{"id":26728,"date":"2025-06-10T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=26728"},"modified":"2025-06-09T05:00:49","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T12:00:49","slug":"the-best-movies-to-buy-or-stream-this-week-bottoms-presence-mishima-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/the-best-movies-to-buy-or-stream-this-week-bottoms-presence-mishima-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Movies to Buy or Stream This Week: Bottoms<\/i>, Presence<\/i>, Mishima<\/i>, and More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters<\/em><\/strong><\/a>:<\/strong> Criterion is giving Paul Schrader\u2019s 1985 masterpiece a 4K upgrade, and it\u2019s a spectacular one. Written with his brother Leonard, Schrader dramatizes the life of Japan\u2019s most celebrated author, Yukio Mishima, using the events leading to his 1970 protest suicide as a framework for flashbacks to key moments of his life, intercut with relevant interpretations of his work. Cinematographer John Bailey alternates crisp black and white with stylized color (along with theatrical lighting and staging) to create a sumptuous visual palate, given further juice by Philip Glass\u2019s enthralling score. Though Mishima<\/em> has the take-no-prisoners inevitability of Schrader\u2019s best work, he never made another movie quite like it. Nor, really, did anyone. (Including audio commentary, alternate English narration tracks, featurettes, interviews, documentary, trailer, and essay by Kevin Jackson.)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ON HULU:<\/strong>

Presence<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>Steven Soderbergh has spent his entire career experimenting, and the experimental concept of this, his first of two 2025 releases (so far!) is that it\u2019s comprised entirely of subjective camerawork, though not quite in the same way as something like, say, Nickel Boys<\/em>. The point-of-view he\u2019s adopting here, first seen moving quickly but smoothly through a very empty house, is that of a ghost\u2014the titular entity, which never leaves the confines of that house\u2019s walls. That logline makes Presence<\/em> sound like a haunted house movie, which isn\u2019t entirely accurate. It\u2019s more of a character study, cloaked in the veil of the supernatural, boasting a tightly constructed script by his frequent collaborator David Koepp and first-rate performances across the board. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ON MUBI: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Viet and Nam<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: Writer\/director Truong Minh Quy uses a mixture of verite technique and lyrical expressionism to tell the story of Viet (Dao Duy Bao Dinh) and Nam (Pham Thanh Hai), two coal miners who have fallen in love, and find moments of quiet, intense intimacy down in the dark. Quy takes pains to share how it sounds, looks, and feels down in those mines, and the 16mm photography is rich and textured. His script is unhurried, setting the scene at a leisurely pace and revealing its story points just as organically; it\u2019s a picture that feels episodic for much of its running time, but the threads that pull us through come together with emotional force at its conclusion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ON BLU-RAY \/ DVD \/ VOD:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bottoms<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>Shiva Baby<\/em> director Emma Seligman and star Rachel Sennott (who also collaborated on the script) reunited for this deliciously dark and frequently subversive riff on the high school sex comedy. They\u2019re joined by the always welcome Ayo Edebiri, who can put a comic spin on pretty much any line and make it twice as funny; Sennott and Edebiri star as a pair of gay seniors who start an after-school club for women\u2019s self-defense and empowerment, which basically amounts to a fight club for high-school girls. (They mostly do it to meet girls.) Seligman can\u2019t match the nerve-rattling brilliance of Shiva Baby<\/em>, but in all fairness, she\u2019s not really trying; this one\u2019s a winking homage and deliberate throwback, and once you adjust your expectations, you\u2019ll have a good time. This one\u2019s been streaming on Amazon since fall of 2023, and (like too many other movies) it could\u2019ve withered away there; kudos to KL Studio Classics for a long-overdue physical media release. (Includes audio commentaries, deleted scenes, outtakes, featurette, and trailer.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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