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:
Who Killed Teddy Bear?: The new boutique label Cinématographe closes out a killer first year with one of the true buried treasures of New York cinema—a pre-Taxi Driver snapshot of midtown sleaze (the credited assistant cameraman is future Taxi Driver cinematographer Michael Chapman) that’s long been all but impossible to see on home video, and then only in a censored edition. This new 4K and Blu-ray edition restores those slashed minutes, giving us a fresh look at a true outsider oddity, equal parts slasher thriller, grimy melodrama, and high camp. Sal Mineo is atypically terrifying as a busboy who’s stalking a pretty disco hostess (Juliet Prowse); an impossibly young Elaine Stritch is a gas as the cynical club manager. (Includes audio commentary, featurettes, and essays by John Charles and Kyle Turner.)
ON MAX:
Juror #2: In the mid-to-late ‘90s, Clint Eastwood went on a run of adapting bestselling novels for the screen, but he somehow wasn’t part of the concurrent burst of bold-face names turning John Grisham books into movies. His latest (and possibly last) feature feels like a make-good, a faux-Grisham Southern courtroom drama that’s a smooth fit for his meat-and-potatoes, classical style. Nicholas Hoult (in a nicely reactive turn) stars as a recovering alcoholic and soon-to-be father who reports for jury duty and discovers, to his shock, that he is responsible for the crime that he’s sitting in judgement of another man for committing. The pace is a little loopy and the supporting performances are wildly uneven, but Eastwood makes this potentially silly premise play, giving genuine urgency to the moral quandary at its center. It’s old-fashioned studio filmmaking, in the best way. (Streaming December 20.)
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story: DC Studios is behind this bio-doc of the man who played Superman, which puts an odd tension at its center; everything here, from the title to the framing, reminds us of Reeves’s most famous role, even as a major theme becomes his intense desire to separate himself from it. That said, it’s a fine and frequently moving picture, starting with his tragic, paralyzing horseback riding accident in May 1995 and moving back from the point, filling in the blanks of his life and career. Family testimony and home video footage paint the portrait of a man who was well-intentioned but far from perfect (especially as a father); the later sections lay out the practical, day-to-day struggles of his disability with fascinating detail, and the stories of his passing are simply heartbreaking, a wound for those who knew and loved him that still hasn’t closed.
ON MUBI:
Dahomey: Atlantics director Mati Diop helms this peculiar hybrid of documentary and magic realism. It considers 26 royal treasures looted from the titular African kingdom (now known as Benin) by French colonialists—“the spoils of vast plundering,” according to the deep, electronically enhanced voice that Diop gives to the 26th of them. That personification, and its ruminations, is intermingled with documentary footage of the artifacts being packed, sent, and unpacked. But then she carefully opens up the story, to question or (depending on your perspective) confirm our initial assumptions, weighing heavier questions of ownership, image, and cultural identity. It’s never less than fascinating, even if, on the heels of a seismic picture like Atlantics, it feels like a bit of a throwaway.
ON 4K / BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
The Wild Robot: The year’s best animated movie is this gorgeous adaptation of Peter Brown’s novel, brought to the screen with grace, humor, and just enough sentimentality by Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon director Chris Sanders. Lupita Nyong’o (astonishingly good) voices ROZZUM Unit 7134, nicknamed “Roz,” a personal assistant robot who washes up on a forest island and becomes the default mother of a gosling who she must then teach to fly, migrate, and the other essentials of bird fowl life. Like many of the best family movies, it’s ultimately about both childhood and parenthood (depending on who’s watching it); speaking as someone in the throes of the latter, it lands with genuine force and emotion. (Includes audio commentary, alternate opening, and featurettes.)
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
Piece by Piece: Done in the standard method of even his very-good earlier efforts like Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and Roadrunner, the latest bio-doc from director Morgan Neville would’ve probably been a competent throwaway. Instead, in profiling music superstar Pharrell Williams, Neville collaborates with the LEGO group to create a music doc that looks like The LEGO Movie, an odd stew that should not work, but does. Part of its success is simply the form—these LEGO movies just look cool and fun—but it’s also a good match for the material, mirroring Williams’s sunny disposition and winking self-awareness. Inspired and inspiring, it’s just a very good time. (Includes featurette.)
