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:
Repo Man: The phrase “cult classic” is bandied about more freely than most of us would like, but there’s simply no other phrase to properly describe Alex Cox’s 1984 gonzo action-comedy, which barely made a blip upon it’s original release before finding a dedicated (rabid, perhaps) following on VHS and cable. Emilio Estevez (never better) is a young automotive repossession man, learning the ropes from a weathered old pro (Harry Dean Stanton, having a helluva year between this and Paris, Texas), and while that sounds aggressively formulaic, writer/director Cox lets his freak flag fly with generous doses of science fiction, punk music, and general dystopian insanity. What more could you want from a Criterion 4K? (Includes audio commentary, interviews, deleted scenes, television version, trailers, and essay by Sam McPheeters.)
ON NETFLIX:
Daughters: Natalie Rae and Angela Patton’s hit Sundance documentary explores the “Date with Dad” program (it isn’t nearly as creepy as its name), which organizes father-daughter dances for incarcerated men and their daughters. Any father participating must complete a ten-week group counseling course, where they talk openly and vulnerably about the mistakes they’ve made and their paths going forward. Those sessions are intercut with candid, often raw interviews with their daughters, detailing the genuine struggles of their lives (and those of their mothers). The reunions, on the big day, are as stirring as their eventual separations are heartbreaking; this is a powerful piece of work, expertly using the intensity of its emotions to make a strong intellectual statement.
ON HULU:
Kinds of Kindness: Yorgos Lanthimos’s bleak, borderline nihilistic worldview is on prominent display in his latest, and how you regard it is likely all bound up in how much you share it. It tells its three stories artfully, with distinctive and dynamic performances from Emma Stone, Jesse Plemmons, Margaret Qualley, and Willem Dafoe, and the craft is top-shelf. Those elements are all in place to keep you off balance, at the service of his well-cultivated assurances that these stories really could go anywhere—that he isn’t bound by the fear and hesitancy that stifles so much of contemporary cinema. He’ll frequently follow a popular success with a purposefully off-putting follow-up, and as he chased The Lobster with The Killing of a Sacred Dear, this one almost seems a conscious attempt to shock those who enjoyed the (if only comparatively) mild Oscar winners The Favourite and Poor Things. Even its June release date seems like a winking, sick joke. Here’s his big summer blockbuster, complete with a mid-credits scene. Chew on that, sickos.
ON PEACOCK:
Gary: There’s something inherently sleazy about Robin Dashwood’s mash-up of bio-doc and true crime excavation—primarily in the latter half of that equation, in which the director gives considerable credence to the notion that the former child actor’s ex-wife Shannon Price was responsible for his death. That’s the kind of wild (evidence-free) theorizing that gets views and clicks, but it’s not responsible filmmaking. The film is far more successful in addressing the ups and downs (and more downs) of his life, chronicling his rise to fame, his life as a star (the Diff’rent Strokes behind-the-scenes videos are charming), and his difficulties as an adult. Much of that amounts to he-said/she-said, with few trustworthy sources, but Dashwood is thankfully willing to get into the weeds of his legal and financial battles to tell a broader story of entertainment industry exploitation. It’s a thoroughly sad story, but a compelling one nevertheless.
The Fall Guy: There may not be language in existence that can fully summarize the low expectations I brought into David Leitch’s film adaptation of a TV show that no one remembers with any particular fondness. That resistance lasted roughly through the end credits; by their conclusion, I was leaning forward in my seat, with a big goofy grin plastered across my face. The Fall Guy may be head-scratching IP exploitation, but the pronounced lack of enthusiasm around the Fall Guy brand (if such a thing even exists) means that Leitch was able to just use the title and protagonist as cover to make a fun, throwback action/comedy/romance. It’s entertaining from the first frame to the last — a great big stupid beautiful valentine to great big stupid beautiful movies.
ON 4K / BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
All of Us Strangers: Andrew Haigh writes and directs this evocative, melancholy mixture of romantic drama and semi-surreal memory play, a new addition to the Criterion Collection. Andrew Scott (who is so good, you’ll follow him any wild place Haigh takes him) stars as a writer who is attempting, in his new screenplay, to grapple with his childhood and the loss of his parents at age 17; on a trip to his hometown, he finds himself inexplicably spending time with them, via vivid visions and candid conversations in which he works through his complicated feelings about them. The years melt away as the interactions and support he so badly needed are grafted onto his past, a fiction less painful than fact. Simultaneously, he’s embarking on a relationship with a neighbor (Paul Mescal) who’s young and wild and probably not good for him in the long run, but exactly what he needs at the moment, and this is a movie that understands the value of both. As it winds up to the home stretch, All of Us Strangers becomes a film about itself — about making art to fix your life, your past, and your pain. (Includes interviews, featurettes, trailer, and essay by Guy Lodge.)
ON 4K:
The Stepfather: Joseph Rubin’s 1987 thriller (new to 4K from Shout! Factory) is rather a masterpiece of construction: it opens at the end of its serial killer’s previous masquerade, as he washes blood from his hands, collects his belonging, and calmly leaves a multiple-victim crime scene. As he finds his next “family,” we’re keenly aware of exactly what he’s capable of, and waiting for him to show it—which puts the entire next hour on a slow boil. Terry O’Quinn’s scarily convincing leading turn brings the whole thing well above the level of the standard slasher flick; he burrows into the scary psyche of this nutjob, crafting a portrait of true, everyday evil, a man deceptively folksy and charming on the surface, cold-blooded and murderous just underneath. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, featurette, and trailers.)
ON BLU-RAY:
My Father is a Hero: Director Corey Yuen and star Jet Li were something of a Scorsese and De Niro of Hong Kong action cinema, teaming up for several memorable HK flicks before Li’s move to Hollywood, with Yuen following and serving as action director for several of his American vehicles. This 1995 effort (released here in 2000 as The Executioner, and now restored by Vinegar Syndrome) is one of their best, with Li as a cop who has to abandon his family, particularly his worshipful young son (Xie Miao), to go undercover as a gangster’s henchman. The script lays on the melodrama pretty thick, but with sincerity, and Li does some fine action between the punches and kicks (which also helps motivate them). But the draw here is the big, loud, bone-and-glass-crunching set pieces, with Yuen mounts with style and vigor. (Includes audio commentary, new and archival interviews, deleted scene, and trailer.
