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:
Pandora’s Box: Filmmaker G.W. Pabst lured Hollywood contract player Louise Brooks away from the States to star in this raw, lurid, and powerful story of a seductive young woman and the men who crumble around her. Her fierce sexuality is dramatized with a frankness that’s still rare in cinema, and Brooks is a remarkable performer, her off-hand sensuality and naturalistic acting style years ahead of its time. Though it may date to the silent era, Pandora’s Box maintains its power to shock and bewitch, and this long-overdue Blu-ray upgrade from the Criterion Collection is a banner occasion for horny movie geeks. (Includes audio commentary, four musical scores, Brooks documentaries, interviews, and essays by J. Hoberman, Kenneth Tynan, and Brooks.)
ON NETFLIX:
Will & Harper: There’s nothing terribly groundbreaking about two old pals taking a cross-country road trip, looking for laughs and truth, except that in this case the pals are comedy superstar Will Ferrell and his longtime friend and collaborator Harper Steele, who very recently came out as a trans woman. Director Josh Greenbaum achieves a perfect balance of laughs and pathos—these two have the kind of comic shorthand that can’t be faked, while their moments of vulnerability and confession are backed with genuine emotion and empathy. It’s a very funny movie, and a quietly moving one as well.
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 lackies are the key to understanding the picture’s title; we met 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.
ON 4K / BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
A Quiet Place: Day One: Confession of biases: I was not exactly amped for a Quiet Place prequel after the dire returns of A Quiet Place: Part II a while back (especially since that film opened with a “day one” sequence to fill us in). But writer/director John Krasinski wisely farmed this one out, handing over the reins to Pig filmmaker Michael Sarnoski, who eschews the small-town setting of the original duo to show us how the aliens hit New York City. There’s an undeniable 9/11 vibe to the events, which is A Choice, but Sarnoski’s intelligent script creates unpredictable stakes by giving us a protagonist (Lupita Nyong’o) who is already dying (her primary concern is her cat, and it must be said: this is one of the great movie cats). Sarnoski excels at building and releasing tension—he’s got a couple of brief but blistering set pieces—and because he’s a real craftsman, he understands that the premise of the series has given him the freedom to make a silent movie, a form whose overwhelming emotions he taps into in the closing scenes. (Includes deleted and extended scenes and featurettes.)
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
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. (Includes deleted scenes and featurette.)
ON 4K:
Paramount Scares Vol. 2: The follow-up to last year’s Paramount 4K box is even more random than that one; the sturdy, Duel-esque Breakdown is much more of a thriller than a horror film, and World War Z feels more like an action flick, zombie apocalypse or no. That said, I’m happy for any excuse to have those (especially the former) on 4K; the straight-up horror selections this time around, also making their 4K debut, are Friday the 13th Part II (which some smart critics deem the highlight of the series) and Orphan: First Kill, which overcomes a weak first act, in which the entire enterprise seems doomed by our knowledge of the big twist that made the inaugural entry memorable, by pulling out a humdinger of a twist of its own; that turn gives the whole movie its juice (alongside a beautifully unhinged Julia Stiles performance). All four films look great, and while there’s a disappointing lack of special features, it comes with a swag package similar to the first box, including patches, stickers, and a special edition of Fangoria magazine.
The Project A Collection: There’s a sequence in 1987’s Project A II that’s as good an illustration as any for Jackie Chan’s greatness. For reasons too convoluted to get into, he’s handcuffed to his rival, and they’re being chased by a gang of axe-wielding killers—so not only must Jackie elude and/or battle them, but he must do so with this dead weight on a chain. And he works this simple idea all the way through, giving us great action and great gags in equal proportion. The two films collected here (in gorgeous 4K restorations by 88 Films), both directed by Chan, feature both aspects of his cinema in spades, but filtered through something of a swashbuckler story; these may also be his most direct homages to Buster Keaton, with the famous Steamboat Bill Jr. falling-building gag getting a direct quotation late in the second. Unexpectedly, that sequel, released four years after the 1983 original, is the better of the two, thanks to Chan’s more expert filmmaking, better understanding of what his audience wants, and the invaluable addition of Maggie Cheung (!) as the ingénue. But both are a blast, and this set is an essential purchase for any fans of Hong Kong action cinema in general, and of its master in particular. (Includes audio commentaries, new and archival interviews, outtakes, alternate endings, featurettes, trailers, and alternate versions.)
