We’ve loaded this column up before, but rarely like this: due to a combination of spooky season, pre-holiday releases, and general physical media feasting, this week’s disc and streaming guide features a page-busting thirty titles, the most we’ve ever showcased. Apologies to your wallet – and to your eyeballs:
PICK OF THE WEEK:
“Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection: Volume 3”: Sony’s decades-spanning 4K collections have become must-owns for physical media connoisseurs (I’m still kicking myself for not nabbing volume 1, which is currently going for just shy of $500, used), and the latest is no exception. It gathers up a film each from the 1930s (“It Happened One Night”), the 1950s (“From Here to Eternity”), the 1960s (“To Sir, With Love”), the 1970s (“The Last Picture Show”), the 1980s (“Annie”), and the 1990s (“As Good As It Gets”), in crisp 4K resolution, and each looks and sounds as good as it ever has. But the bonus features are, again, nothing to sneeze at: this time around, they’ve dug up such obscurities as the TV pilot and miniseries adaptations of “Eternity” and the TV pilot adaptation of “To Sir,” as well as several entire bonus feature films, including the “One Night” remake “You Can’t Run Away From It,” the 1932 film version of “Little Orphan Annie,” and the made-for-TV “To Sir With Love II” helmed by (the circle of life!) “Last Picture Show” director Peter Bogdanovich. (Also includes audio commentaries, interviews, featurettes, deleted scenes, “One Night” radio version, theatrical and director’s cuts of “Last Picture Show,” and trailers.)
ON NETFLIX:
“Descendant”: “The history is like a puzzle that fits together,” explains one of the informal historians that populate Margaret Brown’s moving and nuanced documentary account of how the descendants of “Africatown,” a community of freed slaves off the Mobile coast, came together to excavate the wreckage of the ship that brought their ancestors there – the last such ship to make that nightmarish journey from Africa to America, long after such kidnappings were a federal crime. Many of these distant relatives are aging fast, and Brown captures the shared history and inherited knowledge – and understands that even the closing of this door opens countless more, forcing those in all corners to contemplate this story’s sticky implications of morality, ethics, and legacy.
ON HBO MAX:
“Barbarian”: It begins with such a simple, elegant thriller premise: a young woman (Georgina Campbell), visiting Detroit for a job interview, arrives at an Airbnb in a sketchy neighborhood and discovers it’s been double-booked. But the guy who’s occupying it (Bill Skarsgård) is very kind, and very apologetic, and offers to sleep on the couch, and puts her mind at ease, and they get to talking, and… well. What happens next is all impossible to predict, even from that boilerplate description, and that’s the pleasure of writer/director Zach Cregger’s script – once you realize that he’s willing to take this story in whatever bonkers direction he likes, all bets are off. It fumbles a bit in the home stretch (a couple of beats are just too hard to swallow), but by then, you’re having too much fun to care.
ON 4K / BLU-RAY/ DVD/ VOD:
“Bodies Bodies Bodies”: The narcissism and cynicism of zoomers get a thorough skewering in this clever comic thriller from director Halina Reijn. She’s attempting to merge two fundamentally incompatible genres – the hang-out comedy and the whodunit mystery – and that friction occasionally keeps the picture from finding its groove. But there are enough deliciously sharp-edged moments and pointed performances (particularly from “Shiva Baby” bombshell Rachel Sennott and an especially unhinged Pete Davidson) to carry it off, and its ingenious closing turns are jaw-dropping. (Includes audio commentary, deleted scenes, and featurette.)
ON BLU-RAY/ DVD/ VOD:
“Nope”: Jordan Peele’s third feature film may well be his most accessible – it’s certainly his most traditionally epic, working on a size and scale that recalls early Spielberg (and “Signs”-era Shyamalan). Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer are the brother-and-sister team in charge of a long-running ranch, supplying horses for Hollywood productions, when a strange shape appears in the sky, and… well, as with most of Peele’s work, the less you know, the better; he’s working on pure instinct at this point, creating moods and dread out of seemingly innocuous or even nonsensical materials, yet somehow making it all add up. It’s an invigorating blast, and just when you think it can’t get any better, Michael Wincott shows up. (Includes deleted scenes, gag reel, and featurette.)
