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:
Bringing Out the Dead: Seldom discussed among his finest pictures, weirdly dismissed by audiences (and most critics) at the time of its 1999 release, and previously only available for home viewing on an old and crummy DVD, this haunting and powerful drama reteams director Martin Scorsese with Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader for a similar story of a lonely man (this time, an ambulance driver) cruising through the New York night. It vibrates with a punk edge, its kinetic 911 calls shot and edited at a fever pitch, but its real turbulence is internal; Nicolas Cage’s Frank is a man on the edge, on the verge of either falling into the abyss or pulling himself back. He’s a more thoughtful character than Travis Bickle, and one capable of a different outcome—where, instead of lashing out in vengeful violence, he reaches deep into his soul and tries to find a peace within. Robert Richardson’s starkly contrasting jet-blank and hot-white lighting schemes have rarely been so thematically appropriate, and Paramount’s crisp 4K transfer do them justice. And, bonus, you can also read it as Scorsese’s version of A Christmas Carol. (Includes interviews and featurettes.)
ON NETFLIX:
His Three Daughters: Three adult sisters assemble as their father, whose cancer is “very advanced,” is going into hospice care in this staggeringly good comedy/drama from writer/director Azazel Jacobs. The personality types are established early: the bossy one (Carrie Coon), the ne’er do well (Natasha Lyonne), and the peacemaker between them (Elizabeth Olsen), though one of the small miracles of Jacobs’s screenplay is how keenly it understands that we all end up merely filling the roles we’ve been placed in, no matter the accuracy. In fact, the intelligent and insightful writing makes it clear that they’re all flawed and complicated and petty and fascinating, caught at a moment in their lives of heightened emotion and elevated vulnerability, where everything is just raw, and so the wounds are even deeper than they initially appeared. Every performance is a winner, and the closing passages are just gut-wrenching.
ON APPLE TV+:
Wolfs: A gun to my head, I couldn’t explain why, in as many months, Apple Original Films has given barely-there theatrical releases to two different caper comedies featuring stars of the Ocean’s franchise—movies that would have made a mint at the box office a few short years ago. But I’m no fancy CEO, I’m merely a critic, and I’m here to tell you that this George Clooney/Brad Pitt vehicle (basically Michael Clayton x 2 ÷ Ocean’s) is the kind of good-if-not-great, solid B+ middlebrow star vehicle that we used to get a lot more of, and we were better for it. As a pair of fixers thrown together against their better judgment, they get a good dynamic going, with Clooney as the take-charge straight man and Pitt wryly deflating him at every turn. Writer/director Jon Watts tries to pivot into serious crime drama towards the end, which doesn’t quite land; this story, and these guys, work best in light comedy mode. At its best, Wolfs is a slightly meta pleasure, allowing us to view both its characters and its actors as a pair of old pros, just doing what they do. (Streaming Friday.)
ON AMAZON PRIME:
Challengers: Luca Guadagnino seems, at times, to have become a one-man crusade against the dire sexlessness of the contemporary cinema; while his contemporaries pull their punches and pearl-clutching Zoomers bloviate on Twitter about the “necessity” of onscreen eroticism, he’s turning out pictures that are breathlessly, delightfully hot—and, frequently, comparatively boundary-bending. His spring release (he already has Queer on the festival circuit for later this year) may be the most boy-bi-friendly mainstream release in Hollywood history—though that doesn’t take much—a glisteningly entertaining examination of sports, sex, power dynamics, and the freedom to not only understand what you want, but take it. Mike Feist confirms the burning charisma that made his West Side Story turn so memorable, Josh O’Connor stakes a claim as one to watch, and Zendaya has, simply, never been better.
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
Inside Out 2: Pixar’s turn from reliable, delightful source of boundlessly original works to a dollar-chasing sequel machine certainly won’t be halted by the jaw-dropping commercial success of their latest effort, even though it’s a marked step-down in quality from the heart-wrenching 2015 original. (And the cheapskating replacement of Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling gives the whole thing an unavoidable Return of Jafar stink.) That grousing aside, there’s a lot to like here: several sparkling new voice performers, plotting that grapples admirably with the trickiness of puberty, and the addition of Anxiety (nicely voiced by Maya Hawke), a wrinkle that will hit the target age range (and their parents, hi) with poignance and recognition. (Also streaming tomorrow on Disney+.) (Includes deleted scenes and featurettes.)
