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 Shoeshine<\/em><\/strong><\/a>:<\/strong> Vittorio De Sica won the very first Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for this 1946 classic, entering the Criterion Collection in a glorious 4K UHD edition. It begins (much like his Bicycle Thieves<\/em> two years later) as a story of grinders and dreamers, focusing on two shoeshine kids who are saving every penny to buy a horse. But when they get drawn into a fencing scheme, they\u2019re sent to a cruel juvenile detention facility, and that\u2019s where De Sica really pulls you in, so deep is our investment in these boys and their troubles. It\u2019s heartbreaking, how this place (and the people within it) splinter a seemingly unbreakable bond. Shoeshine<\/em> is that rare beast, a successful combination of poignant, human story and scorching indictment of the system, and it\u2019s lost none of its considerable power in the nearly 80s years since its making. (Includes bonus documentary, featurette, radio broadcast, trailer, and essay by David Forgacs.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n ON NETFLIX:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n On Swift Horses<\/em><\/strong><\/a>:<\/strong> Daniel Minahan\u2019s adaptation of Shannon Pufahl\u2019s novel has the lush, widescreen romanticism of studio pictures of its Eisenhower period, and Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi come off like old-fashioned movie stars of the era, sporting the same kind of jaw-dropping but lived-in beauty that Natalie Wood and James Dean had in Rebel Without a Cause<\/em>, or Wood and Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass<\/em>. That resemblance doesn\u2019t seem accidental; it\u2019s of that film\u2019s ilk but it can say the things Kazan and company could not, explicitly telling a story of sexual fluidity and the secrets we all keep. There\u2019s a kind of simmering sensuality throughout, particularly in Edgar-Jones\u2019s work\u2014hers is a nicely layered performance, carefully revealing the fire under the cool surface. There are some pat scenes in the home stretch, but this is a strong effort overall, with a big-swing ending that connects beautifully. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ON 4K \/ BLU-RAY \/ DVD \/ VOD:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bring Her Back<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>Danny and Michael Philippou\u2019s follow-up to Talk to Me<\/em><\/a> <\/em>boasts the same dynamic sense of craft and similar sense of mounting dread \u2014 and has the sophomore film feeling of attempting to crank up and outdo what came before. Here, that means there are images and sequences so deeply unsettling, so thoroughly unpleasant, that it becomes too hard to take, at least for anyone other than gore-hounds. Which is not to say that it\u2019s not worth seeing; Sally Hawkins is spectacular in a haunting turn as a foster mother whose gee-whiz nature proves (unsurprisingly) false, and its conclusion is highly satisfying, up to and including a doozy of a closing image. It gets under your skin, but in an awfully uncomfortable way. (Includes audio commentary and featurette.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n