Jason Bailey
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:
Shoah: “No one was supposed to be left to bear witness.” So explains one of the many, many interview subjects of Claude Lanzmann’s epic documentary about the Holocaust’s implementation across Poland (a mainstay of the Criterion Collection, upgrading to Blu-ray). Lanzmann’s technique is arresting; though the picture runs over nine hours total, he uses no archival footage and no commentary from experts and historians. He merely talks to people — survivors, observers, perpetrators — some of whom witnessed these horrors and cannot forget them, some of whom carried on as if they hadn’t seen them at all. He focuses (some might say fixates) on process, no detail too minor or grisly, as if to remind us that this was not some kind of supernatural villainy, but people going about the business of human extermination. But over the course of its backbreaking running time, a theme emerges that is both troubling and timely: it’s about evil, yes, but it’s just as much about collaboration. (Includes three additional Lanzmann films, interviews, featurette, essay by Kent Jones, and writings by Lanzmann.)
ON HULU:
Heretic: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods write and direct, and their screenplay is as narratively efficient as you’d expect from the writers of A Quiet Place, hustling to the battle of wits and theological philosophies that sets things in motion, but with just enough character and relationship development to put us on solid ground as they go through that door. The filmmakers conform to the A24 house style without sacrificing a sense of pace or excitement; the picture moves like a shot, comes in as late as possible, and jumps out with similar brevity. It’s a sturdy and effective thriller, and serves as further confirmation that Hugh Grant, playing grippingly against type, is still capable of surprising (and even shocking) his audience.
ON NETFLIX:
To Die For: It’s all but impossible to imagine, but once upon a time, people didn’t really take Nicole Kidman all that seriously; she was Tom Cruise’s wife first and an actor second, and her early starring vehicles (Far and Away, Billy Bathgate, My Life, Batman Forever) didn’t do much to dispute the notion. But this black comedy from director Gus Van Sant changed all that, casting Kidman as a seemingly chipper suburban wife and would-be TV journalist with ice water running through her veins. Buck Henry’s whip-smart script satirizes and analyzes the mid-‘90s media landscape with all the precision and subtlety that Natural Born Killers eschewed, while Van Sant showed, for the first time, that he could direct a mainstream-leaning movie with all the style and intelligence of his indies. It’s well cast from top to bottom (Matt Dillon is at his lunkheaded best as her ill-fated husband, while Joaquin Phoenix dazzles as the teen she seduces and destroys), but this is Kidman’s show, and she crushes it.
ON 4K UHD / BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
Backrooms: Kane Parsons makes some of the mistakes you might expect from a 20-year-old making his feature debut; his exposition is somewhat heavy-handed, and he takes a little too long to get things going. But once he does, watch out. This is a patient, deliberate, and altogether unnerving slice of contemporary horror, in which Chiwetel Ejiofor, as the owner of the splendidly named discount furniture store Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, discovers a seemingly endless and not-quite-right sub-basement in his store, and starts exploring. The acting is sharp, the lore is clever, and the suspense beats are taut and well-executed; Parsons is, as you’ve probably heard by now, a filmmaker to watch. (Includes audio commentary, bonus footage, and featurettes.)
She Rides Shotgun: Low-key one of the best movies of 2025, Nick Rowland’s adaptation of Jordan Harper’s crime novel is exactly the kind of jumpy, unpredictable character-driven genre movie that they seemed to stop making in the ‘90s. But sometimes they still do, and this one has the take-no-prisoners energy and jittery pacing of that era’s most memorable pictures. Taron Egerton, who is turning into one of the more reliable and compelling actors of his generation, stars as an ex-con trying to evade killer white supremacists, with his young daughter in tow; she’s played by an extraordinary young actress named Ana Sophia Heger, whose final scene here, a delicate balance of about seven contrary emotions, is some of the best film acting in recent memory. (Includes trailer.)
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
Minions & Monsters: Look, I’m not here to claim that the latest effort from notoriously half-assed family filmmakers Illumination Entertainment is some sort of masterpiece — but it kind of is when put up against something like Despicable Me 4 or Sing, and we parents take our wins where we can get them. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that this one situates the little yellow whozewhatsits in the early days of Hollywood; yes, friends, it’s a “valentine to cinema,” but the homages are clever and genuine enough that it sorta comes across, at least enough to garner much better reviews than is typical for the studio. (And so, of course, it was a huge commercial disappointment.) The gags are well built and expertly executed, and the voice talents are having a blast — particularly Christoph Waltz, who was sort of born for this kind of thing, the more you think about it. (Includes featurettes.)