Late Night with the Devil: That-guy character actor David Dastmachlian stars as Jack Delroy, a Carson-style late night talk show host in the late 1970s, whom we meet in clever documentary opening, which uses faux-archival footage and clippings, magazine covers, and the like to fill in the show’s backstory and set us up for the main event: the full master tape of its Halloween 1977 show, “the TV event that shocked the nation.” Directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes niftily replicate the look and feel of the era’s late shows, while wisely varying the gag by going to black-and-white behind-the-scenes footage during station breaks. Some of the supporting players are a touch thin, and the picture goes on a few minutes too long, with an epilogue that it could’ve done without. But Dastmachlian crafts a powerhouse performance; he gets the laughs, but conveys the talk show host’s darkness and deep cynicism when it counts. (Includes audio commentary, Q&A, and featurette.)
I Used to Be Funny: Shiva Baby and Bottoms star Rachel Sennott is quickly becoming one of our most bracing and sublime performers, and this modest indie is an ample showcase for her considerable dramatic gifts—a bit of a bait-and-switch, since she stars as a stand-up comic, though one who’s not quite feeling her comedic power these days. (What the hell, it’s right there in the title.) The Daily Show stalwart Jason Jones plays nicely against type as the employer responsible for her psychological spiral, and while Ally Pankiw’s screenplay relies too heavily on the tropes of the trauma narrative (we love a gradually revealing flashback, don’t we folks?), her direction is sure-footed and tonally dexterous. (Includes audio commentary, trailer, and essay by Andrew Crump.)
The Becomers: In films like Little Sister, White Reindeer, and Vacation!, writer/director Zach Clark has become one of the current indie scene’s most reliably eccentric voices, mixing the remnants of a mumblecore aesthetic with the perceptiveness and intelligence of the best social satirists. His latest is old-school sci-fi, in the best sense—low-budget and lo-fi, but with more on its mind than its surface story of alien invaders. Odd and funny and surprisingly touching, it turns its Body Snatchers-esque set-up into one of the deftest commentaries yet on the COVID-era, and the specific brainworms our dopiest citizens acquired in that period. (Includes audio commentary, isolated music track, short film, deleted scenes, trailer, and essay by Justine Smith.)
Tótem: Quietly but keenly observed, the sophomore feature from Mexican writer/director Lila Avilés is simultaneously a warm celebration of the power of family, and a prickly portrait of the limitations of that power. She captures that tension by telling her story primarily through the eyes of Sol, a good-natured seven-year-old who understands that her father is dying, though not why; Avilés centers the action on a single day, as his extended family prepares the house for a birthday party of tremendous emotion and conflict. There are light moments of character comedy to balance out the simmering (and eventually surfacing) resentments, building to one of the more devastating closing images of recent memory. (Includes interview and trailer.)
ON 4K UHD:
Happiness: Like Bringing Out the Dead, Todd Solondtz’s 1998 cause célèbre has long been available only via old DVDs, so Criterion leap-frogging it to 4K is indeed cause for celebration—to the extent that you can celebrate this wildly uncomfortable and deeply disturbing examination of middle-class ennui. The title is, of course, ironic; this is a portrait of misery, a multi-pronged ensemble featuring an obscene phone caller (Philip Seymour Hoffman, predictably great), the object of his desire (Lara Flynn Boyle, same), a lonely woman hoping for a single successful date (Jane Adams, big same), and, most controversially and memorably, a Ward Cleaver-style dad with a shocking secret, played to the hilt by the great Dylan Baker. It’s the very definition of a tough sit, but Solondtz manages to infuse this dark world with desperate humor and, shockingly enough, the faintest hint of pathos. (Includes interviews, trailer, and essay by Bruce Wagner.)