I Walked with a Zombie / The Seventh Victim: Val Lewton headed up RKO’s B-horror unit in the 1940s, and rather than attempt to match Universal’s iconic monsters, he advised his directors to do more with less, crafting psychologically complex thrillers with an emphasis on mood and atmosphere. Both are in abundance in this spooky duo, new to 4K from the Criterion Collection. Zombie, which re-teamed producer Lewton with his Cat People director Jacques Tourneur, replicates that picture’s stunning use of light and shadow; both men acutely understood what’s frightening to see, and what’s better left to the imagination. The Seventh Victim, from Mark Robson (his feature directorial debut), starts as a missing person story, with Kim Hunter trying to locate her sophisticated sister in the underbelly of Greenwich Village, and gets stranger and more unsettling the deeper she goes. An ace fusion of noir and horror devices, it’s perhaps the very best of Lewton’s efforts, and that’s no small compliment. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, Lewton documentary, and essays by Chris Fujiwara and Lucy Sante.)
Demon Pond: Another welcome Halloween release from Criterion, this one of Masahiro Shinoda’s 1979 eerie and nightmarish folk horror tale. Set in summer of 1913, it finds wandering traveler Tsutomu Yamazaki arriving in an odd, remote village, where he becomes fascinated by the local legend concerning the nearby, well, demon pond. The visuals are striking (and beautiful in 4K), the synth score by Isao Tomita is a banger, and the conclusion, featuring A+ model and optical work, is startling stuff. (Includes interview, featurette, and essay by Michael Atkinson.)
Brick: Before director Rian Johnson and star Joseph Gordon-Levitt knocked out critics and audiences with Looper, they both broke out (from obscurity and kid-stardom, respectively) with this moody, memorable detective thriller. Gordon-Levitt stars as a high-school outcast who becomes a junior P.I. when his ex-girlfriend is murdered, plunging him into a hard-boiled suburban underworld. The “high school noir” thing was hot in ’05 (Veronica Mars had debuted the previous fall), but Brick transcends the gimmick via writer/director Johnson’s hard-boiled dialogue and tone, as well as Gordon-Levitt’s weary, naturalistic performance. KL Studio Classics gives it the 4K boost, and it’s crisp and gorgeous. (Includes audio commentaries, deleted and extended scenes, featurette, and trailer.)
A Nightmare on Elm Street: Wes Craven’s career-making, sequel-spawning 1984 smash gets the 4K treatment from Warner Bros., and it’s worth a look if you haven’t watched it lately, or only know its pop-culture reputation. Though the later films in the series turned him into a pop icon and semi-beloved one-liner dispensary, in this original outing, “Fred” Krueger was the neighborhood child molester and terrifying nightmare fuel for suburban kids—a real-life boogeyman, in other words. It’s a harder, darker, nastier movie than its reputation, and time well spent now that we’re firmly in spooky season. (Includes theatrical and uncut versions, audio commentaries, alternate endings, and feturettes.)
ON BLU-RAY:
Clockwatchers: Jill Sprecher’s office comedy/drama has been trapped on DVD since its 1997 release, so hats off to Shout! for finally giving it the Blu-ray upgrade it deserves. Toni Collette stars as a withdrawn young woman, new to the world of office temping, who is shown the ropes by Parker Posey (we should all be so lucky); Lisa Kudrow and Alanna Ubach complete the titular group of temps, and if that’s not a stacked enough crew, Bob Balaban, Paul Dooley, Joshua Malina, and Debra Jo Rupp are among the supporting cast. Sprecher’s deadpan style and deeply informed worldview—anyone who has worked in an office will find much to identify with here—make this a spiky comic treat.
Cross Creek: Not to get all ‘we used to be a proper country’ about it, but once upon a time, Mary Steenburgen starred in things. We used to have Mary Steenburgen vehicles! This 1983 Oscar nominee was helmed by mid-budget master Martin Ritt, featuring Steenburgen as author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, a struggling author who chucked it all to buy a plot of land in rural Florida, where she discovered the kinds of backwoods characters and insular aesthetic that would finally make her writing sing. Peter Coyote is charming as the local smoothie who sets his sights on her, but the juice comes via Oscar nominated scene-stealers Rip Torn and Alfre Woodard, who feel less like character actors than real people who accidentally wandered in front of the camera. (Includes audio commentary, interview, and trailer.)
Body and Soul: The shady-world-of-boxing noir is one of the true standbys of sports cinema, but it was rarely done with as much texture and nuance as in this 1947 bruiser from director Robert Rossen and writer Abraham Polonsky (both of whom were later targeted by HUAC). The great John Garfield is the boxer in question, a skilled brawler who is tempted to ignore his morals and play the game for the big bucks. Rossen’s naturalistic direction nails every scene, Polonsky’s weaves in just the right dosage of social commentary, and James Wong Howe’s evocative and luminous cinematography sparkles thanks to KL’s tip-top 4K restoration. (Includes audio commentary.)
