The 8 Best Movies To Buy Or Stream This Week: ‘Wasp Network,’ ‘Tommy Boy’ & More

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. 

They’re starting to schedule film festivals again, for some reason, so it’s a fine week to check out some festival selections from home, including the latest from Olivier Assayas (Venice, TIFF, and NYFF 2019) and Céline Sciamma (Cannes, TIFF, NYFF 2019), the Audience Award winner from Sundance 2018, and a music documentary from Slamdance 2019. All that and a groundbreaking documentary from Criterion, a period mystery from KL, and, for levity, a Chris Farley movie. Here we go:

ON NETFLIX:
Wasp Network”: Director Olivier Assayas (“Carlos,” ”Personal Shopper”) writes and directs this true story of a group of Cuban refugees making their way in Miami, and choosing to fight Castro from afar, with unsurprisingly tricky results. The storytelling gets a little muddy – it’s not always clear who’s spying on who, and why – but Assayas’s direction never falters (watch how adroitly intercuts the extravagancies of Miami with the hardships of Havana), and his enviable ensemble cast shines. It does, at times, play like an outsider’s interpretation – particularly when it comes to casting. But there’s still much to admire here.

ON HULU / BLU-RAY:
Portrait of a Lady on Fire”: There’s so much to praise about Céline Sciamma’s masterful period romance (now out on disc from the Criterion Collection), and that’s the main thing to praise: her attentiveness to detail, to every look, to every pause, so that there’s no such thing in its leisurely yet somehow fleeing 121-minute runtime that feels thrown away. She tells the story of a young painter (Noémie Merlant) on a one-week assignment to capture the visage of an aristocrat (Adèle Haenel), but it’s a film less about its story than about a feeling – the feeling of looking, really looking, at another person, and the feeling of truly, for the first and possibly last time, being seen. (Also streaming on Hulu.) (Includes interviews and an essay by Ela Bittencourt.)

ON THE CRITERION CHANNEL / BLU-RAY:
Tokyo Olympiad”: “The Olympics are a symbol of human aspiration.” So goes the opening text of Kon Ichikawa’s documentary account of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (newly upgraded to Blu-ray by Criterion). The widescreen photography is gorgeous, the narration is informative, and the athletic feats are, of course, thrilling. But it’s also a fascinating piece of media archeology; observing the film’s clever use of then-groundbreaking techniques (including slow-motion, freeze-frame, and telephoto lenses) is like watching the birth of the televised Olympics, and, in many ways, of television sports in general.  (Also streaming on the Criterion Channel.) (Includes audio commentary, introduction, additional material, new and archival interviews, Ichikawa documentary, trailers, and an essay by James Quandt.)

ON DVD / VOD:
Burden”: Look, no one can blame you for taking a hard pass on the inspiring story of a Southern Klansman who sees the error of his ways, particularly right now. But rest assured, this Sundance Audience Award winner isn’t just an indie “Green Book”; thanks to the complexity of is characters and the precision of the portraiture, this one works. The cast has a lot to do with that; we have yet another well-observed and naturalistic turn from Andrea Riseborough, a chilling embodiment of folksy evil from Tom Wilkinson, and Garrett Hedlund conveying the world of this man in the lope of his gait and the depths of his mutter. (Includes featurette.)

ON VOD:
Desolation Center”: In early-‘80s Los Angeles, performers and audiences of the local punk rock and performance art scene grew so frustrated by the harassment of the LAPD that they took their show on the road, mounting ambitious happenings in “remote desert locations” where they could let their freak flags fly. In that handful of events were the seeds of Lollapalooza, Coachella, Burning Man, and more, and director Stuart Swezey uses his insider’s access to draw the lines to those subsequent events, as well as some of the acts that broke out of those original gatherings. But it’s most engaging as a snapshot of a scene, complete with ugly old VHS recordings, archival photos, grimy Xeroxed fliers, and hilariously panicked reports from local TV stations. 

ON BLU-RAY:
Murder by Decree”: What a weird career Bob Clark had, wildly swerving from slashers (“Black Christmas”) to sex comedies (“Porky’s”) to family films (“A Christmas Story”) to prestige dramas (“Tribute”), an honest-to-goodness journeyman director who seemed up for just about anything, as long as he hadn’t done it before. So this is his period thriller (new on Blu from KL Studio Classics), in which Sherlock Holmes (Christopher Plummer) and Dr. Watson (James Mason) investigate the most perplexing mystery of the period: the murders of Jack the Ripper. Clark gets into some wild and occasionally gruesome territory – it is, after all, a Ripper movie from the director of “Black Christmas” – and the pacing is a little lumpy. But he dons the cloak of respectability nicely, and the picture boasts crisp production and costume design, a superb cast, and evocative, London foggy photography. Best of all, it explores the Holmes and Watson relationship with welcome nuance, jettisoning the bumbling sidekick dynamic of the Basil Rathbone / Nigel Bruce films for one of genuine warmth and respect. (Includes audio commentaries and trailer.)

Tommy Boy”: Chris Farley and David Spade could’ve been one of the great movie comedy teams; like Abbott & Costello and Laurel & Hardy, their personalities and comic sensibilities were both polar opposites and pointedly complimentary, fueled by mutual affection and respect. Their dynamic is best showcased in Peter Segal’s 1995 comedy (recently re-released in an anniversary Blu-ray steelbook by Paramount), which remains quotable, dopey fun. The screenwriting and filmmaking are serviceable at best, but y’know what? You can say that for plenty of those Abbott & Costello movies too. (Features audio commentary, featurettes, deleted and extended scenes, alternate takes, gag reel, storyboard comparisons, and TV spots.)