The Long Good Friday: I’m not entirely sure Guy Ritchie would have had a career (take that as a good or bad thing as you will) without this scorching, searing 1980 British crime thriller from director John Mackenzie. Bob Hoskins is magnificent, a potent mixture of ruthless power and endless insecurity, as a crime boss trying to go (comparatively) legit who finds his business interest jeopardized by threats on his very being. Barrie Keeffe’s screenplay is a model of efficiency, while Francis Monkman’s energetic score aims thunderbolts at scene after scene. The entire supporting cast is top-notch (particularly Helen Mirren as the moll who knows the score), but this is Hopkins’s show, and he shines. (Also streaming on the Criterion Channel.) (Includes audio commentary, introduction, interviews, featurettes, trailers, and essay by Ryan Gilbey.)
Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy: Few filmmakers of the ‘90s had quite as striking an aesthetic glow-up as New Queer Cinema renegade Gregg Araki, a fact put on glistening display in this new set from Criterion. Totally F***ed Up (1993) looks like the proud slab of outsider art that it is, a no-budget rebuke to respectability and stereotypes that wears its punk energy and technical amateurishness like a badge of honor. The Doom Generation (1995) shows a filmmaker gaining in technique while eschewing none of his brashness or nihilism. And Nowhere (1997) finds Araki discovering the candy-coated friskiness that would mark much of his subsequent work. His films aren’t for everyone—I’ll confess to resisting them at the time, and I was not alone—but their devil-may-care worldview and proud amorality makes them feel increasingly like remnants of a more daring period of indie moviemaking. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, featurettes, Q&As, trailers, and essay by Nathan Lee.)
The Ladykillers: There are but a handful of genuinely perfect comedies; this 1955 Ealing Studios effort from director Alexander MacKendrick (Sweet Smell of Success), new on 4K from KL Studio Classics, is one of them. It’s a heist movie with a structure later swiped by Quick Change (and many more), in which the job itself is a breeze, and everything that follows is absolutely impossible. The complications come courtesy of the sweet little old lady (Katie Johnson, resplendent) from whom our criminal gang rents a room, and the Switch watch precision with which William Rose’s screenplay carefully tees up and swats down the turns of the narrative is awe-inspiring, up to and including the deliciously grisly fates that befall its criminal not-quite-masterminds. (Includes audio commentaries, featurettes, interviews, and trailer.)
Murder on the Orient Express: Sidney Lumet gathered a cast divided evenly between distinguished veterans of the London stage (like Gielgud and Redgrave) and big-name movie stars (like Connery and Bacall) for this glistening jewel of an Agatha Christie adaptation. Albert Finney is the common thread, starring as detective Hercule Poirot, investigating the titular crime; the rest of the cast are the suspects, coming on for a few minutes at a time to do their bits and specialties, engaging in an unspoken competition to see who can steal the picture from their distinguished colleagues. (Ingrid Bergman won the Oscar for best supporting actress, so that may be the final call there.) Its 128 minutes breeze by, thanks to Lumet’s impeccable craftsmanship and the infectious good time of the cast, and KL’s 4K restoration (from the original camera negative) is a beauty. (Includes audio commentary, featurettes, interview, and trailer.)
The Million Eyes of Sumuru: Goldfinger co-star Shirley Eaton is the main attraction of this 1967 spy comedy, and the Bond connection is key; consciously or not, Kevin Kavanagh’s delightfully daffy screenplay turns the deeply suspicious misogynist subtext of that series (and its knockoffs) into text, with Eaton as a murderous femme fatale whose army of sexy undercover operatives is out to knock off powerful men and take over the world. Frankie Avalon and George Nader are the eyebrow-wiggling sleazeball American agents who are pulled into her orbit, while Klaus Kinski is really going for it (even for Klaus Kinski) as one of the targets. Lindsay Shonteff’s direction is appropriately bouncy and colorful, and Blue Underground’s 4K restoration really pops. (Includes audio commentaries, documentary, Rifftrax edition, and trailer.)
