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, catalog titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This weekly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.
This week, we’ve got two of 2019’s best films, one of 2018’s most acclaimed movies, an HD upgrade for a classic of French cinema, and a new way to watch one of the finest American movies of all time. Too hyperbolic? You be the judge.
ON NETFLIX:
“The Death of Stalin”: Armando Iannucci made his name and fame with “The Thick of It” and “Veep,” both ruthless chronicles of the ineptitude of contemporary government, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when his first period piece trod much of the same soil. Based on the graphic novel of the same name, this is a darkly (and I mean darkly) comic account of the scramble for power in Moscow, circa 1953, after the unexpected passing of the Soviet dictator – a transition in which the participants’ cruelty is matched only by their incompetence. Each member of the impressive ensemble gets a chance to shine, but the standout is Steve Buscemi, boisterously, gleefully merciless (and funny) as Nikita Khrushchev.
ON NETFLIX / THE CRITERION CHANNEL:
“Raging Bull”: Martin Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece is no stranger to the streaming services – it’s currently on Netflix as well – but it’s worth veering over to the Criterion Channel for one big reason: over there, you can watch it with the 1990 audio commentary by Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker. Somewhat legendary as one of the most informative of all such tracks, it’s long been available only on the Collection’s 1990 laserdisc (which is to say, not really available at all). And it’s a beaut, delving deep into not only well-told but still fascinating production stories like Robert De Niro’s weight gain and the casting of Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarity, but technical details like the framing and cutting of the fight sequences and the methodology of the slow-motion. In other words, it’s like a two-hour film school master class, which is what the best audio commentaries should be.
ON AMAZON PRIME:
“Invisible Life”: “Forget your sister,” the father sneers, “as she has forgotten about you.” Brazilian writer/director Karim Aïnouz helms this intimate epic, a sprawling chronicle of two very different sisters separated by circumstance and kept apart by cruelty in 1950s Rio de Janeiro. Aïnouz ingeniously intercuts their comparable experiences, underscoring their loneliness by including their unanswered letters to each other; these two women could’ve given each other the support they needed, the support their fiercely patriarchal society and unsympathetic partners refused them, and the running heartbreak of these little missed connections gives the film’s concluding sequences an overwhelming emotional force.
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
“Little Women”: That Greta Gerwig, a filmmaker so adept at distinctly personal and decidedly contemporary stories, chose to follow up the triumph of “Lady Bird” with yet another film version of Louisa May Alcott’s classic seemed, at first, frankly baffling. But this is not “yet another film version”; Gerwig cleverly crafts a combination of adaptation and critical study, reconfiguring and restructuring the events of the novel into a complex examination of past and present, and placing the narrative (particularly its conclusion) into a metatextual frame. If that all sounds like unnecessary eggheadery, not to worry; Gerwig still delivers the story’s emotional beats with dexterity and finesse. (Includes featurettes.)
ON BLU-RAY:
“Army of Shadows”: Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 masterpiece – which didn’t see a U.S. theatrical release until 2006, and this week gets a Blu-ray bump from Criterion – is both classical and experimental, telling a WWII adventure story as procedural, with an emphasis on process over thrills (though it’s thrilling nonetheless). Melville focuses on the activities of the French Resistance, but the picture feels muddy and lived-in, in a way few spy pictures do; the color palette is muted, and the atmosphere is suffused with dread. But what’s most striking about the picture is its formal discipline, the pinpoint precision of the filmmaking. Melville would only direct two more features after this one, and there’s never a doubt, for even a second of its expansive, 145-minute running time, that we’re watching a master in full control of his craft. (Includes audio commentary, archival interviews, featurettes, trailers, and essays by Amy Taubin and Robert O. Paxton.)