Disclosure Day: The first and only time I checked my watch during Steven Spielberg’s latest, it was mostly out of curiosity — it felt like the narrative was wheeling into the third act, but that couldn’t be, because the movie had just started, right? No, we were 100 minutes in, but that’s Spielberg; he hits the ground running here and barely pauses to take a breath. It’s full of moments delightful for their sheer innovation, momentary reminders that there’s still no one better at showing us things in an inventive and unexpected way, and every performance is a winner (particularly Emily Blunt, in a role that could have so easily lapsed into bad laughs). David Koepp’s clever script slyly comments on current events in a manner that never feels heavy-handed, reminding us that values like empathy, science, and knowledge are not, contrary to popular belief, political buttons to push. (Includes featurettes.)
Two Prosecutors: Sergei Loznitsa’s potent historical drama (new on Blu from Criterion Premieres) is a textbook case of “it’s not what it’s about, but how it’s about it”; I could sum up what actually happens in its 118 minutes in a sentence or two, but that would put across nothing about the tension and unease that’s packed into every frame. Set during Stalin’s great purge, it finds a young prosecutor summoned to a Soviet gulag by an Old Bolshevik who has been imprisoned and beaten; the prosecutor attempts, carefully, to bring the injustice to the Prosecutor General in Moscow – a figure as entrenched and corrupt as our hero is an idealist outsider. That’s the whole story, really, but not unlike Lanzmann, Loznitsa focuses on the logistics of injustice, and how feigned ignorance and genuine threats keep smother meaningful change in its crib. And that is unique to neither that time nor that region. (Also streaming on the Criterion Channel.) (Includes interview, trailer, and essay by Beatrice Loayza.)
ON 4K UHD:
12 Angry Men: Some directors are slow out of the box, but not Sidney Lumet; this, his 1957 debut feature (bumped up to 4K from Criterion) is still one of the sharpest films ever made about American jurisprudence. He was no novice, of course; he’d honed his skills with hours upon hours of live teleplays — though, significantly, not the original iteration of this vice-grip real-time drama, set in the deliberation room of a capital murder trial. The cast is a murderer’s row of great character actors (and great faces), led by Henry Fonda as the initially lone holdout and Lee J. Cobb as his primary antagonist. The screenplay by Reginald Rose is so precise and nuanced that one might miss the skill of Lumet’s filmmaking, as he subtly shifts shot sizes and compositions to reflect the rising tempers and tensions around the jury table. But that’s an appropriate kickoff to Lumet’s career, which he spent making great American movies without ever seeming to show off. (Includes television version, featurette, new and archival interviews, “Tragedy in a Temporary Town” teleplay, trailer, and essay by Thane Rosenbaum.)
Out of the Past: I cannot think about Jacques Tourneur’s classic film noir (new on 4K from Warner Archive) without thinking of Roger Ebert, who wrote about it so eloquently — specifically, about its smoking. “Few movies use smoking as well as this one,” he wrote. “In their scenes together, it would be fair to say that Mitchum and Douglas smoke at each other, in a sublimated form of fencing.” That smoke, and how it drifts in and out of the light and shadow, are all part of the seductive yet menacing tone that Tourneur establishes early and maintains throughout; it’s easy to call this a quintessential noir, because it’s filled with so many of the genre’s standbys (the horny chump, the femme fatale, the bruising other man, etc.), but it’s just as easy to call it the best of all noirs. (Includes audio commentary.)
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret: Judy Blume waited over 50 years to sell the film rights to her beloved pre-teen novel, and there’s some danger in adapting it so much later; the book was so wildly influential that though there hasn’t been an official film adaptation, plenty of movies have stolen from it. Yet screenwriter/director Kelly Fremon Craig (The Edge of Seventeen) found exactly the right approach for her 2023 feature (now getting a delayed 4K release), retaining the 1970 setting and the vivid (sometimes cringe-inducingly so) portraiture of middle-school life. The characters are keenly defined, and everybody gets an arc—not just Margaret (a wonderful young actress named Abby Ryder Fortson) but her mother (the always-excellent Rachel McAdams), father (Benny Safdie) and grandmother (Kathy Bates). What sets this one apart are all the little character touches and narrative details most teen/tween movies don’t even bother with, and the result is a triumph — smart, sensitive, and sometimes simply heartbreaking. (Includes featurettes, deleted scenes, roundtable discussion, and trailer.)
