The Best Movies to Buy or Stream This Week: Sinners, Warfare, A Different Man, and More

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: 

The Adventures of Antoine Doinel: François Truffaut chronicled the young life of Antoine Doinel (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud) in five features and one short over 20 years, all of which are collected in this A+ Criterion 4K box set (a long-awaited upgrade to their 2003 DVD collection). The first, and best, of that series is The 400 Blows, the 1959 French New Wave starter pistol that finds young Antoine on the verge of outright juvenile delinquency—rebelling against his school, his teacher, and his parents. Truffaut does not apologize for Doinel, but he does attempt to understand him (and, thus, himself, as the character was based on the filmmaker’s boyhood years). The film’s final shot, though oft-imitated, maintains its haunting lyricism and narrative power; it captures a journey that has, on one hand, ended, and on the other has barely begun. Léaud was 14 years old when Truffaut cast him, so their work simultaneously captures Truffaut’s maturing as a filmmaker and Léaud’s maturing as a man. The subsequent pictures are all nearly as good (save for the mostly-compilation Love on the Run, which often plays like a Friends clip episode), resulting in a funny, thoughtful, candid chronicle of one young man’s life and loves. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, video essays, trailers, and essays by Annette Insdorf, Kent Jones, Andrew Sarris, Noah Baumbach, and Chris Fujiwara, and Truffaut.) 

ON 4K UHD / BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:

Warfare: On November 19, 2006, a group of Navy SEALs found themselves trapped in a commandeered home in Ramadi, Iraq, under heavy fire from Iraqi insurgents. “This film uses only their memories,” explains the opening text; those memories were collected by Civil War’s Alex Garland and his co-writer and co-director Ray Mendoza, one of the men on the ground. It plays out in something like real time, lingering at first on the dull routine of on-the-ground grunts, but as a result, the bullets and explosions break up the monotony forcefully. Garland, Mendoza, and their strong ensemble of young character actors (including Michael Gandolfini, Cosmo Jarvis, Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Noah Centineo, Kit Connor, and  D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) so convincingly convey their helplessness and fear that the filmmakers’ purposeful avoidance of conventional exposition hardly matters. (Includes audio commentary and featurette.)

ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:

Sinners: It is, by now, accepted conventional wisdom that Ryan Coogler is one of the singular filmmakers of his time, a writer and director who merges peerless command of craft with ferocious intelligence and keen insight into how we live now, and how it relates to what came before. Sinners is only his fifth feature directorial effort, but it’s the most pronounced culmination of his considerable gifts, merging genre thrills, breathless storytelling bravado, and unblinking historical examination into a ferociously entertaining package. A minute or so into The Musical Sequence (you know the one) I realized I was leaning all the way forward in my seat; there may be nothing more thrilling than a filmmaker trying something that’s objectively insane, yet possessing the skill to pull it off. (Also streaming on HBO Max.) (Includes featurettes and deleted scenes.)

A Different Man: The writer and director Aaron Schimberg reteams with his Chained for Life star Adam Pearson — and throws in Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve for good measure — for this genuinely uncomfortable and thrillingly unconventional drama. Stan stars as a lonely, bitter actor who believes his lack of romantic and career success is entirely due to his neurofibromatosis. An experimental treatment unexpectedly “fixes” him, but his encounters with a happy and satisfied Pearson, who also has the condition, reframes his assumptions. Schimberg is a gifted visual storyteller, deftly finding memorable images or compositions that fill in the blanks with verve, and his surrealist touches are fleeting but affecting. (Also streaming on HBO Max.) (Includes audio commentary, featurettes, and deleted and extended scenes.) 

Eephus: Director Carson Lund is telling a story here, of the last game played on a Massachusetts amateur baseball diamond before it’s leveled for a new middle school. But that’s not what his movie is about; it’s about living in and romanticizing the past, reveling in analog pleasures like baseball, terrestrial radio, and nostalgia itself. The characters are colorful without being clichés, the dialogue is funny without sounding written, and by the time Lund shifts into semi-surrealism in the third act — as these dudes, desperate to hang on for just another inning or two, have to play in the dark — he’s found just the right mixture of warmth and resignation. (Includes audio commentaries, deleted scenes, featurettes, blooper reel, interviews, Q&As, and essay by Caden Mark Gardner.) 

ON 4K UHD:

Barry Lyndon: Criterion’s latest film nerd fetish object is this gorgeous 4K edition of Stanley Kubrick’s painterly period piece, one that’s funnier and sexier than you’ve probably heard. But it’s primarily a character study, of a “wanderer” (Ryan O’Neal, miscast but occasionally effective) and his evolution from good-natured rogue to total S.O.B. to loving father. Exquisitely designed and sumptuously photographed, but not just for the sake of its pretty pictures; the beauty with which it’s mounted renders the emotional and physical violence all the more jarring, and the stateliness of the pacing softens us up for the hits of the last hour. (Includes new and archival interviews, trailers, and essay by Geoffrey O’Brien.) 