“Beast” / “Fall”: Film critic Bill Bria calls them “single-issue thrillers,” and describes them thus: “a couple of characters encounter A Big Problem, and then over the course of one or two hours (but not more than that), struggle to find a way to solve, escape, or survive it.” The single-issue thriller has fallen rather out of favor these days, thanks to the multi-media, “universe”-spanning tentpoles that studios increasingly hang their hats on, but the summer yielded a handful of sturdy, solid examples, and both are new on Blu-ray. “Beast” was advertised as “Idris Elba fights a lion,” and there’s thankfully not much more to it than that, as he, his daughters, and a friend (Sharlto Copley) go on a safari that goes very wrong, finding themselves stuck in an immobile jeep with a ferocious lion waiting to pounce. It’s well-acted, the effects are convincing (mostly), and the pace is exemplary – director Baltasar Kormákur gets the job done in a tight 92 minutes. “Fall” has a bit more fat on the bones (running a looser 107), but it’s expertly done, as two thrill-seeking best friends (Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner) climb a 2,000-foot radio tower and end up stuck at its top with no clear escape in sight. If you’re afraid of heights (hello!) proceed with caution, but this is a gripping little nail-biter, and its leads have charisma to burn. (“Beast” includes featurettes; “Fall” includes audio commentary, music video, featurette, and trailer.)
“PVT CHAT”: Julia Fox appeared in this low-budget indie drama just before “Uncut Gems” but it was released after, when she had become a much more marketable name. However, the primary focus is not on her character, a camgirl with a secret or two, but that of Jack (Peter Vak), the online gambler and bullshit artist who becomes obsessed with her. That split focus is a bit of a problem – she’s both the more interesting character and the better actor – but this is nevertheless a clear-eyed and raw depiction of sex work (and the relationships therein), and the turns of director Ben Hozie’s screenplay are sharp and unpredictable. (Includes audio commentary, deleted scenes, interview, and Hoze’s feature “Announciation” and short film “Little Labyrinth.”)
“La Llorona”: This 2019 chiller from writer/director Jayro Bustamante is the first film to travel the Shudder pickup to Criterion Collection pipeline, and it’s worthy of both acquisitions – less or a horror movie (in any traditional sense) than a dread movie. A Guatemalan dictator is on trial for a 1980s campaign of military genocide against indigenous people, prompting his fiercely protective wife to question the loyalty of his curious daughter. But her vivid nightmares, coupled with the dementia and delusions of her husband, turn their estate into a haunted house. Bustamante’s filmmaking is sharp as a tack, executing scenes with precision and slowly mounting terror; it’s a movie that burrows under your skin, and stays there. (Also streaming on Shudder.) (Includes featurette, interview, trailer, and essay by Francisco Goldman.)
“Vortex”: The idea of feature-length split-screen isn’t new (where are my “Wicked, Wicked” people at?), but it’s never been done to such devastating effect as in this wrenching drama from Gaspar Noe. We first meet the elderly couple (played, with offhand brilliance by Francoise Lebrun and the legendary director Dario Argento) at the story’s center enjoying a day together, happy in the twilight of their lives, but that night, a line crawls down the screen, slowly and menacingly, pulling the wife away from her husband and into her own dizzying dementia. The two-plus hours that follow are spent in split screens that occasionally overlap but rarely intersect, and it’s an ingenious formal method of conveying her sense of isolation and uncertainty. Noe is both an extremist and a formalist, and both instincts are indulged here (the closing scenes are almost unwatchably grim). But “Vortex” is also imbued with an unavoidable humanity, and its central performances are brilliant and heartbreaking, in quite different ways. (Includes Q&As, trailer, and essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas.)
“Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank”: Doofuses online love to insist that “you couldn’t make ‘Blazing Saddles’ today!” – meanwhile, Paramount up and released a whole-ass remake of “Blazing Saddles,” for children. This animated adventure transposes the action to animals (the title character, the Bart figure, is a dog among cats) and the genre from Western to samurai (giving it a nicely commercial “Kung Fu Panda” sheen). Most of the jokes don’t fully translate, obviously, but there are enough to both make the kids giggle and the parents chuckle knowingly, and the vocal performances (particularly Mel Brooks himself, reprising his role from the original) are a real treat. (Includes featurettes.)
“A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon”: Aardman Animation’s Shaun movies aren’t just mindless family entertainment; these are basically silent comedies, in conception and execution. You see these filmmakers working through all the possible variations and complications of their scenarios, as Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd (and their gagmen) did. The narrative for this 2020 delight (picked up here by Netflix, finally making its domestic Blu-ray debut from Shout!) follows the broad outlines of “E.T.”, with winks to “Close Encounters” and “2001” (among others), and while it doesn’t surpass the first “Shaun” movie – there’s nothing nearly as miraculous as that clockwork restaurant sequence – it offers up plenty of laughs and just enough pathos, and its closing scenes are like balm for the soul. (Includes featurettes.)
ON 4K:
“Universal Classic Monsters: Volume 2”: The Universal monster bench is so deep that this second collection feels like titles that all could’ve been in the first batch – including “The Mummy,” “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” and especially “The Bride of Frankenstein,” which you can make a compelling case (and many have) as the best of the entire bunch. But the unsung gem here, for my money, is their “Phantom of the Opera,” which doesn’t much feel like Universal horror; it’s in color, for one thing, and its costume-drama tastefulness is a departure from the delightfully lowbrow norm. But it’s only slick on the surface, and watching the doom take over this ornate production is a real pleasure. (Includes audio commentaries, featurettes, and trailers.)
“Dressed to Kill”: It’s very easy to get wrapped up in the #problematic aspects of Brian De Palma’s 1980 cause célèbre (new on 4K from KL Studio Classics); it’s just as easy to recognize that, as with any film whose opening credit is “Samuel Z. Arkoff presents,” it’s proudly disreputable and leave it at that. DePalma takes on the puzzle of female sexuality as he took on most themes: by liberally borrowing from Hitchcock (in this case “Psycho,” from the wink-wink shower scene to the dispatching of our ostensible heroine early on to the “cross-dressing killer” to even the thudding exposition of the resolution) and overwhelming the viewer with his virtuoso style. Pound for pound, this may be the most De Palma-ish of De Palma movies, so marvel at the sheer inventiveness of his deep-focus compositions, the obsessiveness of his surveillance scenes, the ingeniousness of his split-screens, and the holy-shit deliciousness of his set pieces; the elevator and the subway sequences are among the best he ever did, which is to say among the best anybody ever did. (Includes audio commentary, news and interviews, featurettes, theatrical trailer, and TV and radio spots.)
“The Usual Suspects”: Revisiting this 1995 indie hit (also new on 4K from KL) is a similar dodging of landmines, as it was the breakthrough project for both director Bryan Singer and actor Kevin Spacey, both of whom have become… well, tough to talk about! So let’s focus instead on the intricacies of Christopher McQuarrie’s airtight screenplay, the neo-noir smokiness of Newton Thomas Sigel’s tip-top cinematography, and the ace ensemble; how about that Benicio Del Toro, am I right? (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, featurettes, deleted scenes, interview outtakes, gag reel, theatrical trailers, and TV spot).
