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:
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: The testosterone-driven narratives that dominate Martin Scorsese’s filmography don’t allow him many opportunities to tell women’s stories — a point that has gone, to put it mildly, not unnoticed by his critics online. But there is the not-small matter of this low-key 1975 dramedy, new to the Criterion Collection (making both its 4K and Blu-ray debut) which would later inspire TV’s Alice. Impressed by his breakthrough film Mean Streets, star Ellen Burstyn sought him out to direct , and her instincts were right on; she was the first of many fine actors to win an Oscar for a performance he directed. The supporting cast is also quite strong, particularly Kris Kristofferson as her paramour and Diane Ladd as her sharp-tongued co-worker, and if the “traditional” ending rankles a bit, Alice has a lived-in quality that is rarely seen in Scorsese’s typically larger-than-life stories. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, featurette, trailer, and essay by Stephanie Zacharek.)
ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO:
Project Hail Mary: One has to applaud the cojones of directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord, whose first live-action feature after their notorious dismissal from a big-budget space movie was… another big-budget space movie. But they’ve had the last laugh; this is the kind of wonder-inducing, crowd-pleasing, full-on entertainment that IP maintenance like Solo was never going to be. Ryan Gosling is splendid in the lead, as he must be — you have to really enjoy watching someone who is alone onscreen this much — while Sandra Huller proves surprisingly funny thanks to some bone-dry line readings. Miller and Lord’s comedy chops are fully intact, but they don’t let the comedy overwhelm the wonder of it all, and the structure of Drew Goddard’s script, which masterfully interweaves its parallel timelines and distributes exposition as late as possible without seeming to keep secrets, should be taught in screenwriting schools.
ON 4K UHD / BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
Obsession: I have some quibbles with Curry Barker’s horror hit — the protagonist is thinly drawn, some of the scare beats are amateurishly executed, the ending does her dirty — but it’s a hoot, an audience-pleaser that works in the way that the best Twilight Zone episodes do: because we revel in the schaudenfraude of a character getting exactly what they wanted, all twisted up. The premise offers plenty of food for thought (you can read it as a commentary/critique of chatbots, the tradwife movement, or rom-com conventions) and writer/director Barker knows how to use comedy as misdirection for shocks. But it mostly works because of Inde Navarrette, whose leading performance is full of smart, strange, perfect choices that are certainly going to make her horror’s next big breakout star. (Streaming Friday on Peacock.) (Includes audio commentary and featurette.)
The Drama: Writer/director Kristoffer Borgli (Dream Scenario) is a proud provocateur, and his latest has a premise so combustible that A24 kept it a secret in the picture’s marketing (and spoiler demands to critics): with less than a week to go before her wedding to Charlie (Robert Pattinson), a too-drunk Emma (Zendaya) confesses that as a misguided teen, she planned — but did not go through with!! — a school shooting. Understandably, it overwhelms the final steps of their union, and Borgli is skilled at creating a suffocated atmosphere, where you can’t talk or think about anything else, complemented by his hyper-present, in-the-moment, anxiety-prone filmmaking rhythm (augmented greatly by the atonality and discordance of Daniel Pemberton’s score). Some of the little coincidences are a bit hard to swallow, but the slow-motion car wreck quality builds forcefully, Pattinson and especially Zendaya are excellent (she’s especially skilled at letting us see her think onscreen, visualizing worst-case scenarios), and if nothing else, it leaves you with much to consider and much to discuss. (Includes audio commentary, wardrobe and camera tests, and promo videos.)
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
The Christophers: I can’t think of a single item in Steven Soderbergh’s 30-plus feature filmography that resembles this two-hander, with Ian McKellan as a legendary but cantankerous artist and Michaela Coel as an art restorer who’s been hired by his children to “finish” (forge, basically) a series of his long-thought-lost paintings. He talks and talks and talks, complaining and pontificating and offending; she mostly listens, and Coel is a first-class reactor; she says more with her wide eyes and pursed lips than in paragraphs of dialogue. They have such contrasting energies as actors that they make quite a compelling pairing; it’s like watching two jazz soloists figure out how to play together, and when the characters finally connect, it’s sort of seismic. Ed Solomon’s script is smart and quotable, and Soderbergh directs with a warmth and coziness that contrasts the cool, sleekness of his recent work. The Christophers is so modest in the early scenes that it almost seems inert. But then it picks up steam as we get to know these two people, and to understand them. It barely feels like a Soderbergh movie, save for the fact that it’s elegant and intelligent and very, very good. (Includes interview and trailer.)
Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror: The pre-title sequence of this documentary account of the making, release, and lasting legacy of The Rocky Horror Show and its film adaptation begins on a personal note — the director is Linus O’Brien, son of Rocky Horror creator Richard O’Brien — while the first voice after is one of the film’s many super-fans. That’s the right balance; the younger O’Brien can’t help but be subjective, but he also tells his story in a straight-forward fashion. And it’s a dramatic one, with ups and downs and triumphs and failures, tracking the show’s evolution from experimental theater to proper stage production to flop feature to cult sensation, as told by everyone you’d want to hear from (even Tim Curry and Susan Sarandon, with a fun sidebar by celebrity fan Jack Black). It’s a lively story, told briskly and with plenty of delicious archival footage, even if the total omission of Shock Treatment feels like a real oversight. (No bonus features.)
