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:
Bless Their Little Hearts: American cinema is perpetually and woefully inadequate at telling stories of income inequality and class struggle, which is part of what made the films of the “L.A. Rebellion” of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s so powerful; they specifically address the systemic shortcomings that cause people to not only live in poverty, but stay there. That feeling of utter helplessness infests Billy Woodberry’s 1984 drama from its opening sequence, in which an instrumental version of “Nobody Loves You When You’re Down and Out” accompanies Charlie Banks (Nate Hardman) on his most recent visit to the unemployment office. At the time, the efforts of the Rebellion felt like America’s long-delayed answer to the neo-realism of Italy in the ‘50s, but now they play like dispatches from the working class, and assurances that even early on, Reaganomics was pure bullshit. (Includes audio commentary, short film, interviews, and essays by Allison Anders and Samantha N. Sheppard)
ON MAX:
Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes: Nanette Burstein’s compelling documentary finds the icon, in effect, narrating her own story, via recently discovered interview audio dating to 1964. Burnstein (American Teen, On the Ropes) moves through her life at a rapid clip, and while the various romantic entanglements, scandals, and tragedies have been well-documented, what’s of note here is Taylor’s tremendous candor and self-awareness. The only drawback of the lost audio is that it can only take the story so far, so the picture suffers from an inherent lopsidedness due to the source materials, hustling through the last several decades of her life in a minutes-long montage with only a comparatively surface Dominick Dunne interview from 1985 to provide a bookend. But that’s a small complaint; this is a fine film, giving us new food for thought about a figure about whom it might seem everything has been said.
ON AMAZON PRIME:
Waves: Trey Edward Schults (Krisha, It Comes at Night) writes and directs this shifting-narrative drama, tackling high school romance, toxic masculinity, and familial responsibility. Kevin Harrison, Jr. is a marvel in (initially, at least) the leading role, crafting a raw, vulnerable performance that soon reveals the rage inside. As his father, Sterling K. Brown masterfully shows us where both sides of that personality come from – he can shift from soft-spoken to shudderingly steely in the blink of an eye – and Lucas Hedges is disarming, deploying his considerable charisma to help the film’s unexpected hinge moment work. Waves was met with some derision when it hit theaters in 2019, and it certainly has its problems. But the earnestness of the picture is undeniable, and there are moments here of genuine, unvarnished power.
ON NETFLIX:
Man on Wire: Early on the morning of August 7, 1974 (the day before Nixon’s resignation), a French street performer and wirewalker named Philippe Petit stunned New York City, and the world, by walking a high-wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center without a net. Director James Marsh’s extraordinary and joyous documentary tells the remarkable story of Petit’s journey to that wire, via new interviews, archival footage, and stylish black-and-white reenactments. It’s equal parts heist movie (explaining, point-by-point, how they pulled it off) and a celebration of those towers—and of Petit’s stunt, seeing both as an act, a work of art, and a thing of beauty.
ON 4K / BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga: George Miller’s prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, the fifth film (though not chronologically!) in his “Mad Max saga,” can’t quite match the soaring heights of Fury Road—by my god, few films do. Once you’ve tempered your expectations, Furiosa is a thrilling, visceral experience, filled with striking images, hair-raising stunts, and memorable performances (please, for the love of God, keep Chris Hemsworth playing eccentric antagonists instead of hammer-wielding superheroes). And Anya Taylor-Joy fills the big shoes of Charlize Theron with flair, expertly bridging the character’s evolution from wide-eyed innocent to fierce desert warrior. (Streams Friday on Max.)(Includes featurettes.)
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
The Bikeriders: Jeff Nichols is among the most underrated feature filmmakers of our time, steadily cranking out expertly crafted, adult-oriented mid-budget fare to alarmingly little fanfare; that the same filmmaker gave us Mud, Take Shelter, Loving, and Midnight Special should be celebrated, rather than shrugged off. His latest is an adaptation of Danny Lyon’s pictorial chronicle of the first Midwestern motorcycle gangs, which shifts from a fond remembrance of boozy good times into considerably darker territory. Nichols convincingly recreates the atmosphere and camaraderie, and his cast is aces top to bottom; Austin Butler’s got the movie-star juice, Tom Hardy is both mesmerizing and impenetrable, Michael Shannon plays at his own tempo throughout (god bless him), and Jodie Comer makes a meal of several perfectly observed moments. It gets a little draggy in the back half, and slows to the occasional crawl to get introspective. But Nichols is going for something more nuanced than the typical ‘70s period drama, and credit where due for that. (Also streaming on Peacock.) (Includes audio commentary and featurettes.)