Conclave: The latest from director Edward Berger unfortunately reunites him with his All Quiet on the Western Front composer Volker Bertlemann, who creates an even more bombastic and distracting score this time around. But the film it’s slathered over is a pretty good one, with the ever-reliable Ralph Fiennes (seriously, does any contemporary actor do weary, impatient intelligence better?) as the cardinal overseeing the conclave to pick a new pope, and Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow as the front-runners. What begins as a tale of religious ritual becomes a white-knuckle political thriller, detailing the behind-the-scenes machinations and intrigue, even if too many good scenes are absolutely smothered by Bertlemann’s score; it doesn’t ultimately ruin the movie, per se, but it certainly keeps a good film from being a great one. (Includes audio commentary and featurette.) (Also streaming on Peacock.)
The Beast: Metatextual from frame one, Bertrand Bonello’s French-Canadian drama—freely adapted from (or, perhaps more accurately, inspired by) Henry James’s novella The Beast in the Jungle—is a time-hopping, character-melding mash-up of science fiction, historical drama, and psychological thriller, featuring Léa Seydoux as a young woman revisiting her past lives while undergoing a “DNA purification,” and George McKay as the slithery dude she keeps encountering in them. The precise connections between stories are occasionally elusive, but that’s to the picture’s benefit, allowing Bonello to go off in all sorts of odd, unexpected, and frequently unsettling directions, on his way to a devastating (and perfect) conclusion. (Includes interview and trailer.) (Also streaming on the Criterion Channel.)
Evil Does Not Exist: The new film from Drive My Car director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi concerns a small community that’s about to be taken over by business interests, who plan to use post-pandemic subsidies to establish a tourist-catering “glamping” ground. This sounds like the set-up for an overdone tale of a tight-knit community rallying together to save their town, but that’s not Hamaguchi’s bag at all. Sure, he makes satirical hay of the pointed contrast between people who visit the outdoors and those who spend real time there, but those lackeys are the key to understanding the picture’s title; we meet them basically as villains, and get to know them as people, via their understated dialogue and Hamaguchi’s wry humor, which sometimes makes them the butt of the joke, but not always. (Includes featurette and trailer.) (Also streaming on the Criterion Channel.)
Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus: This cinematic rendering of the final performance of the great composer and pianist Sakamoto is technically a concert film, albeit for a much smaller audience than is typical for the form; the director, Neo Sora, is Sakamoto’s son, an accomplished filmmaker who captures the music simply, a man and a piano on a mostly bare stage. But the austerity of the images and the crispness of the black-and-white cinematography belies the intensity of the undergirding emotion. Sakamoto, who was mere months from dying of cancer, occasionally fumbles, sighing “This is tough” or “I need a break” before powering through. In those blink-and-you’ll-miss-them moments, Opus becomes less about the music (which is luminous) than about the man playing it, and soaring on it, one last time. (Includes interview and trailer.) (Also streaming on the Criterion Channel.)
Hundreds of Beavers: An honest-to-goodness cult phenomenon in the year of our lord 2024 (which you wouldn’t be wrong for thinking impossible), this super-low-budget marvel melds slapstick silent comedy, wild surrealism, and video game mechanics into something both markedly familiar and altogether new. Telling the simple story of a hapless applejack salesman (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) who becomes a fur trapper, pursuing the pelts required by his lady love’s father in order to win her hand, director Mike Cheslik frees himself from the shackles of amateurism, putting his goofy story onscreen no matter how clumsy or unconvincing his methods. It doesn’t all work, and the 108-minute running time starts to feel like a dare by the third act. But this is an undeniably original work of cinema, in a landscape where that seems increasingly, direly rare. (Includes audio commentaries, deleted scenes, featurettes, interviews, lyric video, and marketing gallery.)
Scala!!! or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World’s Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits: The Scala was, per the opening narration, “London’s most infamous and influential cinema,” a notorious repertory theater in one of London’s sketchiest neighborhoods, where fringe characters could commune with fringe movies. Eraserhead premiered there, John Waters and Russ Meyer flicks were in constant rotation, all-night movie marathons were the norm, and a whole generation of punk-era weirdos found their art—and their people. Ali Catterall and Jane Giles’s documentary is an entertaining assemblage of clips, interviews, and backstory, walking through the venue’s various iterations, financial struggles, and ultimate shuttering after an illegal screening of the then-banned A Clockwork Orange. It’s not just a history of this particular cinema, but of an entire London subculture, defined by not only film but music, art, and (above all) attitude. (Includes two discs of additional shorts, interviews, and featurettes.)
