuine emotion and empathy. It\u2019s a very funny movie, and a quietly moving one as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ON THE CRITERION CHANNEL:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Evil Does Not Exist<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: The new film from Drive My Car <\/em>director Ry\u00fbsuke Hamaguchi concerns a small community that’s about to be taken over by business interests, who plan to use post-pandemic subsidies to establish a tourist-catering \u201cglamping\u201d ground. This sounds like the set-up for an overdone tale of a tight-knit community rallying together to save their town, but that\u2019s not Hamaguchi\u2019s bag at all. Sure, he makes satirical hay of the pointed contrast between people who visit the outdoors and those who spend real time there, but those lackies are the key to understanding the picture\u2019s title; we met them basically as villains, and get to know them as people, via their understated dialogue and Hamaguchi\u2019s wry humor, which sometimes makes them the butt of the joke, but not always.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ON 4K \/ BLU-RAY \/ DVD \/ VOD:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A Quiet Place: Day One<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>Confession of biases: I was not exactly amped for a Quiet Place<\/em> prequel after the dire returns of A Quiet Place: Part II<\/em><\/strong><\/a> a while back (especially since that film opened with a \u201cday one\u201d sequence to fill us in). But writer\/director John Krasinski wisely farmed this one out, handing over the reins to Pig <\/em>filmmaker Michael Sarnoski, who eschews the small-town setting of the original duo to show us how the aliens hit New York City. There\u2019s an undeniable 9\/11 vibe to the events, which is A Choice, but Sarnoski\u2019s intelligent script creates unpredictable stakes by giving us a protagonist (Lupita Nyong\u2019o) who is already dying (her primary concern is her cat, and it must be said: this is one of the great movie cats). Sarnoski excels at building and releasing tension\u2014he\u2019s got a couple of brief but blistering set pieces\u2014and because he\u2019s a real craftsman<\/a>, he understands that the premise of the series has given him the freedom to make a silent movie, a form whose overwhelming emotions he taps into in the closing scenes. (Includes deleted and extended scenes and featurettes.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n ON BLU-RAY \/ DVD \/ VOD:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Kinds of Kindness<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019s bleak, borderline nihilistic worldview is on prominent display in his latest, and how you regard it is likely all bound up in how much you share it. It tells its three stories artfully, with distinctive and dynamic performances from Emma Stone, Jesse Plemmons, Margaret Qualley, and Willem Dafoe, and the craft is top-shelf. Those elements are all in place to keep you off balance, at the service of his well-cultivated assurances that these stories really could go anywhere\u2014that he isn\u2019t bound by the fear and hesitancy that stifles so much of contemporary cinema. He\u2019ll frequently follow a popular success with a purposefully off-putting follow-up, and as he chased The Lobster<\/em> with The Killing of a Sacred Dear<\/em>, this one almost seems a conscious attempt to shock those who enjoyed the (if only comparatively) mild Oscar winners The Favourite<\/em> and Poor Things<\/em>. Even its June release date seems like a winking, sick joke. Here\u2019s his big summer blockbuster, complete with a mid-credits scene. Chew on that, sickos<\/a>. (Includes deleted scenes and featurette.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n