Bride of Re-Animator: The 1990 direct-to-video sequel to Stuart Gordon’s cult fave horror/comedy starts off rocky, the absence of writer/director Gordon (and star Barbra Crampton) felt keenly enough to result in some fairly sweaty overplaying. But once director/co-writer Brian Yunza settles down and settles in, he finds his own workable groove, crafting a sustainable follow-up (the premise is right there in the title, but it’s as smart a play as it was for James Whale) and leaning into the comedy-team dynamics of returning stars Bruce Abbott and Jeffrey Combs; there’s something of a Martin and Lewis element to their byplay, the handsome straight man bouncing off the absolute nutcase. Yunza works out some ingenious slapstick bits with errant body parts (the dog with the human arm is a comic highlight), and builds in confidence as he works up to a nicely fevered pitch in the climax. Ignite Films gave the first film a delightfully lavish deluxe treatment last year, and doesn’t let the sequel’s somewhat lesser reputation stop them from treating this one with just as much reverence. (Includes new and archival audio commentaries, new and archival interviews, feature-length documentary, featurettes, deleted scene, behind-the-scenes reel, and trailer.)
Looney Tunes Collectors Vault, Vol. 3: Nicely timed to the long-delayed theatrical release of Coyote vs. Acme, the latest addition to the Blu-ray collection of rare-ish Merrie Melodies contains the usual assortment of ‘toons that have aged badly (the treatment of Native Americans in “Horse Hare,” for example), some that have left rotation perhaps due to mere titling (the Daffy and Porky short “Boobs in the Woods,” for example) and some that have just fallen through the cracks. There’s an awful lot of Sylvester and Tweety here, for example, most of it quite fun (“A Pizza Tweety-Pie,” which puts the pair in the exotic locale of Venice, and “Trick or Tweety,” which gives Sylvester some fierce competition for his prey). But the best of the bunch may well be “Ballot Box Bunny,” which finds Bugs and Yosemite Sam competing for votes, and reminds us that the unapologetic pandering and cheerful mud-slinging of the political process is one topic that never ages. (Includes audio commentaries.)
Tequila Sunrise: I sneak-rented this 1988 neo-noir thriller way back in its initial VHS run, and all I could remember, upon revisiting it for the first time via Arrow’s crisp new 4K edition, was that it felt so grown-up to my 13-year-old eyes: a movie about, and made by, adults. That wasn’t such a rarity for studio pictures back then, but it’s not exactly the norm now, so it’s aged pretty well (aside from that Dave Grusin score, but that goes for most of his work). It’s populated by professionals: Conrad Hall shot it, Dick Sylbert designed it, and Robert Towne wrote and directed it, populating it with an absurdly good-looking cast (and ace character actors like J.T. Walsh in supporting roles). Stars Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Kurt Russell are all incandescent with movie star shine, making meals of Towne’s juicy dialogue — and then Raul Julia waltzes in and steals the whole damn thing. What a picture! (Includes audio commentary, interviews, featurette, trailer, and essays by Sean Hogan and Josh Nelson.)
ON BLU-RAY:
Star Trek: The Complete Series: Just in time for the show’s 60th anniversary, Paramount and CBS collect every damn episode of the O.G. series in all of their goofy glory. Oh sure, it’s a re-release, but it’s priced to move ($85 at the moment), loaded to the gills with bonus features (nine-plus hours), and looks fantastic; these episodes have never glistened like they do here. But at its core, what still makes it so good is what was there from the beginning: the peerless chemistry between leads William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, the fine work of its ensemble cast, and creator Gene Rodenberry’s knack for smuggling social commentary into sci-fi tropes. Sometimes things are classics for a reason. (Includes audio commentaries, featurettes, interviews, trivia tracks, panel discussions, and previews.)
TAG: The Assassination Game: Before he got his big shot with The Last Starfighter, Nick Castle put in his time at the Corman factory with this 1982 action-comedy. He’s doing a lot of winking at other movies, from the bond riff opening forward, but it’s more endearing than obnoxious; he’s one of those novice directors who’s clearly not sure he’ll get another shot, so he goes for broke. The cast is stellar (mostly; sorry-not-sorry to any extant fans of Michael Winslow) and the premise is juicy, but weirdly, surprisingly, what makes it play is the romance between stars Robert Carradine and Linda Hamilton. Most movies would treat their mutual pursuit as a throwaway, but there’s a real rooting interest thanks to the strength of their charisma — particularly the pre-Terminator Hamilton, who is so sexy, funny, and charming that she even gets away with quoting Bacall’s instructions on how to whistle. (Includes audio commentary and trailer.)