Femme: The violent inciting incident of Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping’s psychological thriller is visceral, brutal, and thankfully brief, as drag performer Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) has a tense encounter with a gang of homophobic hoods, and is badly beaten by Preston (George McKay), the worst of them. Three months later, Jules spots Preston in a gay sauna, and a plan for revenge begins to form. The question becomes when (and how far it will go), but Freeman and Ping’s screenplay is sharper and smarter than your typical revenge melodrama, thanks to the complexity of the characterizations and the credible performers who embody them. So nuanced are these people, yet so combustible is the inevitable reveal and confrontation, that it becomes impossible to guess where Femme is going — and at this moviegoing moment, that’s a high compliment indeed. (Includes Q&A, featurette, trailer, and essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas.)
ON 4K:
The Last Emperor: Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 Oscar winner for Best Picture and Best Director also won Vittorio Storaro some hardware for Best Cinematography, and Criterion’s new 4K upgrade is unsurprisingly gob-smacking; the lush images of this handsomely mounted production have never looked better at home. But it’s also worth nothing that Emperor is more than just pretty pictures—it’s a melancholy account of a boy ruler’s considerable fall, a story told in elliptical moments and interweaving flashbacks, with appropriate side-eyes for political and religious betrayals. John Lone is marvelous in the title role. (Inclues audio commentary, extended television version, featurettes, production footage, new and archival interviews, trailer, and essays by David Thomson and Fabien S. Gerard.)
Bill & Ted’s Most Triumphant Trilogy: Shout Selects follows up their 2018 release of the initial adventures of Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves) with a 4K upgrade that adds in 2020’s long-awaited third installment, Bill & Ted Face the Music. So yes, you’ll need to buy the whole damn thing again. 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure remains a clever, time-trotting slacker comedy, given a boost by its winking intelligence and a charming supporting turn by George Carlin. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, released two years later, may have aged even better, thanks to the uproarious inclusion of the Grim Reaper (William Sadler) following an extended Seventh Seal parody. (Yes, these dumb movies included Bergman satire. Turns out, they weren’t as dumb as they looked.) And Face the Music is a little rocky early on, as screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon (who also penned the earlier entries) must balance catch-up, fan service, and new characters and conflicts. But once it finds its rhythm, it hums right along, resulting in a sequel that’s somehow both offhand and meticulous, shaggy yet crisp, and the apparent joy of its creation is infectious. Frankly, that goes for all three of them. (Includes audio commentaries, featurettes, interviews, new and archival featurettes, and trailers.)
No Way Out: The best twist endings aren’t the M. Night Shymalan-style tricks that you spend the whole movie waiting for; they’re the ones that come unexpectedly, suddenly shifting the entire movie beneath your feet. Such is the case with Roger Donaldson’s bravura 1987 thriller (new to 4K from KL Studio Classics), where Kevin Costner plays a U.S. naval officer investigating the murder of his lover (Sean Young) by her previous paramour, the Secretary of the Defense (Gene Hackman)—though all fingers seem to point to our hero. And thus the film progresses as a tightly constructed, breathlessly executed thriller… and then they give you one more piece of game-changing information. Even if that turn doesn’t work for you (and it may not), there are plenty of thrills, chills, and sex to keep you busy along the way (Includes audio commentaries, interview, and trailer.)
Bob Le Flambeur: Jean-Pierre Melville’s crackerjack 1956 thriller (also new from KL), along with Jules Dassin’s Rififi the year before, set a template for the heist movie that we still adhere to: the perfect plan, the assembling of the team, the prep, the complications, the job, the payoff. But it’s much more than mere mechanics: like the best films of the French New Wave (which it also helped kick-start), the tropes of American crime pictures aren’t the focus, but merely serve the needs of the character drama Melville is more interested in making. And he does so in high style, with considerable help from Roger Duchesne in the leading role, the friendly gambler at the caper’s center. (Includes audio commentary, featurette, and trailer.)
