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:
Mean Streets: New to the Criterion Collection in a grimy yet vibrant 4K edition, Martin Scorsese’s 1974 breakthrough picture was something of a spiritual sequel to his first feature Who’s That Knocking At My Door, featuring the same leading man (Harvey Keitel) and many of the same themes. It’s a vivid, keenly observed portrait of street hoods and would-be businessmen—the kind of workaday “grinders” that were mostly left out of The Godfather. Scorsese pops up not only in a cameo (as a hitman), but in voice-over, his interior monologue battling Keitel’s own, in a kind of dialectic battle for the young man’s soul. And while Keitel is the protagonist, the picture belongs to Robert De Niro, who makes his first appearance blowing up a mailbox (seemingly for the sheer fuck of it) and turns in an electrifying performance as an untetherable force of reckless nature. Oh, and it finds the filmmaker making perhaps his savviest use of popular music (no small statement, that), from the evocative home-movie accompaniment of “Be My Baby” to the goofy nonsense lyrics of “Rubber Biscuit” paralleling the actions of a drunken Keitel to the clean, crisp “Please Mr. Postman” incongruently scoring the ugly, messy pool hall brawl to, finally, De Niro shimmying and shaking to “Mickey’s Monkey,” a dead man dancing. (Includes selected-scene audio commentary, new and archival interviews, video essay, archival featurette, Mardik: Baghdad to Hollywood documentary excerpt, and trailer.)
ON NETFLIX:
Minari: Lee Isaac Chung’s Academy Award winner (and Best Picture nominee) concerns a Korean-American family’s immigration to the greener pastures (literally) of Arkansas, but this is no simple-minded fable of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. Their story is stressful from frame one, with the marriage between parents Jacob (Steven Yeun) and Monica (Yeri Han) already in distress; “That land is your dream?” she asks, incredulously, and his can-do spirit and gee-whiz enthusiasm begins to melt away in the reality of what they’ve taken on. Minari is modest on is surface, moving along in a series of comic vignettes and mild arguments. But there are tempest and torrents just underneath, as the picture slowly, expertly works its way to a point of simultaneous devastation and satisfaction.
ON AMAZON PRIME:
The Lighthouse: The relentless blasting of the foghorn fills the soundtrack of Robert Eggers’s follow-up to The Witch like a warning bell; it’s the sound of the oncoming and inevitable madness of its protagonists. Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson star as a pair of late-19th century lighthouse keepers losing their bearings on their remote island outpost as a storm rails unceasingly, and both actors shine, though Dafoe, sporting his customary wild-eyed intensity, walks away with the picture thanks to his magnificently grizzled, eccentric performance. Eggers pitches it like a fever dream, but has a way of composing his images for maximum comic effect (some of it plays like straight-up slapstick), and takes this strange story into some, to put it mildly, unexpected territory. It’s a wild piece of work, a twisted sea shanty, warbled by a lunatic.
ON 4K / DVD / VOD:
Oppenheimer: If The Dark Knight was Christopher Nolan doing a Michael Mann movie, this is his riff on ‘90s Oliver Stone— like JFK or Nixon, it’s a big, bombastic historical epic, with the director orchestrating an all-star cast and a striking bag of cinematic tricks. Cillian Murphy turns in an admirably knotty performance as J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, and Nolan thankfully eschews the cradle-to-grave biopic structure; instead, he zeroes in on a handful of key moments throughout his life, and moves between them freely and often ingeniously to create a complex portrait of a complicated man. It feels less like a biopic than an exploration of big ideas and unfathomable processes. (Includes featurettes.)
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
Tori and Lokita: The latest from Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne is, unsurprising to anyone familiar with their work, bleak and tough — and also intimate and matter-of-fact, a ground-level account of the struggles of those on the fringes of society. Their title characters (played with natural charisma by nonactors Pablo Schils and Joely Mbundu) are two young African migrants trying to hustle up the funds to keep themselves afloat, and to get 17-year-old Lokita her residency papers. As is often the case in Dardenne films, much of the fascination is logistical (we get a clear sense of how various criminal enterprises work), but the emotional heft is considerable, and when Tori asks Lokita, “Can I call you when I’m in bed so you can sing the song,” well, it just about breaks you in two. (Includes interview and trailer.) (Also streaming on the Criterion Channel.)
Godland: This period drama begins as a man-against-nature story, as a 19th century priest (Elliott Crosset Hove) travels by land and sea to establish a church in a village in Iceland. Writer/director Hlynur Palmason derives some comic tension from this proper, soft-handed gentleman’s journey with the polar opposite roughnecks charged with assisting him, but once they reach their destination, it becomes a rich portrait of the community and the people within it. Palmason doesn’t lose his edge, however, and the third act takes a series of bleak turns that are shocking without feeling out of character (for either the picture or its protagonist), winding down with a series of jump cuts that are frankly breathtaking. (Includes interview and trailer.) (Also streaming on the Criterion Channel.)