The Big Heat: Fritz Lang is no stranger to the Criterion Collection, which has previously released his most acclaimed picture, M, as well as his German classic The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and the wartime political thriller Ministry of Fear. Those are his most respectable pictures; bravo to them for giving a sleek restoration and copious bonus features to this, the best of his noir programmers. As a refugee in Hollywood, he made B-movies — but he made them better than just about anyone, and this hardboiled police drama features Glenn Ford as a bloodthirsty cop and Gloria Grahame at her va-va-va-voomest as a gangster’s moll. (Includes audio commentary, video essay, new and archival interviews, trailer, and essay by Jonathan Lethem.) 

Lethal Weapon: The (ahem) colorful off-screen exploits of its leading man have made this beloved buddy cop franchise a bit more work to engage with, but Warner’s new 4K edition of the 1987 original reminds us of what a skillful, tightly coiled, electric and unpredictable work of popcorn art it is. Mel Gibson is the title character, a Vietnam vet and LAPD detective whose suicidal impulses give him the upper hand in standoff situations; Danny Glover is his new partner, a family man who would prefer to avoid hairy situations. Director Richard Donner (the original Superman) stages the action sequences with plenty of flair, but the character dynamics and unexpected humanity are what make this one special. (Includes featurettes.)

High Society: Charles Walters’s 1956 hit turns The Philadelphia Story into a musical, keeping much of the original text intact but spicing it up with generous helpings of Cole Porter music (much of it performed by Louis Armstrong, who also appears, delightfully). The direction is occasionally stodgy (a lot of it plays out in flat medium-wides), and it has the same narrative flaw as the source material (the leading lady ends up with the wrong guy), amplified this time around (the wrong guy is Frank Sinatra, at his hottest). But the music is charming, the performers are charismatic, the chemistry is electric, and Warner Archives’ 4K transfer is a stunner, particularly when you’re gazing upon people as beautiful as Sinatra, Grace Kelly, and Bing Crosby. (Includes featurette, premiere newsreel, cartoon, radio spots and trailers.) 

Shane: One of the most recognizable and beloved of all Western gets a crisp new 4K from KL Studio Classics to underscore its beauty and artistry. And it’s a good, sturdy Western hitting the notes of pathos and adventure with aplomb. But there’s something overpowering about the way director George Stevens shoots violence (I’m thinking particularly of the saloon brawl and Shane’s fistfight with Starrett). He makes the brutality of these scenes rough and messy; the jarring cuts contrast with the picture’s otherwise smooth style. As a result, they’re terrible and thrilling, all at once. (Includes audio commentaries and trailer.) 

Primary Colors: It would be so easy to imagine how this film adaptation of the 1996 Clinton campaign roman à clef by Joe Klein (originally penned anonymously) could’ve been a quickly forgotten throwaway, full of winks and gossip and inside baseball shop talk. Instead, director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May elevate the material, turning a campaign chronicle into a meaty and often mournful meditation on the soullessness of contemporary politics and the inevitable demise of idealism. John Travolta is spectacular as the Clinton stand-in, a performance perhaps undervalued because of the eerie effectiveness of his imitation. But he creates a real, flawed, fascinating character; ditto Emma Thompson as his wife, Billy Bob Thornton as the Carville fill-in, Adrian Lister as our window in, and especially Kathy Bates as a campaign guru who finds her quixotism dies especially hard. (Includes audio commentary, new interviews, and trailers.) 

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death: For years, knowing only the title of John D. Hancock’s 1971 psychological thriller, I’d assumed it to be some kind of slasher-adjacent something-or-other – akin to all those ‘80s prank-gone-awry movies, perhaps. On first viewing it in 2020, I discovered something much deeper and richer, barely qualifying as a horror movie; this is a 90-minute experience of discomfort and terror. When a contemporary film (specifically, something from A24) attempts something like this, it’s hailed as a ground-breaking game-changer, which has less to do with the (typically) high quality of those films than the extent to which our understanding and definition of horror has been limited, if not broken entirely. But there are all kinds of horror to explore onscreen, and as Let’s Scare Jessica to Death exquisitely reminds us, not all of them are external in origin. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, TV and radio spots, trailer, and booklet essays by Molly Henery, Quatoyiah Murry, and yours truly.) 

Dirty Work: This Norm Macdonald vehicle from director Bob Saget was a critical and commercial failure upon its initial release in 1998, in no small part because it was defanged under studio pressure to make a PG-13 rating that didn’t make any difference anyway. Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K release restores that minute or so of cuts to create the “Dirtier Cut” (though the theatrical version is also included). And maybe it’s the sheer dearth of big, dumb, broad theatrical comedies these days, but Dirty Work offers up a good time, between Macdonald’s arid-dry delivery and amusing ironic reserve, the inventive supporting performances (including an utterly unhinged Chris Farley), and a climax that’s unapologetically lifted from A Night at the Opera. As they say, if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best. (Includes audio commentaries, documentary, interviews, assembly cut, alternate extended ending, and trailer.) 