ON 4K:
Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Crackling Collection: Just in time for Christmas, and just in time for the release of the new (and wonderful) Netflix-produced Wallace & Gromit feature—which I guess will make the title immediately inaccurate?—this marvelous upgrade from Shout! Factory not only gives us 4K versions of their four award-winning shorts, the stop-motion adventures of a cheese-loving inventor and his sensible pooch, which unspool as equal parts Chaplin, Keaton, Rube Goldberg, and Sylvester & Tweety; it also one-ups their previous release by throwing in their earlier, Oscar-winning feature Curse of the Were-Rabbit (albeit only on Blu-ray), as well as their ten Cracking Contraptions micro-shorts.
Paris, Texas: Just in time for its 40th anniversary, and sporting a startling new 4K digital restoration, the Criterion Collection gives a beautiful upgrade to one of its signature releases. Harry Dean Stanton is captivating as an enigmatic drifter who wanders back into the lives of his brother (Dean Stockwell), his son (Hunter Carlson), and, most trickily, his estranged wife (Nastassja Kinski). Sam Shepard’s screenplay is filled with the expected memorable moments and searing insights, but the centerpiece section, in which Stanton finally comes face-to-face (sort of) with the love of his life, is one of the most moving things Shepard ever wrote, or that Wim Wenders ever directed. A rich, masterful film that reveals more with each viewing. (Includes audio commentary, new and archival interviews, deleted scenes, Super 8 home movies and photos, and essay by Nick Roddick.)
No Country for Old Men: Criterion continues to bulk up its Coen Brothers library with the duo’s 2007 Best Picture winner—still one of their finest hours. Mating their unsurpassable technical skills with the terse, unforgiving prose of Cormac McCarthy, the duo pulled career-best performances out of Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, and the somehow undervalued Tommy Lee Jones; it’s a potent mixture of genre elements and downright experimental storytelling, up to and including that controversial closing scene. Tough, haunting, and unforgettable filmmaking, with a 4K transfer and teeth-rattling sound mix that knocks the wind out of you. (Includes new and archival interviews, featurettes, and essays by Francine Prose and Larry McMurtry.)
8 1/2: Federico Fellini’s 1963 classic is one of those films that’s impossible to imagine saying anything new about, but here we are. After the astonishing worldwide success of La Dolce Vita, Fellini found himself suffering from a bad case of director’s block—so he made that the subject of his follow-up, turning his lens inward, telling the story of a failing filmmaker (Marcello Mastroianni) with the kind of lacerating self-examination that made this the template for cinematic confessionals from All that Jazz and Stardust Memories to Synecdoche, New York and I’m Not There. This was an early entry in the Criterion Collection, so this 4K bump is unsurprising but undeniably welcome. (Includes audio commentary, introduction by Terry Gilliam, featurettes, Fellini short, interviews, trailer, and essay by Stephanie Zacharek.)
Interstellar: Christopher Nolan’s space opera was one of 2014’s most surprisingly divisive movies, with a sharp split between those who dismissed it as a clunky mess and those who praised it as a visionary masterpiece. At the time, I fell somewhere in the middle, aware of its many flaws, yet grateful for the chances it takes. Revisiting it recently, in a crackerjack new anniversary 4K UHD, it plays stronger; with my expectations adjusted, the clumsiness of the first hour is easier to forgive, knowing the majesty and mystery that awaits once it lifts off into the great wide expansiveness of outer space. (Includes featurettes and trailers.)
Pulp Fiction: Paramount put out a 4K steelbook of Quentin Tarantino’s sophomore feature and mainstream breakthrough back in 2022, and it’s still a beaut – this was always a good-looking movie, putting a sleek sheen on its grimy material, and the sparkling transfer honors that look. This 30th anniversary limited edition keeps the same transfer (understandably), while adding some ephemera: a replica contact sheet, lobby cards, stickers, and a pop-up slipcover. Most importantly, the movie itself holds up, its handful of mid-‘90s edgelord “n-word” drops aside; every performance is an all-timer (and this remains the pinnacle of Samuel L. Jackson’s film work to date), the music is top-tier, and Tarantino and co-writer Roger Avary’s innovative blend of pulp iconography, pop-culture dialogue, and circular storytelling would influence a generation of screenwriters. (Includes feautrettes, behind the scenes footage, “Siskel & Ebert” episode, festival footage, archival interviews, trivia track, deleted scenes, and marketing gallery.)