ON BLU-RAY:
Go Fish: Rose Troche’s 1994 16mm black-and-white lesbian rom-com famously played the festival circuit alongside Kevin Smith’s Clerks (and, just as famously, inspired his later Chasing Amy), and it shares some of that pictures flaws: the limitations of its low-fi look, a handful of stilted performances, a sense of tonal unsteadiness. But it also shares its virtues, in spades; this is a story by, about, and for queer people, in an era when that was not the norm, and its candor and truths still vibrate with the voyeuristic thrill of private conversations overheard. Its abstract sequences are so direct that they’re jaw-dropping, and the lead performance of co-writer Guinevere Turner (who would later co-star in Watermelon Woman) is as delightful as ever. Kudos to Cinématographe for giving this indie gem the deluxe treatment it deserves. (Includes audio commentaries, trailer, and essays by Kyle Turner, Jourdain Searles, and Jenni Olson.)
My Favorite Spy: “Don’t you want to be a hero?” two-bit burlesque comic Peanuts White (Bob Hope) is asked, early in this 1951 comedy, to which he replies, “What for? I’ve been happy all my life as a coward!” That may as well be the thesis statement for the comedies of Hope’s golden period, in which his horny-but-frightened protagonists are thrown into various popular genres—Western, costume drama, and, in this case, spy caper—and forced to sink or swim. This one falls solidly in the middle of those vehicles, quality wise; Hope and co-star Hedy Lamarr can’t quite generate the chemistry that makes, say, his Dorothy Lamour pictures so engaging. But he’s mighty funny anyway, and is given just the right length of leash by his frequent director, the great Norman Z. McLeod. (Includes audio commentary.)
That Guy Dick Miller: Dick Miller was the quintessential character actor, accumulating 185 IMDb credits before his passing in 2019; thankfully, director Elijah Drenner was able to release this celebratory bio-doc five years before that (it now makes its Blu-ray debut via Dekanalog). The subject comes across as equal parts flattered and dubious—this is clearly a guy who saw acting as a job, and did it as best he could—but he’s always charming, whether slouching off for another gig or recalling his triumphs and occasional flounderings. The cutting is energetic, friskily intermingling great clips and entertaining interviews from a solid mixture of friends and collaborators, including his frequent employers Joe Dante and Roger Corman, whose paths crossed with Miller’s often enough to make this a worthy companion to the invaluable Corman’s World. (Includes audio commentary, outtakes, home movies, premiere footage, trailer, essay by Caelum Vatnsdal, and bonus feature, 1978’s Starhops.)
Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore & the Films of Sarah Jacobson: The American Genre Film Archive reissues this invaluable release of the only feature film from the late, great outsider artist and DIY multi-hyphenate Sarah Jacobson. She wrote, produced, directed, shot, and edited this story of a delightfully average teenage girl (Lisa Gerstein, wonderful) and her quest to get laid – and, in the process, maybe grow up too. It’s the cinematic equivalent of an early grunge record, grainy and scratchy but undeniably authentic and candid; these characters look and sound like actual teenagers, and Jacobson’s unblinking candor in matters sexual and cultural is still startling. The third act stumbles a bit; it feels like someone decided it needed a big, melodramatic “plot turn,” when none of us are there for the plot anyway. But that said, this is a must-see (and still sadly overlooked) piece of the ‘90s indie cinema puzzle. (Includes Jacboson’s short films and music videos.)
Tattooed Life: Seijun Suzuki had not yet settled on the batshit beautiful style of his later Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill when he helmed this 1965 yakuza movie, new on Blu from Radiance Films. But he was, as ever, more interested in the quirks of his characters than the genre conventions, and this criminals-on-the-run story is nimbly paced, emotionally involving, and (of course) gorgeously photographed, filled with striking images and gobsmaking color (the blood-red sky near its conclusion is awe-inspiring). And when it arrives, the action absolutely delivers, including a last big fight that’s an all-out barnburner—and a clear inspiration for the much-imitated long-take combat of Oldboy. (Includes audio commentary, archival interviews, and essay by Tom Vick.)
