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:
Anora: The big winner at this year’s Oscars — also the best film of the year, a rare but pleasing overlap — joins the Criterion Collection in a gorgeous 4K UHD edition, and hurray for that. This is his fourth straight film about sex workers, but from the very first, he found the right approach, granting these characters a flawed but undeniable humanity; he doesn’t judge, but also resists the urge to veer into nobility and tragedy. In fact, Anora is a wildly funny movie; its centerpiece sequence, which veers from danger to slapstick to one-crazy-night farce, would’ve been a five-minute montage in any other film. Here, it’s something like half of the movie, and miracle of miracles, Baker sustains it. He was good from the jump, but he’s becoming a more accomplished filmmaker each time out, and here he’s made a film that burrows into your brain, like one of the earworm dance tracks that blast through the strip club speakers, and stays there. (Includes audio commentaries, deleted scenes, audition footage, making-of documentary, interviews, Cannes press conference, trailers, and essays by Dennis Lim and Kier-La Janisse.)
ON NETFLIX:
Havoc: The Raid director Gareth Evans brings his trademark mixture of brutality and grace to this story of police corruption and crimes gone sideways. The story is old hat, with Tom Hardy as a dirty cop who’s rethinking his choices, Timothy Olyphant as a fellow cop who is doing no such thing, and Forest Whitaker as a crooked mayor whose son (Justin Cornwell) is caught in the crossfire. What matters here are the set pieces, which Evans builds and executes with exhilarating skill, filling the frame with impressive choreography, inventive prop work, and copious bloodshed (most of it unconvincing CG sprays, alas). It doesn’t reach the heights of his Raid pictures, but that’s a high bar indeed; for a straight-to-Netflix action-er, this is well above average.
ON 4K:
Jean de Florette / Manon of the Spring: Director Claude Berri’s epic two-part adaptation of Marcel Pagnol’s 1963 novels L’Eau des collines enters the Criterion Collection in glorious 4K, beautifully capturing the films’ stunning photography of the French countryside. The films deftly intermingle light and darkness, detailing how a farmer and his son attempt to manipulate the property of their neighbors to acquire it for themselves; Jean is the story of their scheme, and Manon picks up several years later, to dramatize their downfall. The expansive running time allows Berri to dig into the grist of the story (he somehow makes the logistics of farming fascinating, don’t ask me how), and to follow the tonal shifts and story twists into gut-punch territory towards the home stretch. (Includes two documentaries, trailers, and essay by Sue Harris.)
Basquiat: Painter-turned-filmmaker Julian Schnabel made his feature directorial debut with this portrait of his friend and fellow artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, played with overwhelming magnetism by Jeffrey Wright (his breakthrough performance, and still one of his best). Even while indulging in some of the tropes, Schnabel makes this less of a Doomed Genius Biopic than a snapshot of a scene, reveling in the loosey-goosey hangout life of a New York downtown artist in the early 1980s—a world in which Schnabel was himself ensconced, and the picture benefits greatly from his proximity. Terrific supporting performances abound, chief among them David Bowie, in a clever bit of casting, as Andy Warhol; he barely looks like Warhol, and certainly sounds nothing like him, but he has the aura down cold. Another new addition to the Criterion Collection, though only Schnabel’s new black-and-white version gets the 4K treatment; the original, color version is included on the accompanying Blu-ray, and considering the striking colors of Basquiat’s work, I’m still not certain the film is better without them. (Includes audio commentary, new and archival interviews, trailer, and essay by Roger Durling.)
Last Tango in Paris: The first thing we think of, when we think of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1972 drama, is the sex—but it’s far more than a skinflick, and even the ground-breaking eroticism becomes decidedly unerotic once Brando starts in about the fingernails and the pig vomit and the bestiality. (And that’s not even opening up the can of worms that is the butter scene.) Outside of the bedroom, director Bertolucci and his screenwriters aren’t looking to turn us on; if anything, they use the surface flash of the story, in which an American expat (Marlon Brando) and a young, soon-to-be-wed French woman (Maria Schneider) meet on a semi-regular basis for animalistic yet anonymous sexual encounters, into an unflinching examination of midlife crisis and sexual obsession, culminating in one of the more definitive rejections in movie history. Its legacy is, to put it mildly, “problematic,” but this is a major work of incalculable influence, and Distribpix’s 4K edition does it justice. (Includes new and archival interviews and location featurette.)
