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 His Girl Friday<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur\u2019s stage hit The Front Page<\/em> was first made into a film in 1931, but for this 1940 adaptation (a new 4K upgrade from the Criterion Collection), director Howard Hawks and screenwriter Charles Lederer famously turned star reporter Hildy Johnson into a woman, created a romantic history with editor Walter Burns as adversarial as their work relationship, and wound up with one of the great comedies of the era. It hasn\u2019t lost a bit of its bite; this fast-talking, lightning-paced, whip-smart picture influenced everyone from Mamet to Sorkin to Tarantino. And the sexy spark of stars Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell still leaps from the screen \u2014 you can\u2019t imagine her actually running off with boring old Ralph Bellamy, simply because she and Grant get too much pleasure out of pushing each other\u2019s buttons. (Includes the full 1931 Front Page; <\/em>interviews; featurettes on Hawks, Russell, and Hecht; radio adaptations; trailers; and essays by Farran Smith Nehme and Michael Sragow.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n ON MUBI:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Mastermind<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: On a baseline level, it\u2019s kind of insane to imagine Kelly Reichart, the maker of such low-key indie dramas as Wendy and Lucy<\/em> and First Cow<\/em>, helming a heist movie. She\u2019s aware of that incongruity, and leans into it<\/a>, making a modest, \u201870s-era character study that not only de-glamorizes the heist itself (lingering on logistics, miring in minutiae, the execution more clumsy than cool) but the romantic notion of the life of crime. The early scenes find quiet irony in the domesticity of Josh O\u2019Connor\u2019s title character, whose planning meetings are interrupted by his curious but clueless wife (Alana Haim) and whose heist is thrown a monkey wrench by a forgotten inservice day for his kids (\u201cYou two stay outta trouble,\u201d he instructs them, handing them a few bucks). But the deeper it gets, the more ironic the title becomes, as the depths of his ineptitude are revealed. The jazz score by Rob Mazurek is appropriate, since the director is doing idiosyncratic variations on familiar themes, all while stubbornly refusing to take narrative shortcuts or go in easy directions. (Streams starting Friday<\/em>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n ON BLU-RAY \/ DVD \/ VOD:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Long Walk<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>It\u2019s a little nutty that, within the same year, we got two different adaptations of not just Stephen King books but specifically books written under his pseudonym Richard Bachmann (this and The Running Man<\/em>). It\u2019s even stranger that they\u2019re both dystopian nightmares that now seem like chillingly prescient predictions of the current moment. Beyond that, it\u2019s fascinating to contemplate the participation of director Francis Lawrence in The Long Walk<\/em>, since it now seems like such an obvious inspiration for the Hunger Games<\/em> franchise. As far as what\u2019s onscreen, this is a brutal but exhilarating watch<\/a>; the exposition is efficient, the characters are sharply drawn, and the acting is universally stellar, particularly Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson as the primary participants and Judy Greer in a brief but devastating turn as Hoffman\u2019s mom. And Mark Hamill (also seen in yet another<\/em> 2025 King adaptation, The Life of Chuck<\/em>) is a stunner, with a performance that\u2019ll make you wonder how King wrote such a pointed parody of Pete Hegsmith clear back in 1979. (Includes featurettes and trailer.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n