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 The Movie Orgy<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>It ranked, for decades now, high on the list of physical media holy grails \u2014 and indeed, it would seem impossible that Joe Dante and Jon Davison\u2019s 1968 mash-up, a gleeful, funny, bizarre compilation of film clips, TV commercials, early TV shows, trailers, and other video ephemera, would ever see the light of an official release. And that\u2019s because it was never properly licensed, so as the film toured college campuses (and, in more recent years, revival houses and art museums) in its various mutations (it was an ever-evolving organism, with some cuts mutating to over seven hours), it seemed forever fated to be a thing you just had to be lucky enough to see. Bless, then, the fine folks at AGFA and Vinegar Syndrome, who cleared enough of the clips to release this 276-minute version on Blu-ray, and it\u2019s nearly as much of a hoot at home. Don\u2019t crowd me! (Includes introduction by Dante, trailer, and essays by Frank Felisi and Justin LaLiberty.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n ON NETFLIX:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Wake Up, Dead Man<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>The most admirable quality of Rian Johnson\u2019s latest Knives Out<\/em> sequel is how adroitly he manages to both deliver what audiences are expecting, and take real risks in the process of that delivery. Benoit Blanc doesn\u2019t show up until a good 30 minutes in, following a complex setup that methodically introduces a sprawling cast of characters \u2013 not only who they are, but how they\u2019re broken. But it\u2019s never less than involving, thanks to the trust Johnson has earned in these previous installments; we put ourselves in his hands, and those of his tip-top cast. Some cringed at the explicitly online-political pieces of Knives Out<\/em>, and they\u2019ll feel the same about some of this material, but to tell a story about modern religion without getting political would be wildly dishonest. More importantly, when you least expect it, Johnson nimbly navigates a turn into genuine grace and empathy; Benoit Blanc may be a \u201cproud heretic,\u201d but I don\u2019t think Johnson is, and that matters<\/a>. Wake Up Dead Man<\/em> does everything you want the third Knives Out<\/em> movie to do \u2014 and then it goes deeper, which is some neat trick<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ON MUBI:<\/strong>
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<\/strong>Die, My Love<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/em><\/strong>Lynne Ramsay\u2019s adaptation of Ariana Harwicz\u2019s novel has the punk energy of the filmmaker\u2019s best work, full of forceful compositions, knife-sharp edits, and intermingling flashbacks and detours, cultivating a dread-filled, anything-can-happen vibe. Jennifer Lawrence is magnificent (you absolutely cannot take your eyes off her) as a young mother suffering from a combination of postpartum depression and the mental illness of your choice; it\u2019s a slow-motion spiral into a bottomless pit of despair and fury, and she slowly but surely loses her damn mind. It\u2019s a tightrope of a performance, somehow retaining empathy while doing the most unsympathetic things, and the extent to which both the actor and director give no quarter to the expectations of a general audience is, frankly, sort of inspiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n