Tombstone: Disney had this 4K steelbook in the works before Val Kilmer’s untimely death earlier this month, but it seems like the best possible tribute, presenting his most memorable performance like the treasure that it is. That wasn’t always the way the studio treated George P. Costmatos’ Western drama; they gave it a no-confidence release in late 1993, burying it in the holiday rush and not screening it for critics, seemingly only to beat Lawrence Kasdan’s bigger-budget, higher-profile Wyatt Earp to the punch. But audiences, and the critics who checked it out on their own, were enthralled by it — thanks primarily to Kilmer’s iconic turn as the sickly yet witty Doc Holliday and Kurt Russell’s rock solid leading performance as Wyatt Earp. Surrounding them are Bill Paxton and Sam Elliott, dream casting as Wyatt’s brothers; a killer Powers Booth appearance as a genuinely loathsome villain; and one of the weirdest ensemble casts of the ‘90s (find me one other movie that includes Charlton Heston, Jason Priestley, and Thomas Haden Church). Russell made the way-weird choice to announce, after Costmatos’ 2005 death, that he had in fact ghost-directed the picture; whoever helmed it, they put together an engaging and entertaining throw-back oater, filled with sharp performances and quotable dialogue. (Includes featurettes, storyboards, and trailers and TV spots.)
King of New York: The mainstreaming of MS. 45 director Abel Ferrara culminated with this, perhaps his slickest feature, a neon-tinged crime picture with Christopher Walken as a Robin Hood-esque Manhattan crime boss. It’s one of his most Walken-esque performances (complimentary), and the supporting cast is mind-boggling (Laurence Fishburne, Wesley Snipes, Giancarlo Esposito, Steve Buscemi, and David Caruso are among the future stars—that’s not even all of them). But what’s really striking about the picture is Ferrara’s fierce command of form; he’s gone from a grubby, exploitation filmmaker to a first-class genre stylist, and every frame feels lived-in, pulsing, and dangerous, particularly in Lionsgate’s first-rate 4K transfer. (Includes audio commentaries, featurettes, interviews, music video, trailer, and TV spots.)
Basic Instinct: Lionsgate’s other ‘90s fave for the month is Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 hit, which continued the reign of the erotic thriller and made Sharon Stone a star. Her performance remains the primary attraction here, a ‘90s twist on the femme fatale as a fabulously successful novelist who gleefully pursues kinky sex and may or may not be a murderess. Michael Douglas’s characterization of the tough-guy cop who pursues her, as both a conquest and a suspect, has aged less well (it’s one of those movies where the hero has, in the ensuing years, become the antihero), and Joe Ezsterhas’s dialogue has faced the test of time least successfully. But Verhoeven’s direction is as sleek and sumptuous as ever, and it would frankly be difficult to find a movie that feels more like the early ‘90s than this one. (Includes audio commentaries, introductions, featurettes, storyboard comparisons, original screen tests, video scrapbook, trailers, and TV spots.)
Dirty Harry: Three vintage Clint Eastwood vehicles make their 4K UHD debuts this week from Warner Brothers, and all three are must-owns, chief among them this 1971 smash from Eastwood’s longtime collaborator and pal Don Siegel. Its title, and title character, became a go-to shorthand for tough-on-crime policing, but the picture isn’t nearly as black-and-white as its reputation (or its sequels); this is a character study first and foremost, drawn with a moral ambiguity and socio-political complexity that’s as fascinating now as it was in those tricky early days of the post-Miranda era. Siegel’s direction is, as ever, comfortingly sure-handed, and Eastwood strides across the street like a lion in a cage. (Includes audio commentary, featurettes, and two feature-length Eastwood documentaries.)
The Outlaw Josey Wales: Second in this week’s Eastwood trilogy is this 1976 effort, an exceptional Western, not quite traditional, not quite as boldly revisionist as the other films (like McCabe and Mrs. Miller or The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean) that challenged the genre in the 1970s. Its innovations are mostly quiet ones, shifts in conventional characterization or storytelling, augmented by the kind of crowd-pleasing shoot-outs and tough-guy dialogue that audiences flocked to Eastwood movies to see. They got what they expected from Eastwood the actor, but for Eastwood the director (taking on that role for the fifth time), it was an important turning point in the progression towards Unforgiven, his Western magnum opus. WB’s 4K restoration crisply captures the vast vistas as well as the weirdly visceral, almost surreal photography of the “attack of the comancheros” sequence. (Includes audio commentary and featurettes.)
Pale Rider: By the mid-1980s, Eastwood had just about given up the Westerns he’d made his name on for Dirty Harry movies and similarly lucrative cop pictures. But in 1985, he starred in and directed this elegaic story of a mysterious gunman who saves a small town from an evil miner and his henchman. Critics mostly dismissed it as Shane Lite, but Eastwood’s performance is lean and muscular, his direction brutally efficient, and in both areas, you can see the continuing genre exploration and demystification that would culminate in his next and final Western, the aforementioned Unforgiven. (Includes featurettes and two feature-length Eastwood documentaries.)