Le Doulos: Six years later, with the French New Wave off and running, Melville crafted this sharp-edged story of crime, brutality, and betrayal, featuring Breathless star Jean-Paul Belmondo at his absolute coolest. The story is compelling, but this is the film where you really see the Melville style flowering: rough violence, offhand sexuality, and tough, hard cases in great hats and coats, growling at each other in run-down apartments. When they talk about the New Wave, this is what they’re talking about. (Includes audio commentary, interview, featurette, and trailer.)
Last Embrace: In 1979, between the quirky human comedies of Handle with Care and Melvin and Howard, Jonathan Demme directed this Hitchockian thriller, a North by Northwest riff with shout-outs to Vertigo and The Birds for good measure. Roy Scheider stars as a government agent and recent widower who is afraid his own agency is going to kill him next. It’s an unsung entry in the grimy ‘70s urban thriller milieu, a kind of spiritual successor to Three Days of the Condor, but enlivened by the genuine wit and elegance of Demme’s filmmaking and the urgency of Scheider’s sweaty, vulnerable performance. (Includes audio commentary, video essay, interview, trailer, and essays by Jim Hemphill, Jeva Lange, and Justin LaLiberty.)
Reptilicus: We do love an alternate-versions home video set (see last month’s release of The North Star / Armored Attack!) and this one’s a doozy—a 1961 Danish/American co-production of a kaiju adventure, shot both simultaneously and separately with most of the same cast, but in different languages by different directors. The fact that Vinegar Syndrome’s release gives the 4K disc solely over to the American version tells you where their preference lies (correctly), but watching and comparing the concurrent productions is, as with the 1931 English and Spanish takes on Dracula, fascinating and informative. The movie itself is pretty standard stuff, a well-made but undeniably derivative Godzilla riff; the presentation is what makes this one worth your time. (Includes alternate Danish version, audio commentary, featurettes, and interviews.)
ON BLU-RAY:
Bastards: Claire Denis’s 2013 dramatic thriller is a quiet and businesslike bit of work, even in its sex scenes and emotional confrontations; these are people who are not accustomed to raising their voices, even when they find themselves in the most dramatic circumstances. Vincent Lindon is a sea captain whose attempt to help his sister investigate her husband’s suicide leads him into the arms of the woman (Chiara Mastroianni) whose nefarious husband set the events in motion. The hushed intensity of the eroticism is vintage Denis, who simmers this story to the boiling point of an outcome as inevitable as it is astonishing. (Includes audio commentary, video essay, featurette, and essay by Madelyn Sutton.)
Brief Encounters / The Long Farewell: The Criterion Collection welcomes the first two solo features of Ukrainian filmmaker Kira Muratova, keenly observed and knottily executed stories of women under pressure. Brief Encounters is a sharp-edged domestic drama, with Muratova herself as a career woman and one side of a love triangle that includes her husband and their housekeeper. The Long Farewell is somewhat more stylized (and cynical), detailing the drifting-apart of a single mother and her teenage son, who decides he wants to move in with his estranged father. Both films are sneakily powerful, humming along in predictable ways before gut-punching the viewer in their closing passages. (Includes new and archival interviews and essay by Jessica Kiang.)
Navajo Joe: Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 Spaghetti Western is the very definition of a movie you couldn’t make today, thanks primarily to Burt Reynolds’s casting in the title role; the intensity of the violence will also alienate some viewers (it’s extreme even by Corbucci’s standards, and present from scene one, a graphic scalping of an unarmed Native girl). But if you can look past those historical and stylistic norms, there’s much to admire here. Reynolds was, by all accounts, miserable during the production, but he brings his A-game, exhibiting copious quantities of movie-star charisma, and he’s got a credible adversary in Aldo Sambrell, who is divine as the utterly contemptible villain. And when Corbucci cuts to a wide mountaintop shot of Reynolds, atop his horse in silhouette as Ennio Morricone’s score literally shrieks, sweet Jesus, that’s moviemaking right there. (Includes audio commentaries and trailer.)