“Tropic Thunder”: The Hollywood satire is an especially hard thing to do well, because the people who make movies often lack much of a sense of humor about themselves and what they do. But Ben Stiller pulled it off in 2008, with this poison pen letter to pretentious actors, over-their-head directors, and over-the-hill executives, and from the opening frames – a ruthlessly accurate series of fake trailers for the most tiresomely go-to entertainments of the day – he never pulls a punch. It’s not the first movie you’d think of for a 4K upgrade, but KL’s excellent presentation does Stiller the favor of making the cliché-ridden Vietnam picture at the movie’s center look and sound even more like the real thing. (Includes audio commentaries, deleted and extended scenes, featurettes, interviews, alternate ending, and trailers.)
“Quiet Days In Clichy”: This playfully X-rated 1970 comedy/drama (new on 4K from Blue Underground) is a fascinating convergence of cinematic and cultural movements, calling up mid-century Bohemia (it’s based on Henry Miller’s novel), the French New Wave (in its style and location), New Hollywood (in the American attitudes and songs by Woodstock fave Country Joe McDonald), and pre-porno chic (its prints were seized by the government on charges of obscenity). Its protagonists, a pair of Americans taking advantage of looser morality abroad, are often hard to like (“Clichy” would make an ideal double-feature with last week’s “Going Places,” but you’d need three or four showers after), but it’s frequently funny and undeniably of its time, for better or worse. (Includes deleted scenes, interviews, trailer, and court documents.)
ON BLU-RAY:
“E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial”: Steven Spielberg’s 1982 megahit (the all-time box office champ for over a decade) hasn’t exactly gone unrepresented on home video; in fact, it just had a big 4K and Blu-ray re-release back in 2017. But this 40th anniversary edition (following its theatrical re-release last summer) boasts over four hours of new bonus features, including an anniversary retrospective and Spielberg’s Q&A at last summer’s TCM Classic Film Festival, and if you’re an “E.T.” fan, well, I’m afraid you’re buying it again. And if you didn’t before, this is a fine time to do so; it became almost a punchline in the 1980s, so ubiquitous were its characters and dialogue, but it has only grown more poignant and powerful with the passing decades. (Includes deleted scenes, featurettes, and Q&A).
“Eve’s Bayou”: Roger Ebert picked this Gothic drama by actor-turned-director Kasi Lemmons as the best film of 1997 – no mean feat in a year that included “L.A. Confidential,” ”Boogie Nights,” “Jackie Brown,” and “Titanic.”But it’s a terrific piece of work, with mood and atmosphere to spare, as a young woman (an early and terrific turn by Jurnee Smollett) recalls her father’s death, and the complicated story surrounding it. Samuel L. Jackson turns in one of his very best performances as the father in question, while Lemmons’ masterful script creates memorable characters for a rich supporting cast, including Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Diahann Carroll, Lisa Nicole Carson, and Meagan Good. (Includes theatrical and director’s cuts, audio commentary, interviews, cast reunion footage, featurettes, preliminary short film “Dr. Hugo,” trailer, and essay by Kara Keeling.)
“Cure”: Also new from Criterion, this Kiyoshi Kurosawa chiller is like a cross between “Memories of Murder” and “God Told Me To,” with a stubbornly dedicated police detective (Koji Yakusho) investigating a series of seemingly unmotivated murders, committed with a frighteningly matter-of-fact randomness. But his investigation keeps leading him to an oddball amnesiac (Masto Hagiwara), who is certainly more than he appears to be. Kurosawa’s imagery is, as ever, haunting, but the picture isn’t just about the horrors onscreen – it’s about the horrors of the mind, and the evil that men are shocked to find themselves capable of. (Includes new and archival interviews, trailers, teaser, and essay by Chris Fujiwara.)
