The Best Movies to Buy or Stream This Week: 28 Years Later, M3GAN 2.0, Flow, and More

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’re watching.

PICK OF THE WEEK: 

Gang Related: When Tupac Shakur was murdered in 1996, he had completed work on two unreleased films: Gridlock’d and this cop drama from writer/director Jim Kouf. The former was seen as a prestigious indie project; this was treated like the redheaded stepchild, a throwaway thriller that basically went straight to video in which Pac played second fiddle to Jim Belushi, of all people. I might never have bothered to see it were it not for this stellar-as-usual Blu-ray release from Cinématographe, and that’s why it’s such a great label, because this is a true unsung gem. Kouf’s script is a Swiss watch that keeps turning itself upside down and inside out, as a pair of dirty cops (Belushi and Shakur) watch a bad drug rip-off snowball into an inescapable bear trap. Their energies are a surprisingly good match, and Kouf saw what it would take David Lynch to also identify: that beneath Belushi’s gregarious guy’s-guy exterior is an aptitude for villainy. And the supporting cast is bananas — any movie where James Earl Jones just shows up halfway through is worth your time. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, featurette, trailer, and essays by Quatoyiah Murry, Brandon Streussnig, and Travis Woods.)

ON 4K / BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:

Flow: Perhaps the most delightful upset at the most recent Academy Awards came in the Best Animated Feature category, where the behemoths of Disney/Pixar, DreamWorks, and Netflix all lost to this indie international animated movie (now joining the Criterion Collection) that was made entirely on open-source software. Co-writer/director Gints Zilbalodis keeps his story straightforward (and dialogue-free), following a sweet little grey kitty on a series of adventures, some modest, some thrilling. The easy-breezy vibes are immediately cozy and the animation is striking yet simple. And, just a tip: cat owners, watch this one with your pets, who will quickly be mesmerized by the real meows on the soundtrack — Sound designer Gurwal Coïc-Gallas used his own cat Miut as the voice of our hero.  (Includes audio commentary, feature-length animatic, interviews, featurettes, unused footage, trailers, TV spots, proof-of-concept teasers, short films, Zibalodis’s debut feature Away, and essay by Nicolas Rapold.) 

ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:

28 Years Later: The imagery is powerful and the gore is plentiful in director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland’s return to the zombie franchise they began (and fast-zombie glut they similarly started) with 2003’s 28 Days Later. But as with Boyle’s mournful, melancholy T2: Trainspotting, this sequel isn’t a nostalgia play or an easy paycheck; he takes care to update his style and storytelling to our current, frantic mood, via kinetic camerawork and a pulsing soundscape. Jodie Comer continues to amaze, newcomer Alfie Williams is superb, and Ralph Fiennes dazzles in one of those third-act, “oh right he’s in this too” turns that he does so well. (Also streaming on Netflix.) (Includes featurettes.) 

M3GAN 2.0: Director Gerard Johnstone’s sequel to his 2022 hit was considerably less profitable, which most folks seemed to attribute to a genre shift, away from the original’s straight-up horror vibe and into a kind of action-thriller mode. But that’s what makes this one commendable — god forbid, once in a blue moon, a filmmaker tries something new rather than merely recycling what worked before. Which is not to say that 2.0 is essential viewing; there are some corny moments and gags that don’t work, and Johnstone’s attempts to manufacture viral moments in the vein of its predecessor feel a touch sweaty. But it’s good, trashy fun, energetic and silly, which you can’t always say about horror sequels these days. (Includes unrated and theatrical versions and featurettes.) 

ON 4K:

Peking Opera Blues: Shout! Factory continues their run of releases for Hong Kong action classics with this 1986 banger from the great Tsui Hark. Its scope is somewhat breathtaking, telling a story of intrigue and action in and around the Peking Opera, in which several memorable characters intersect, guns are fired, fights are fought, the whole nine yards. It’s all frisky and playful and frequently sexy, Hark’s panache with an action set piece remains unparalleled, and Shout’s 4K restoration does right by the richly saturated visuals. (Includes audio commentary, new and archival interviews, and trailer.) 

The French Dispatch: Wes Anderson’s 2011 ensemble comedy/drama (joining the Criterion this week in both a stand-alone edition and as part of their massive Wes Anderson Archive) is one of his best, and perhaps his funniest – he’s firing on all comic cylinders here, filling this feature-length illustration of “an American magazine published in Ennui, France” with fabulous little flourishes of verbal and (especially) visual wit. It’s an anthology film, and as is so often the case, the quality varies from episode to episode; I found the Jeffrey Wright story strongest and the Timothée Chalamet the weakest, but your mileage may vary. Yet it all coheres beautifully under the umbrella of Anderson’s distinctive aesthetic and deadpan humor. (Includes audio commentary, storyboard animatic, visual essay, featurettes, interview, music video, trailer, and essay by Richard Brody.) 