The Eight Mountains: The third of this month’s new releases from Janus Contemporaries is this Italian drama, winner of the jury prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, a poignant dual coming-of-age story tracking the lifelong friendship of Pietro and Bruno, who meet as boys in the Italian Alps, immediately become best buddies, and find that bond tested (and sometimes broken) over the decades that follow. It’s an intimate epic, spanning their lives and the moments therein with offhand ease, and packs a real punch in its powerful closing scenes. (Includes interview and trailer.) (Also streaming on the Criterion Channel.)
ON 4K:
Fargo: The Coen Brothers won their first Oscars (and bounced back from the costly flop of The Hudsucker Proxy) with this modest, darkly comic thriller, new on 4K from Shout Selects. From this vantage point, it’s like a catalogue of great ‘90s indie actors doing their quintessential things: William H. Macy is a bumbling weasel, Steve Buscemi is a skeezy criminal, Peter Stormare is a silent terror, and Frances McDormand is, well, Frances McDormand. She also won her first Oscar for her work here, and it speaks volumes about the character of Brainerd police chief Marge Gunderson—and the extraordinary actor playing her—that she doesn’t show up until a good third of the way in. Yet she looms large in the memory of everyone who sees it, and for good reason: among a motley crew of criminals, liars, killers, and thieves, she stands out not only for her keen detection skills, unflappable interrogation techniques, and general sense of “Minnesota nice,” but as the picture’s moral compass. Fargo has all of the qualities of a great Coen movie (memorable dialogue, striking compositions, unexpected tonal juxtapositions, pinpoint-perfect performances), but Margie was what lifted this one to a higher level. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, trailer, and TV spot.)
The Fugitive: Andrew Davis’s 1993 thriller was not only a commercial success but a critical one, picking up a best picture nomination at that year’s Oscars, and a best supporting actor win for Tommy Lee Jones. And it’s richly deserved; one word in his very first scene (an “ok,” for god’s sake) tells us everything we need to know about this weary and dogged federal marshal, but he finds all kinds of textures and flourishes for what could’ve been a one-note performance. He’s so good that it’s easy to overlook Harrison Ford’s lead performance, which is excellent — watch the way he seizes on the script’s tiny character moments and plays them to the hilt, without slowing the picture’s considerable momentum. It remains a compelling model of efficiency and craftsmanship, and Warner Bros.’ new 4K transfer is a knockout. (Includes audio commentary, introduction, featurettes, and trailer.)
Stalag 17: Billy Wilder directed, produced, and co-wrote this adaptation of the 1951 play, focusing on a group of American airmen confined in a German P.O.W. camp. Yes, these are the rough roots of Hogan’s Heroes, but don’t hold that against it; the cartoon-y extremities of that series are mostly absent in this character-driven comedy/drama. Wilder’s elegant direction makes the tricky balance look easy, and he gets a big assist from William Holden, who won an Oscar for his terrific work as the cynical but moral J.J. Sefton. But there’s not a false note sounded in the entire ensemble, which includes such heavyweights as Peter Graves, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger, and the great Marx Brothers stooge Sig Ruman; Ernest Laszlo’s black-and-white cinematography is both luminous and naturalistic, and KL Studio Classics’ 4K crisply captures its beauty and grime. (Includes audio commentaries and featurettes.)
Blackhat: Michael Mann doesn’t exactly make out-and-out blockbusters, but he’s certainly got a following, and his 2015 release (his first in over five years, and his last until this year’s Ferrari) had an Avenger and a release accidentally but fortuitously timed to the Sony hack. So it was a bit of a surprise that it tanked so badly—especially since it’s such a stylish and jazzy picture, packaged like a cyber-thriller but playing more like a slow-burn character study. Thankfully, it’s found its audience over the years, and this Arrow Video edition includes not only the U.S. and international theatrical versions in 4K UHD, but a Blu-ray of the previously hard-to-find director’s cut (its shifts are minor but impactful). Mann luxuriates in a mien of cool, coasting confidently from one terse scene and charged dialogue exchange to the next, and Blackhat’s joyless critics missed the point. It’s not a film about tight plotting or slam-bang action, but about style — pure, hypnotic, mesmerizing style. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, and featurettes.)
ON BLU-RAY:
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz: In the year between American Graffiti and Jaws, Richard Dreyfuss went up to Canada to star in this Jewish coming-of-age tale from director Ted Kotcheff, the journeyman director whose diverse filmography ran the gamut from Wake in Fright to Weekend at Bernie’s. Dreyfuss’s Duddy is an unapologetic grinder — “I got a lot of ideas, I’m a real comer!” — whose strategies for becoming a somebody evolve from saving his pennies and charming potential investors to lying through his teeth and stealing from his friends. It’s a wonderfully subversive work, presenting the kind of character we’re conditioned to root for, but presenting him warts and all, without the varnish of a feel-good Hollywood epic. (It was also clearly an influence on Licorice Pizza, down to the pinball subplot.) It’s both wildly funny and deeply melancholic, and features Dreyfuss in his purest, uncut form, his tics and mania softened by his often inexplicable charisma. (Includes audio commentary.)