“Cutter’s Way”: Decades and movements don’t always cut cleanly, and films with the qualities we associate with the ‘70s – flawed protagonists, institutional skepticism, bummer endings – continued to trickle out in the early 1980s, albeit often without the acclaim and commercial success they deserved. Such was the case with this 1981 mystery-thriller from director Ivan Passer (“Born to Win”), featuring Jeff Bridges as a good-time guy and John Heard as his roaringly cynical, Vietnam Vet best friend. They get in way over their heads when Bridges implicates a powerful local businessman in a murder, but the mystery isn’t Passer’s primary preoccupation; this is a character piece and a mood poem, and the kind of picture you can’t shake once it’s in your head. (Includes new and archival audio commentaries, new and archival interviews, introductions, isolated music track, trailers, and essays by Danny Peary and Margaret Barton-Fumo.)
“Eyes of Laura Mars”: Director Irvin Kershner, screenwriters John Carpenter and David Zelag Goodman, and cinematographer Victor J. Kemper teamed up to create this flashy, stylish, jazzy snapshot of New York City in her Studio 54 era; it’s one of those movies where coke dust all but settles in the corners of the frame. Faye Dunaway stars as the title character, a celebrity fashion photographer whose eye for composition soon becomes an eye for murder. Tommy Lee Jones is as weary as ever as the police detective investigating the murders she keeps “seeing” (was this guy ever young and vigorous?), and Carpenter and Goodman’s screenplay is both ridiculous and realistic, grounding its Giallo-style gore and psychic suspense in a grimy street aesthetic. (Includes audio commentary, archival featurette, trailer, and TV and radio spots.)
“Happy Birthday to Me”: The slasher movie was still in its infancy when this grisly little item hit theaters in 1981 – the genre hadn’t yet fully surrendered to gore and villain idolatry, still hanging much of its output on the framework of the Christie-style whodunit. Director J. Lee Thompson wasn’t the typical novice or hack – he directed the original “Cape Fear,” for goodness’ sake – so he executes the picture with some style, and coaxes fine performances out of Melissa Sue Anderson and Glenn Ford. But this kind of cleverly-constructed, twistily-plotted slasher was on its way out; the ad campaign trumpeted “six of the most bizarre murders you will ever see,” and that was, increasingly, what horror audiences were looking for. (Includes audio commentary, interview, trailer, and TV and radio spots.)
“In the Soup”: The 1992 Sundance Film Festival was like the starter pistol for the ‘90s American indie movement, boasting one of the most astonishing line-ups in that festival’s history, including “Reservoir Dogs,” “Gas Food Lodging,” “Swoon,” “The Living End,” “The Hours and Times,” and “Brother’s Keeper.” But the big winner (of both the dramatic competition and the Grand Jury Prize) was this wry dark comedy from co-writer/director Alexandre Rockwell, which made much less of a splash, and all but disappeared in the years since. Factory 25’s new Blu-ray is a splendid restoration of a real gem, with Steve Buscemi (kicking off his period of indie ubiquity) as a filmmaker so desperate to raise the funds for his movie that he goes into business with a half-cocked wiseguy with boundary issues (the great Seymour Cassel). It’s a wise and witty treat, and Phil Parmet’s crisp black-and-white photography has never looked better. (Includes Rockwell’s 2014 feature “Little Feat” and post-screening Q&A.)
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”: One of these days, young cinephiles are going to discover director Rouben Mamoulian, and it’s all gonna be over. His take on the classic Robert Louis Stevenson story, lensed by the great Karl Struss (“Sunrise,” “Gone with the Wind”), is innovative from the jump, opening with a series of immersive POV shots (take that, “Halloween”!), and it continues along those lines, eschewing the visual clunkiness of early talkies with dazzling camerawork, innovative cutting, and even some split-screen. It’s a stunning piece of visual filmmaking, augmenting a deservedly Oscar-winning performance by Frederic March in the title roles – he truly creates two entirely different and equally riveting characters. (Includes audio commentaries, cartoon, and radio adaptation).