The Golden Child: Eddie Murphy could make just about anything into a hit in the mid-1980s, though this 1986 action-comedy was one of the first hints that he might not be bulletproof forever. It too often plays like director Michael Ritchie (no slouch) was advised to paper over the script’s holes by just letting Eddie cook, and (contrary to something like Beverly Hills Cop) he doesn’t always spin hay into gold. But he has plenty of funny moments and charming chemistry with leading lady Charlotte Lewis, while Charles Dance is (as usual) a chilling villain. Ritchie’s gift for marshaling undisciplined stars (he came to this one right off of Fletch) serves him well, and this one is just goofy and light enough to work, most of the time. (Includes audio commentary, new and archival interviews, featurettes, and trailer.) 

Jade: When it hit theaters in fall of 1995, awash in waves of bad press over star David Caruso’s defection from NYPD Blue and the conflicts between inexplicably in-demand screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and angling-for-a-comeback director William Friedkin, Jade seemed like an outright dud — yet another would-be Basic Instinct undone by the ineptitude of its writer and the ubiquity of its genre. But revisiting it, in Vinegar Syndrome’s sparkling new 4K edition, it goes down easier; a big-budget, name-cast dirty movie is much more of a novelty these days, Linda Fiorentino’s femme fatale turn has a genuine kinky kick to it, and to his credit, Friedkin directs the absolute shit out of this terrible script. (Includes theatrical and director’s cut, audio commentary, interviews, featurette, and trailer.) 

The Dark Half: Stephen King’s 1989 novel The Dark Half found the horror novelist grappling with himself, using the story of a serious writer losing control of his pseudonymous alter ego to work through his own feelings about the books he published earlier in his career under the name Richard Bachman. Four years later, King’s frequent collaborator George A. Romero adapted and directed this screen version, with Timothy Hutton as a novelist who comes to believe that his pen name has become sentient — and murderous. Hutton is excellent in both roles, while Amy Madigan and Michael Rooker provide rock-solid support. (Includes audio commentary, deleted scenes, new and archival interviews, new and archival featurettes, TV spot and trailer.)  

Naked Came the Stranger: The Mélusine imprint continues the yeoman’s work of 4K restorations and re-releases for the work of Henry Paris, the nom de porn of the gifted erotic filmmaker Radley Metzger. Based on the 1969 literary hoax book perpetuated by a group of 24 journalists, this 1975 effort tells the story of a successful career woman who discovers her husband (and talk radio co-host) is cheating on her with one of their employees, and decides to engage in “a little messing around” in retaliation. The story is mostly told for laughs, but Metzger is also slyly interested in the psychological ramifications of infidelity. And while he delivers the sex-picture goods – with star Darby Lloyd Rains sampling voyeurism, cross-dressing, spanking, public sex, sex with strangers, and (of course) bisexuality – Naked moves, and is pitched, like a screwball comedy, in which she can never quite get the various plates of her adulterous desires spinning at the same time. It’s both hilarious and sexy, an unfortunately rare combination, and Mélusine’s restoration surpasses their already-high standards. (Includes audio commentary, alternative softcore version, featurette, radio spots and trailer, and essay by Ashley West.) 

ON BLU-RAY:

Charley One-Eye: This 1973 revisionist Western from director Don Chaffey (new on Blu from Vinegar Syndrome Labs) uses its familiarity to its advantage; the only three characters of note are “The Black Man” (Richard Roundtree, having a blast playing against his “Shaft” fame), “The Indian” (Roy Thinnes), and “The Bounty Hunter” (Nigel Davenport), and its story of an uneasy alliance between a runaway Black soldier and an off-the-reservation Native American is not exactly fresh. But within this well-trod territory, Chaffey takes real risks. He lays on the atmosphere thick, and avoids the traps of the Blaxpoitation Western; his deliberate pace and focus on character over action lend an unexpected poignancy to its inevitable, doomed conclusion. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, featurette, trailer, and essay by Jourdain Searles.) 

Exclusive: Alexander Hall’s 1937 newspaper picture (new on Blu-ray from KL Studio Classics) has all of the cornerstones of the subgenre: a fast-talking city editor (played to perfection by Fred MacMurray), a tough dame (the legendary, and ultimately tragic, Frances Farmer), quotable dialogue (“You! Call the weather service and find out why it didn’t rain last night!”), and heady themes about the responsibility of the media. Some of the melodrama is a little stiff, but Hall keeps things moving at a good, swift clip, and MacMurray and Farmer make for a splendid pair. (Includes audio commentary.) 

Sugar Hill: AIP’s 1974 attempt to replicate the Blaxpoitation horror success of Blacula, this mash-up of crime picture, revenge thriller, and voodoo chiller has many of the flaws we’ve come to expect from low-budget exploitation movies of the era: uneven acting, borderline nonsensical narrative, shoestring production values. But director Paul Maslansky makes do, often entertainingly, with a big assist from leading lady Marki Bey; she’s deliriously watchable as the title character, the girlfriend of a club owner killed by the mob who sends her zombies into the underworld to avenge his death. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, radio spots and trailer.)