Galaxy Quest: This clever satire of fan culture, sci-fi television, and second-tier celebrity gets a 25th anniversary 4K release, and while the only new feature is a brief interview with director Dean Parisot, it’s still a fine price for a very funny picture. Parisot marshals a tip-top ensemble cast (including Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver, Tim Allen, Tony Shaloub, and a scene-stealing Sam Rockwell) as the stars of a Star Trek knock-off who find themselves charged with saving a species of real (and really strange) aliens. It’s a well-written riff on the old Three Amigos / A Bug’s Life formula, in which delusions of heroism turn into the real thing, and it’s done so convincingly, the movie’s developed a fairly rabid fandom of its own. It’s easy to see why; it’s a blast. (Includes deleted scenes, featurettes, and trailer.)
Shaun of the Dead: For his breakthrough feature, Edgar Wright kept hold of his Spaced stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to create a pitch-perfect mixture of zombie horror flick and stoner comedy. The pieces that make it play are immediately clear: Pegg and Frost’s deft chemistry, the knowing but loving humor, and the unexpected moments of genuine poignancy. But Wright’s razzle-dazzle direction is what really shines in this 4K edition (out in a sharp new 20th anniversary steelbook from Universal), which served as a body-check to comedy directors around the world that funny movies didn’t have to look dull. (Includes audio commentaries, deleted scenes, outtakes, and new and archival featurettes.)
Stir of Echoes: When this supernatural mystery hit theaters in August of 1999, it was unexpectedly yet thoroughly overshadowed by the similarly themed The Sixth Sense. Yet the picture, making its 4K debut via Lionsgate, eventually found the niche audience it deserved; it’s a spooky and well-made thriller from writer/director David Koepp, the screenwriter-for-hire behind such megahits as Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, and Spider-Man, but whose early directorial efforts (specifically this and the equally underrated Trigger Effect) showed a real flair for mood, tone, and thought-provoking chills. Kevin Bacon is terrific in the leading role of a cynical working-class guy who starts seeing ghostly visions; the supporting cast is full of fine character actors, though Illeana Douglas is the stand-out as his wife’s best friend, an amateur hypnotist who accidentally “opens the door” to the paranormal. (Includes audio commentary, deleted scenes, featurettes, and interviews.)
Demolition Man: This 1993 smash could’ve easily been yet another brainless, Stallone-led mash-up of action and sci-fi, and if you’d like proof of that, look no further than Judge Dredd two years later. What makes Demolition Man stand out, and makes it worthy of this 4K boost by Arrow Video, is its wit; working from a screenplay by (among others) Heathers scribe Daniel Waters, director Marco Brambilla surrounds the shoot-‘em-up set pieces and rough-and-tumble violence with a sly satire of ‘90s mores, polite society, and (depending on how close you want to read it) action movies themselves. Stallone is well-cast and delightfully self-aware as the lunkish leading man, while Wesley Snipes chews so much scenery as the super-villain, he may as well wear a bib. And Sandra Bullock is just as enchanting now that we know who she is as she was back then, when many of us were meeting her for the first time. (Includes new and archival audio commentaries, alternate versions, featurettes, interviews, and essays by Clem Bastow, William Bibbiani, Priscilla Page and Martyn Pedler.)
The Addiction: Arrow put out Abel Ferrara’s 1995 indie vampire drama a few years back in a handsome Blu-ray edition, doing their part to get this oft-overlooked banger back onto the radar. Their 4K edition is sharp as a tack, beautifully capturing Ken Kelsch’s haunting black-and-white cinematography, Ferrara’s moody direction, and a too-rare Lili Taylor leading role as a New York graduate student who wanders into the wrong alley late one night. The supporting cast is killer, including a pre-Sopranos Edie Falco, a seductive Annabella Sciorra, and a brief but juicy Christopher Walken appearance, and the screenplay by Ferrara’s regular collaborator Nicholas St. John freshens up even the dustiest clichés of the genre. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, featurettes, trailer, and essay by Michael Ewins.)
ON BLU-RAY:
On the Road with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby: KL Studio Classics collects all seven of the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby (and Dorothy Lamour) Road to… musical/comedies into one box set—a must-have for any classic comedy lover. You sense them struggling a bit to figure out the formula in the first film, 1940’s Road to Singapore, while the final installment, 1962’s Road to Hong Kong, shows the age of its stars and the franchise (it came a decade after the penultimate picture). But all the movies in between are gems, loaded to the edge of the frame with catchy songs, memorable comic bits, and quotable, meta-textual quips. (Includes audio commentaries, featurettes, and trailers.)