ON 4K UHD:
The Elephant Man: David Lynch’s 1980 sophomore feature, a new 4K upgrade by the Criterion Collection, is widely regarded as his most “accessible” effort (with the possible exception of The Straight Story), which is not to say it’s free of his flourishes – particularly its nightmarish opening, an assaultive barrage of sound and image. But it is comparatively restrained, featuring a distinguished (and mostly British) cast, including John Hurt as John Merrick, the title character, and Anthony Hopkins as the physician who saves him from a life spent as a “freak.” But Lynch has a bit of the carny spirit himself, carefully saving the full reveal of Hurt in make-up until well into the film, for maximum effect. So it’s not a complete departure for the filmmaker, but it does center on a kind of naked sentimentality that he’s rarely allowed himself to explore, and is better for it. (Includes archival interviews, featurettes, audiobook excerpts, trailer, and radio spots.)
Hud: The title character of this 1963 rural drama (new to the Criterion Collection), brought to forceful life by Paul Newman as the town bad boy — a proud hellraiser, brash and cocksure. He roars down its dirt roads in a giant convertible Cadillac, drinking and screwing and generally having a great time being young, cool, and sexy. Most movies (of that era, and our current one, and every one in between) would take Hud at face value, perhaps tsk-tking a bit at his recklessness or pairing him off with “the right girl,” but treating him, essentially, as the hero. Newman and director Martin Ritt (and the screenwriters, Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr.) drill deeper into the character; the more time we spend with him, the clearer it becomes that he’s not just reckless but wildly irresponsible, a louse and a brute, and worse. What the filmmakers (and the star) do with that realization still packs a wallop. (Includes new and archival interviews, Newman’s Inside the Actors Studio episode, and essay by Gabriel Miller.)
The Crying Game: Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan found himself in Hollywood demand after his low-budget Mona Lisa became an international success in 1986, but his studio follow-ups High Spirits and We’re No Angels didn’t exactly set the world on fire. That could have been why he couldn’t get studio financing for The Crying Game, which he wrote and planned to direct; they were also reportedly concerned that audiences would be turned off by the film’s big plot twist, which contained a bit more sexual ambiguity than most. Jordan ended up making the film independently, until Miramax snatched it up and made it an arthouse smash—partially by playing up the very plot twist that had put off other studios. That twist has given it a complicated legacy; as with Silence of the Lambs, our cultural evolutions can leave earlier art looking out-of-touch or even offensive. (Criterion’s new edition addresses the issue head-on in its copious bonus features.) But Jordan and his cast’s delicacy is noteworthy for the era, and there’s much more going on here anyway; this is also a first-rate political thriller, boasting nuanced dialogue, taut suspense, and an awe-inspiring leading turn by the great Stephen Rea. (Includes audio commentary, new and archival interviews, alternate ending, and essays by Tasha Robinson and Willow Catelyn Maclay.)
Red Sun: Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a cowboy, a Frenchman, and a samurai walk onto a train… oh, you’ve heard it? I somehow hadn’t; I can explain most of my blind spots, but I cannot even imagine how I’d somehow never not only seen but even heard of a Spaghetti-style Charles Bronson Western, co-starring Toshiro Mifune, Alain Delon, Ursula Andress, and Capucine, from three-time Bond director Terence Young. But here it is, in beautiful 4K from Arrow Video, and it’s a hoot; Bronson does the charming rogue thing that he did so well in Westerns like Breakheart Pass and From Noon Till Three, Mifune pairs up with him for most of the running time for entertaining buddy picture byplay, and Delon provides fine counterpoint as a cold-as-ice villain. (Includes audio commentary, featurettes, archival interview and featurette, trailer, and essays by Paul Talbot and Moya Luckett.)
ON BLU-RAY:
The Office: The Complete Series: The American iteration of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s British comedy hit Blu-ray season-by-season, with a full series box set out in 2020; this new edition features “superfan extended episodes,” including deleted scenes and/or additional footage from all 194 shows. Some fans like the additional gags and texture of these “super-sized” shows, while others feel like those bits were cut for a reason (this writer tends to fall into the latter camp, but your mileage my vary). Either way, it’s a fine method of experiencing the endlessly-rewatchable series — well, the second through sixth seasons, at least. (No bonus features.)
Pittsburgh: 1942’s The Spoilers is one of the great Westerns of the its era, featuring a delightfully vampish turn by Marlene Dietrich and an all-timer of a fistfight between co-stars Randolph Scott and John Wayne. But you might not know (I certainly didn’t) that those three stars appeared in another film together, that very same year, with Scott and Wayne as a pair of coal miners trying to strike it rich while fighting — mostly figuratively, but sometimes literally — for the affections of Dietrich’s fancy lady. Director Lewis Seilier shifts tones with grace and snap, from the rowdy and funny first half (Shemp Howard shows up, for God’s sake) to the darker and more unsettling second, as Wayne’s title character becomes more and more of a selfish sonofabitch. The final turn into flag-waving pablum is a bit much, but up until then, Pittsburgh is a high-spirited showcase for three fine movie stars at their friskiest. (No bonus features.)