The Good German: Steven Soderbergh loves a challenge — his entire career has, in some ways, played out like an extended version of The Five Obstructions — and he took on a compelling one with this 2006 WWII drama: telling a period story using only the filmmaking tools of the period, meaning that this Casablanca riff uses only the distinctive cameras, lenses, and audio recording equipment of that era. That’s mostly catnip for us eggheads, though; it’s also a sweeping, romantic yarn, with appropriately movie-star glam leading turns by Soderbergh regular George Clooney and his recent Black Bag co-star Cate Blanchett, and an inspired supporting turn by Tobey Maguire in Weird Little Guy mode. This one never made it past DVD, so Warner Bros. giving it a 4K release — alongside its long-awaited Blu-ray — is an unexpected delight. (Includes trailer.)
The Informant!: Soderbergh and his Contagion and Side Effects screenwriter Scott Z. Burns first teamed for this 2009 adaptation (also new on 4K from Warners) of Kurt Eichenwald’s book, telling the true story of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), an agri-industry executive-turned-whistle-blower, who alerted the FBI to an international price-fixing conspiracy. It sounds, at first glance, like a retread of Michael Mann’s The Insider; leave it to Soderbergh and Burns to decide it was a comedy, an oddball journey into the mind and psyche of a self-important doofus. Damon is terrific in a full departure from pretty much anything else in his filmography, and Soderbergh finds just the right eccentric tone for this very unconventional piece of work. (Includes audio commentary, additional scenes, and theatrical trailer.)
Sneakers: Phil Alden Robinson’s 1992 treat gets the 4K bump it deserves via KL Studio Classics, and it remains a whip-smart crowd-pleaser, lovingly intermingling the conventions of the heist picture, the lovable underdog movie, and the conspiracy thriller. The script, which Robinson co-wrote with WarGames scribes Lawrence Lasker and Walter Parkes, has proven remarkably prescient on matters of national security and the commodification of information, but it’s mostly aged as well as it has because of its human comedy – its characters are clearly drawn and beautifully matched, played to perfection by Robert Redford and a stellar ensemble that includes Sidney Poitier, River Phoenix, David Straithairn, Dan Aykroyd, Mary McDonnell, and a chilling Ben Kingsley. (Includes audio commentaries, featurette, and trailer.)
Foul Play: I have such intense nostalgia for this 1978 mystery-comedy-romance from writer/director Colin Higgins (it was all but inescapable in the early days of pay cable) that it’s easy to forget its considerable flaws — namely, that Higgins makes the mistake of giving more time and attention to the mystery than the comedy or the romance. With blander actors, that might not matter; with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase at their funniest and most staggeringly hot paired up for the leads, it’s a miscalculation. But there is enough of their tentative courtship, and of the goofy stuff on the side (particularly Dudley Moore’s uproarious appearance as a swinging single), for this one to land anyway. (Includes audio commentary, featurette, trailers, and TV and radio spots.)
Career Opportunities: Some may argue that you don’t need a 4K UHD for a movie best known as a gif (if ya know, ya know), and I won’t attempt to make the argument that this slight 1991 comedy from the John Hughes factory is anything resembling art. (Well, maybe that gif is.) But it’s a low-key charming time-passer, with Frank Whaley in a rare leading role as a Ferris Bueller-style lovable corner-cutter and Jennifer Connolly as the poor little rich girl who ends up, somewhat incredibly, locked into a Target with him over one long night. Being a post-Home Alone Hughes pic, there are a pair of bumbling crooks in the mix (played by real-life brothers Dermot and Kieran Mulroney) and a John Candy cameo as a welcome bonus. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, and trailer.)
Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead: This 1995 Miramax crime thriller (also new from KL) is often pinpointed as the most egregious of the post-Pulp Fiction Tarantino knock-offs, even as screenwriter Scott Rosenberg swore up and down that it was written years earlier (sure, Jan). And it’s not much of a leap, thanks to the presence of Tarantino regulars like Christopher Walken and Steve Buscemi, and the script’s writerly proliferation of lingo, catch-phrases, and street chatter, much of which isn’t terribly convincing. But it’s worth seeing, primarily for the magnetic leading turn by Andy Garcia at his coolest (and hottest), and for a winning supporting turn from Christopher Lloyd, doing the kind of tragicomic work he rarely had the chance to try. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, featurette, and trailer.)
