The 9 Best Movies To Buy Or Stream This Week: ‘One Night In Miami,’ ‘Ammonite’ & More

Every week, 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, catalog titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This biweekly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.

Our first new release round-up of the new year is even more of a grab bag than usual, running the gamut from this year’s awards hopefuls to long-forgotten exploitation head-scratchers. Let’s take a look: 

ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO:

“One Night in Miami…”If we’re being honest, it’s kind of rude of Regina King to be great at literally everything. The Emmy- and Oscar-winning actor adroitly and confidently directs this adaptation of Kemp Powers’s play, a dramatization and fictionalization of the night when Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) became the world champ, and celebrated with friends Malcolm XSam Cooke, and Jim Brown. It’s a torrent of words, and much of its running time consists of four men, huddled up, talking honestly and intimately. On one hand, that’s not what we traditionally consider “cinematic”’; on the other, there’s a closeness and intimacy here that only movies can achieve. (Streaming January 15.)

ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:

“Ammonite”: ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ was both the best and worst thing that could’ve happened to Francis Lee’s period romance – the best, in that it presented a clear blueprint for its possible success (it was even picked up by ‘Lady’ distributor NEON), and the worst because it made comparisons, mostly unfavorable, inevitable. But once we accept that ‘Lady’ not only an unapproachably great film but an inimitable one, and take ‘Ammonite’ on its own terms, there’s much here to admire: the gorgeous cinematography, the subtle writing, the layered performances (particularly Kate Winslet’s work, with a fierce stubbornness concealing decades of pain), and the intensity with which the raw, bottled emotions of the first two acts percolate and boil over in the third. (Includes featurette.)

 ON 4K:

“Tremors”: One of the least likely film franchises of our time was born in 1990, when this modest horror-comedy slithered into theaters, did a bit of business, and slithered back out. But its B-movie charms made it a home video hit, and it somehow spawned six direct-to-video sequels (to date!) and a spinoff television series. And it’s easy to see why: it works, plain and simple, approaching its story of two good ol’ boy handymen leading the fight against killer underground worms with appropriate goofiness and irreverence, but without condescending to the material. That’s a tricky balance, tougher than it looks; director Ron Underwood and writers Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson wisely ground the silliness in a sharply-drawn ensemble of town weirdos, and put across the effects with just enough gory panache. Arrow’s new 4K restoration and release is pricy but lovely; the sound mix is appropriately rumble-y, and the Southwestern landscapes look glorious. (Includes new and archival audio commentaries and documentaries, new interviews and featurettes, EPK, deleted scenes, trailers, outtakes, and early short films.)

“Vigilante”: William Lustig followed up his sleaze masterpiece “Maniac” with this unapologetic “Death Wishrip-off, in which a New York factory worker (Robert Forster) goes looking for revenge when a gang of toughs attacks his family. The script is a series of stacked decks, even by the standards of these movies, and Lustig is better at crafting his own urban nightmares than replicating someone else’s. But Forster rises above the material with his usual gravitas, and the supporting cast – including Fred WilliamsonWoody Strode, and Joe Spinell – is a blast. (Includes audio commentaries, featurettes, trailers, promo reel, and essay by Michael Gingold.)

ON BLU-RAY:

“Minding the Gap”When they made the skateboarding videos as teenagers, Bing Liu’s friends asked, “Why are you filming everything?” Yet those years with a camera in his hand disarmed the people around him, allowing Liu to craft a candid, piercing, and occasionally haunting documentary that’s less about skateboarding than reluctant adulthood. He captures moments of quiet truth and blatant self-deception, particularly with regards to his buddy Zach, whose refusal to be responsible (for his wife, for his child, for himself) turns the picture from handmade doc to full-on tragedy. Powerful and sensitive, it netted Liu an Oscar nomination for best documentary feature. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, outtakes, short film, trailer, and essay by Jay Caspian Kang.)

“Three Films by Luis Buñuel”: Criterion assembles its previously-released editions of the great Spanish-Mexican filmmaker’s final three features in one crisp package, a magnificently enjoyable portrait of an artist intent on expanding and provoking until the bitter end. “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” is a magnificent roasting of rich boors (and bores), stifled in their constant search for pleasant dinner and mild conversation by attacks of surrealism, hedonism, and worse. “The Phantom of Liberty” approaches Monty Python territory, a series of broadly satirical blackout sketches that treats several sacred cows – religion, government, the military, marriage, and family – like bowling pins, to be lined up and knocked over, with gleeful abandon. And “That Obscure Object of Desire” is one of Buñuel’s boldest formal experiments, a cat-and-mouse romance in which two different actresses play the female lead, to better illustrate the elusive nature of love – or, perhaps, the impossibility of ever really knowing, or controlling, one’s partner. Taken together, the three films create a stunning snapshot of an artist at full command of his considerable powers, yet still fully capable of the playfulness and experimentation that made him a legend. (Includes documentaries, archival interviews, featurettes, and essays.)

“Silent Running”: Special effects whiz Douglas Trumbull’s 1972 sci-fi film is a fascinating and seemingly incongruent mixture of tones and ideas (its screenwriters include “Mike” Cimino and Steven Bochco). It’s a space saga in which you can plainly see the origins of “Star Wars,” “Alien,” and “Moon” – and most directly, “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” dealing as it does with a lone man on a space station who mostly communicates with a pair of robots. But it’s also an environmentalist screed, a rare slab of hippie sci-fi, complete with Joan Baez needle drops and a Bruce Dern performance that goes from mild and sensitive to wildly unhinged. The effects remain stunning, even after all these years, and Arrow’s new restoration gives them their deserved shine. (Includes new and archival audio commentaries and interviews, isolated music and effects tracks, archival featurette, and trailer.)

“The Train”Between 1962 and 1966, John Frankenheimer directed “Birdman of Alcatraz,” “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Seven Days in May,” “The Train,” and “Seconds,” a run of first-rate movies the some of our best filmmakers haven’t matched. This is one of the less-discussed of that bunch, but it’s no less impressive, a blistering WWII heist picture in which Burt Lancaster leads a team to stop a German colonel (Paul Scofield) from transporting a priceless cache of stolen artworks. Frankenheimer executes the breathless action and taut suspense with aplomb, and Lancaster (though suspiciously accent-less) is rock-solid in the leading role. (Includes new and archival audio commentaries, isolated score, and trailers.)

“Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture, Vol. 8”The films released thus far in Kino-Lorber’s “Forbidden Fruit” series have mostly been giggly trash, sex and drug and nudist pictures that also tell us much about shifting morals and mores (and how silly and arbitrary they can be). Their latest is something quite different: “Ingagi,” the long-thought-lost 1930 “ethnographic film” notorious for its fabricated premise, racist imagery, and disturbing narrative (it claims to be a documentary about an African tribe that sacrifices a woman each year to the nearby gorillas). It’s worth seeing – the ties to “King Kong” are both documented and demonstrable – but it certainly isn’t the same kind of good time that “Narcotic” or “Guilty Parents” offer. (Includes audio commentaries, restoration demonstration, and trailers.)