Eastern Condors: A confession, since we’re all friends: I’ve never been a big Sammo Hung fan. I mostly know him as the second banana to Jackie Chan, and find his performances in those pictures overly broad and cartoony, so I brought some skepticism into this 1987 Hong Kong action flick, in which he is director and star. But he mostly plays it straight here, as both actor and director, and that works; the story is a post-Vietnam hodgepodge of elements from The Dirty Dozen, The Deer Hunter, and Mission in Action, and while the theft is undeniable, it’s all done with such copious energy and high style that you can’t really complain. Hung takes his time getting to the action sequences, but they’re good ones, and the no-holds-barred conclusion is a real humdinger. (Includes audio commentary, English-dubbed “export cut,” new and archival interviews, teaser and trailers, and essay by Sean Gilman.)
The Claim: British director Michael Winterbottom invests his frontier drama with big McCabe & Mrs. Miller vibes—lotta artfully falling snow over its Western town—but he also brings his outsider’s eye (and cynicism) to this tale of Manifest Destiny and the ruthless capitalism it incurs. Peter Mullan is magnificent, both terrifying and weak, as “Mr. Dillon,” a name invoked like a specter, the ruler of the tiny but mighty Kingdom Come, California; Milla Jovovich is also quite good as his queen, her performance a fine reminder that there’s a real actor under that action star. And while I’m glad to have Sarah Polley’s films in the world, we lost one of our best film performers when she made that transition—watch the way she simply listens when Mr. Dillon finally confesses his secret to her. This is an underappreciated epic, and an indictment of the unavoidable corruption of greed and power, so kudos to KL Studio Classics for this long-overdue Blu-ray release. (Includes audio commentary and trailer.)
Rambling Rose: Martha Coolidge helms this excellent 1991 memory play (also new on Blu from KL), and the female perspective is key here; under the male gaze, already present in the narrative, this story of (among other things) a young woman’s sexual awakening could be seen as exploitative or worse. But Coolidge is sensitive to the journey of domestic worker Rose (Laura Dern), who is both a wide-eyed innocent and desperately horny, and Dern plays her with a gobsmacking complexity that nabbed her an Oscar nomination. The supporting cast is also tip-top, with Robert Duvall doing one of his signature exasperated patriarch turns, Diane Ladd (Dern’s real-life mom) playing the matriarch with just the right mixture of goodness and ignorance, and Lukas Haas as the son who becomes hopelessly obsessed with Rose. (Includes audio commentaries, alternate ending, outtakes, introduction, interview, and trailer.)
Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare II: AGFA and Something Weird’s 2021 “Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare” disc was a delightful compendium of dodgy exploitation cheapies, most noteworthy for its “Full Drive-In Experience” mode, which racks the movies up in a triple feature with connecting drive-in bumpers and coming attractions. They’ve thankfully continued that tradition with this follow-up, which gives us three sleazy selection: the 1964 synthesis of nudie cutie and Blood Feast-style gore-fest, Love Goddesss of Blood Island; the 1965 proto-slasher short Follow That Skirt; and the stomach-churning 1966 notoriety The Undertaker and His Pals. None of them are particularly good; taken together, they’re a trashy blast. (Includes audio commentary for Undertaker with Patton Oswalt, Love Goddesses outtakes, and essay by Lisa Petrucci.)
Dario Argento’s Deep Cuts: Contemporary home video has proven especially hospitable to the work of Mr. Argento, one of the true masters of Italian horror in general and giallo in particular, and this four-disc package from Severin Films delivers what its title promises: a handful of lesser-known Argento projects, produced primarily for Italian television. None are for newbies, to be clear, nor will they turn anyone into a fan. But Argento fanatics will love every minute of these long-forgotten efforts. (Includes documentaries, featurettes, and interviews.)
Hard Wood: The Adult Features of Ed Wood: This three-disc set, also from Severin, collects four of the even less reputable later features of the Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 from Outer Space director: Necromania, The Only House in Town, and The Young Marrieds, all of which he wrote and directed, as well as Shotgun Wedding, which he co-wrote for director Boris Petroff. These are, to put it mildly, not for the casual viewer, both for the subject matter and the clumsiness of the craft (suffice it to say that Wood’s mise en scène did not miraculously improve in his hardcore period). But for aficionados of Wood’s bizarro oeuvre, and for far-fringe cinema in general, they make for fascinating further study of a man who simply couldn’t go without making movies, no matter the circumstances under which he made them. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, The Incredibly Strange Film Show episode, and vintage sex loops.)