Drop Zone: Another 4K debut from the fine folks at Cinématographe, who continue to gleefully blur the lines between high and low art. This 1994 John Badham movie (that’s the verbiage he used on his credit cards) was a commercial and critical failure upon its release, but it’s exactly the kind of well-crafted junk food we don’t get anymore, in lieu of bankrupt IP plays and mindless origin stories. This is simply the story of a federal marshal (Wesley Snipes) who tracks down a gang of parachuting criminals, looking for revenge after they kill his brother (a delightful Malcolm Jamal-Warner). Gary Busey plays the big bad in exactly the same key as his thrillseeker-hunting FBI man in Point Break, almost as if that guy went rogue, and I admire the decision; Snipes was at his most charismatic in this period, which helps paper over the thinness of his character. The main draw here is the action sequences, where the practical stunts and Badham’s clear-headed direction really shine. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, video essay, and essays by Simon Abras, Bilge Ebiri, Mark Edward Heuck, and Justin LaLiberty.)
ON BLU-RAY:
Prince of Broadway: Criterion bookends the release of Sean Baker’s latest picture with one of his first, a loose and playful low-budget winner from 2008. As with much of his work, Prince grabs our interest as a “how it works” story, detailing as it does the logistics of one of those Chinatown-adjacent fly-by-night spots that sells knockoff handbags, replica sneakers, and other stolen or bootleg items via back rooms, street hustling, and cash-only transactions. Prince Adu stars as Lucky, one of the street barkers for such an operation, whose entire laid-back lifestyle is turned upside down by the unexpected arrival of a toddler son he didn’t know about. He is, to put it mildly, ill-equipped for the job, and as in much of his work, Baker mines considerable tension from scenes of people under pressure beyond their means. Yet, then as now, he’s always empathetic to his characters, screw-ups though they may be; they may do ill-advised or even terrible things, but you always understand their logic. (Includes audio commentaries, introduction, featurettes, restoration demonstration, trailers, and essay by Robert Daniels.)
Baby It’s You: John Sayles’ 1983 coming-of-age drama gets the special edition treatment from the fine folks at Fun City Editions and, hopefully, finds a new audience. Rosanna Arquette is radiant and wonderful as a Jewish good-girl type, gobsmacked by the charms of an Italian bad boy (Vincent Spano) who’s new to their New Jersey high school, circa 1967. Sayles knows this is well-trod ground, but he finds the complexity in these characters and situations — he captures the urgency and eroticism of first love, as well as the importance of getting that love out of your system. His sense of time and place is indelible, and the cinematography (by frequent Scorsese lenser Michael Ballhaus) is top-notch, but this is Arquette’s show; watch the way her eyes flash when she looks at him, which tells a whole story in an instant. (Includes audio commentary and new interviews.)
The Adventurers: The accomplished Hong Kong action auteur Ringo Lam directed and co-wrote this 1995 banger (his last before heading to Hollywood), which gets a crisp Blu-ray via Eureka Entertainment. The endlessly charismatic Andy Lau (Infernal Affairs) stars as Wai, who sees his parents killed at the tender age of 8, and spends the rest of his life seeking to avenge their murders by taking down the powerful gangster (Paul Chun) who pulled the trigger. The plotting is marvelously convoluted, and barely matters anyway; we’re waiting for the kinetic action beats, which Lam delivers with his customary skill, and on a massive and impressive scale. (Includes audio commentary, new and archival interviews, trailer, and essay by Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park.)
Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got: The Oscar winner for 1985’s best documentary feature gets a much-needed 4K restoration and soundtrack remastering for this new Blu-ray release from Film Movement Classics. Stylistically, the film is nothing special; it’s a fairly straightforward, vanilla PBS talking-head-and-voice-over sort of situation. But all of that barely matters, because Shaw, a groundbreaking swing-era bandleader and gossip columnist staple, was such a fascinating figure, telling his own story of assimilation and aspiration with both candor and chest-thumping. Director Brigette Berman knows when to push in and when to lean back, and when she holds on him, for minutes, merely listening to his classic recording of “Summertime” and then saying, simply, “Yeah, that’s a good record”… well, that’s documentary gold right there. (Includes audio commentary and essay by Bill Milkowski.)
The Sword and the Claw: Another left-field treat from the freaks at the American Genre Film Archive, this 1975 Turkish import (original title: Kiliç Aslan) stars Cüneyt Arkin as a fierce fighting machine who won’t let anything stop his quest for revenge — even his enemies cutting off his hands, which he replaces with the metal claws of the title. It all sounds nuts, and it is, but there’s real craft at work here; Natuk Baytan is a DIY artist, building this amalgam of stilted exposition and no-budget battles into, improbably enough, a swashbuckling epic. (Includes action trailer reel and bonus movie The Brawl Busters, an entertaining kung-fu cheapie screened with The Sword and the Claw in its initial U.S. grindhouse release.)