“No Escape”: “In the year 2022, the international prison system is operated by private corporations. Criminals from all over the world are exploited at a profit. Prisons have become big business.” Hey, how about that science fiction, huh? So begins director Martin Campbell’s (then) futuristic 1994 sci-fi/action hybrid, a kind of a ‘90s riff on “Terminal Island” that’s both silly and thrilling, often at the same time. Ray Liotta stars as a former military man sentenced to life (or death) on an inescapable island prison, and he makes for a peculiar action hero; it’s kind of a waste of his dangerous unpredictability. But Lance Henriksen is perfection as a rebellion leader, Michael Lerner is delightfully slimy as The Warden, and Campbell’s set pieces are top-shelf. (Includes interviews, new and archival featurettes, alternate intro, trailer, and TV spots.)
“The Paper”: Ron Howard’s fast-paced comedy/drama confines its action entirely to a 24-hour period (bookended by the morning news on 1010 WINS — it’s not just a great newspaper movie, but a great New York movie) and set in the newsroom of a Gotham tabloid daily not unlike the New York Post. Michael Keaton plays Henry Hackett, the metro editor, heading into what his very pregnant wife Martha (Marisa Tomei) dubs one of “those days that could change your whole life”; over its course, he is challenged by career troubles, domestic concerns, his contentious boss (Glenn Close), and the big story of the day, a shooting in Williamsburg that’s nabbed two young black suspects who Hackett worries are getting the shaft. Centering one of Keaton’s best performances, awash in the jargon and feel of a newsroom (co-writer Stephen Koepp did time in the trenches), “The Paper” is one of the last great newspaper pictures. (Includes interviews.)
“Shadowlands”: “Her letters are rather unusual,” C.S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) says. “She writes as if she knows me somehow.” The “she” he refers to is Joy Davidman (Debra Winger) a gregarious – uncouth, if you’re being less generous – American poet whom he entered into a marriage of convenience that became, rather unexpectedly, emotionally devastating when she was diagnosed with cancer. It sounds like movie-of-the-week stuff, and it could’ve been. But Richard Attenborough directs with sensitivity and good humor, Winger is stunning (you understand how he falls in with her, because you do too), and Hopkins is doing god-tier work as a stiff-upper-lip type who finds he can’t keep emotion at bay forever. The scene where he has to absolutely fall apart to admit how he feels is, simply put, some of the finest acting of his career, and that’s not nothing. (Includes featurette.)
“The Replacement Killers”: Chow Yun-Fat made his Hollywood debut in this slick 1998 action thriller, which was also the first feature for director Antoine Fuqua. Their collaboration made sense, as this was one of several late-‘90s studio pictures that were taking their aesthetic cues (and lifting directors and stars) from the fertile and furious cinema of Hong Kong. The wild card was co-star Mira Sorvino, who had won an Oscar just a couple of years earlier, and seemed to be slumming it here – but she’s terrific, injecting a much-needed dose of humanity into the proceedings. The plot is no great shakes, and the script is serviceable at best. It’s kinda trash – but it’s very good trash, executed with energy and wit, and it’s fun to watch its charismatic stars smolder.
“Shock-O-Rama Video Party”: Here’s my confession: AGFA and Something Weird can put out as many of these movie-marathon discs as they want, and I’ll watch every damn one of them. It’s just a fun format: smash together a handful of trashy movies that couldn’t sustain a stand-alone release, bridge them with drive-in snips and vintage bumpers, and have a ball. (I can’t imagine watching any of these individually; smash that “all-night slumber party” mode and make a night of it.) Their latest is comprised of long-forgotten oddities from the Something Weird library, taken from their glorious S-VHS masters: “The Naked Witch,” a kind of low-rent “Haxan” that benefits from generous helpings of regional weirdness; “Violated,” a nifty little thriller that makes the most of its burlesque-show access and on-the-fly NYC location work; “Ghost of Hurley House,” a moody black-and-white programmer that trots out the old “spend the night in a haunted house” chestnut; and “Passion in the Sun,” whose gratuitous burlesque sequences and lingering, longing dressing room scenes make it play as sleazy even by these lowered standards. The whole thing is an absolute hoot. (Includes audio commentary on “The Naked Witch.”)