La Cérémonie: This week’s other new addition to the Criterion Collection is this 1995 domestic thriller from French director Claude Chabrol, centered on a trio of sharp performances: Jacqueline Bisset as a rich mother and wife, Sandrine Bonnaire as her new maid, and Isabelle Huppert as the town postmistress, who becomes the maid’s best friend. They’re two women with secrets, and the hints of what they’re capable of, coupled with the casual indicators and subtle subtext of class separation between them and Bisset’s rich family, make much of the running time play like a ticking time bomb; even in scenes of amiable chit-chat and offhand exposition, the compositions and editing tempo are just a little bit off, creating an unease that permeates the picture. (Includes introduction by Bong Joon Ho, selected-scene audio commentary, featurettes, and archival interviews.)
White Lightning: Joseph Sargent (director of the original Taking of Pelham One Two Three) soaks this 1973 Burt Reynolds thriller with sweaty atmosphere and grizzled character actors, telling the story of an incarcerated moonshiner (Burt, obviously) who works out a deal with the federales for an early release if he’ll help them nab a corrupt sheriff — which he’s more than happy to do, since the cop killed his little brother. It plays like a hinge between the serious adventure mode of Reynolds’ Deliverance the previous year (Ned Beatty returns, and is surprisingly terrifying, as the villainous sheriff) and the good-ol’-boy Southern shenanigans of Smokey and the Bandit. Reynolds is top-notch (and not entirely sympathetic), Bo Hopkins is a hoot as his best buddy, and the script by exploitation specialist William W. Norton (Big Bad Mama, Night of the Juggler) comes to one hell of a satisfying conclusion. (Includes audio commentary, featurette, trailer, and TV and radio spots.)
Gator: Reynolds took over directorial duties (for the first time) for this 1976 sequel, which jettisons much of the sociopolitical subtext, throws in more comedy, and most importantly, finds Burt wearing his iconic mustache. The results feel much more like a ‘70s Burt picture — specifically a dry run for Smokey the next year (that picture’s director, Hal Needham, does second unit here, and co-star Jerry Reed is the customary folksy yet menacing villain) — with plenty of chases, bare-knuckle brawls, stunts, and shootouts. But there are also a few of the shaggy-dog touches of later Reynolds directorial efforts, including a break-in accompanied by cats (long story) and an easy-breezy romance with Lauren Hutton, which brings things to an unexpectedly bittersweet conclusion. (Includes audio commentary, featurette, trailer, and TV and radio spots.)
Shredder Orpheus: This 1989 low-budget skater-punk reimagining of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth stars one Robert McGinley, who also wrote, directed, and produced, and unfolds with a delightfully batshit sense of a singular vision at work. It’s something of a low-budget wonder, ingeniously using its thrift-store props and costumes to create a convincing portrait of a post-apocalyptic dystopia controlled by the broadcasts of the EBN (Euthanasia Broadcast Network). AGFA’s Blu-ray release — the film’s disc debut — uses the original film and video elements to give it an HD sheen that cannot (and should not) diminish the inherent grubiness of the material. (Includes audio commentary, vintage promo, original VHS version, and trailer.)
The Christmas Martian: Canadian International Pictures has taken pains to restore undiscovered cinematic gems from our neighbors up north, and perhaps only shining a light on high-quality wares like The Ernie Game, Speaking Parts, and The Hard Part Begins gave them the confidence to unleash this absolutely insane “family” holiday fantasy. It concerns a brother and sister who discover a weirdo alien and decide to help him find his way home, a promising enough premise, and a prescient one — this was eleven years before E.T., after all. But first-and-only-time director Bernard Gosselin comes up with something closer to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, all the way down to an oh-so-wacky alien hero that makes Conquers’ loathsome “Droppo” seem like ALF in comparison. (Includes audio commentary, trailer gallery with commentary, interview, and short films.)
ON DVD:
Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas: Produced as a one-off holiday special for BBC One (and Netflix) with characters from the Aardman series, this is a 30-minute delight, now available on disc from Shout Factory and destined to be a perennial favorite. As with the spin-off films and the best episodes of the show, it has the visual ingenuity and comic spirit of great silent slapstick; there is no spoken dialogue, so those of all ages and languages can enjoy. The tangible textures of the claymation figures are lovely, and several of the individual gags (including a bit with a bunch of sheep disguised as a snowman) are all-timers. (Includes featurettes, shorts, and holiday-themed episodes of Aardman’s “Timmy Time.”)