The Beat That My Heart Skipped: Director Jacques Audiard’s international breakthrough was this 2005 drama (new to the Criterion Collection), a riff on James Toback’s New Hollywood favorite Fingers. As with that film, it concerns a young man (Romain Duris) who was once a gifted pianist, but turned his back on that world for the more immediate rewards of a life of crime — yet he finds himself drawn back in, unsure of why he’s even playing, torn between his high-minded artistic ambitions and the realities of his day-to-day. As in his best films (A Prophet, Rust and Bone, The Sisters Brothers), Audiard’s approach is so low-key and slice-of-life that you don’t even realize how much he’s drawn you in until he punches you in the gut. (Includes deleted scenes with commentary, interviews, press conference, rehearsal footage, trailer, and essay by Jonathan Romney.) 

Read My Lips: Criterion is also adding this earlier Audiard picture, which takes its title from the lip-reading abilities of Carla (Emmanuel Devos), who was once deaf (she now uses hearing aids). Vincent Cassel co-stars as Paul, an ex-con who applies for an assistant position in her office. She finds herself attracted to him, and you can see why; Cassel’s combination of danger and sexuality is especially potent here. What seems like an exploration of sexual attraction and obsession proves more slippery than that, and the joy of Read My Lips is how hard it is to pin down. Is it an erotic thriller? A broken romance? A social drama? A crime movie? Audiard doesn’t always nail big tonal swings (see his latest, Emilia Perez), but he does so gloriously here, right up through its charged, breathless third act. (Includes audio commentary, featurette, interview, deleted scenes with commentary, trailer, and essay by Ginette Vincendeau.)

Of Monsters and Madness: The Films of Larry Fessenden, Vol. 2: Vinegar Syndrome follows up their previous collection of ‘90s works by the indie grinder by following him into the 21st century, and the contrast is clear; with bigger budgets afforded by his burgeoning rep, Fessenden was able to land bigger stars and better production values while maintaining his masterful command of his craft. Wendigo features Patricia Clarkson and Jake Weber as a city couple getting away to the country for the weekend with their young son, and lends equal dread to the supernatural elements as to the fish-out-of-water examination of modern masculinity. The Last Winter features his best cast to date (Ron Perlman, James Le Gros, Connie Britton, Kevin Corrigan) in what begins as a riff on Carpenter’s The Thing, fleshed out with keen psychological thriller elements and smoothly interwoven environmental questions before becoming a gnarly and affecting survival story. (Includes new and archival audio commentaries, archival featurettes, interviews, full-length making-of documentary for The Last Winter, alternate ending for Wendigo, Fessenden short films, and trailers.)

ON BLU-RAY:

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas: The final directorial effort of Colin Higgins reunited him with his 9 to 5 star Dolly Parton for a high-spirited film adaptation of Larry L. King and Peter Masterson’s stage hit. As you’d guess from the title, it’s delightfully dirty, with bawdy lyrics and bare flesh a-plenty, but the most memorable element is the central romance between Parton’s madam and Burt Reynolds as the lenient local sheriff. They’re fun to watch together, conveying a genuine affection and attraction that does wonders for the picture’s emotional stakes — they take the relationship seriously, so we do too. The supporting cast is a hoot (particularly Charles Durning, in a nifty little bit of song-and-dance), and the ending is surprisingly affecting. Plus: see and hear Dolly sing “I Will Always Love You,” which certainly never appeared in a better film than this one. (Includes audio commentaries, featurette, outtakes, and theatrical trailer.) 

Fraud: “The following footage was found on YouTube” explains the opening text of this daring, experimental, found-footage documentary by Dean Fleischer-Camp, who was spending a lot of time on the platform in the 2010s thanks to the runaway success of his Marcel the Shell With Shoes On shorts. This couldn’t be further from the comic whimsy of those films. Fleischer-Camp discovered hours of home movies shot and posted by Gary Adams, who chronicled his average family’s everyday adventures in consumerism, and recut them into a fast-paced jaw-dropping crime movie. It’s kind of an incredible achievement in discovery and assembly — the sort of pointed and piercing post-modern collage filmmaking that I wish we saw more of in this era of non-stop documentation. (Includes featurettes, Q&A, and trailer.)

The Black Panther of Shaolin / The Black Six: The latest release from the wonderful folks at the American Genre Film Association and Something Weird Video is, as is often the case, less about the movies than what’s around them. The films themselves — the first a kung-fu movie with Blaxpoitation accents, the second a Blaxpoitation biker flick with a cast of pro football players — are both pretty lousy, but in a fun way, loaded with wooden performances, cornball dialogue, and less-than-stellar fight choreography. This one’s mostly worth picking up for the second disc, which includes three of Something Weird’s Martial Arts Mayhem mixtapes, their vintage ‘90s compilations of kung fu movie trailers. They give you 282 minutes of total Mayhem, equal parts classics and movies you’ve likely never heard of, and the trailers are often more entertaining than the movies. (Includes audio commentary for The Black Panther of Shaolin.)