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.
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This (busy) week: a pair of new streaming originals, one of the best movies of 2019, one of the best movies of 1972, an underseen indie flick and studio cop movie from late last year, and must-have catalog titles from Jean-Luc Godard and Michael Ritchie. In other words, a little something for everyone:
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ON NETFLIX:
“Jezebel”: Writer/director/co-star Numa Perrier based this intimate, intelligent drama on her own experiences as a cam girl – circa 1998, the early days of web-camming, and part of the draw here is the insider’s knowledge of that world, its rules, and how they’re broken (as well as its refreshingly matter-of-fact approach to sex work). Tiffany Tenille is appealing and occasionally heartbreaking as the title character, a newbie who starts out tentative and terrified, but gradually discovers she’s not only good at this work, but enjoys the sense of power that (sometimes) comes with it.
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ON AMAZON PRIME:
“Troop Zero”: In the tiny town of Wiggly, Georgia, circa 1977, alien-crazy bookworm Christmas Flint (Mckenna Grace) discovers that the winner of that year’s Girl Scout-esque Birdie Scout Jamboree will get their voice on the “Golden Record” of NASA’s Voyager missions – and when she can’t get into the snooty local troupe, she starts one of her own, under the leadership of her father’s wry, cynical office manager (Viola Davis). It’s an outcasts/underdogs story, a gender-swapped “Bad News Bears” (set in the same era, even), and it’s not surprising to learn it played at last year’s Sundance Film Festival before Amazon picked it up; it recalls the charming-if-affected vibe of a “Little Miss Sunshine” or “The Way, Way Back.” But the leads (not only Davis and Grace but Allison Janney as their rival den mother and Jim Gaffigan as the dad) are so wonderful, its occasional lapses into the realm of the twee are forgivable.
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
“Pain and Glory”: An aging, ailing filmmaker (Antonio Banderas, deservedly Oscar- nominated) looks back on his life with affection, sorrow, and regret in this full-on masterpiece from the great Pedro Almodóvar. As his protagonist flashes back to his childhood, settles a feud with an old leading man, and revisits his great, lost love, Almodóvar casts a starling spell, mixing nostalgia, melancholy, warmth, and humor. Like “The Irishman” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” it’s the kind of movie that a great filmmaker can only craft late in their career; this Spanish master (and his longtime leading man) draws not only on a lifetime of peerless craftsmanship, but hard-won humanity. (Includes Q&A, featurette, and trailer.)
“Give Me Liberty”: The entire first hour of Kirill Mikhanovsky’s dark comedy is pitched at an “Uncut Gems” level of nervous tension, as a luckless medical transport driver (Chris Galust) desperately to do his job and call a few audibles along the way, watching each one domino into another disaster. It’s a frankly stressful experience, so it’s a relief when Mikhanovsky slows down (a bit) to let us get to know its characters and their conflicts a bit better. The relentless pace and general ugliness will put a fair number of viewers off, but not this one; it’s a wild, unruly picture, taking its rhythms and cues from everyday life rather than a million other movies. (Includes Q&A, featurettes, and trailers.)
“Black and Blue”: Deon Taylor’s action drama introduces some tantalizing ideas about dual identity and what draws people of color to police work (“You think you’re black? You think they’re your people? They’re not – you’re blue now”), and doesn’t really follow them through, which is a disappointment. But at least they’re jettisoned in favor of a well-crafted and tightly-wound policier, in which an idealistic rookie (Naomie Harris) catches dirty cops doing dirty cop shit on her body cam, and spends the rest of the movie on the run. Taylor has a good eye for action, Harris carries the picture on her shoulders comfortably, and Frank Grillo is predictably compelling as the chief villain. They’re not breaking any new ground here, but this is a solid, sturdy little programmer. (Includes deleted scenes and featurettes.)
ON BLU-RAY:
“Le Petit Soldat”: This 1963 story of revolution and ennui from Jean-Luc Godard features one of the most famous (and quotable) sequences of his filmography, in which his leads (Michel Subor and the recently-departed Anna Karina) feel each other out as he takes her picture, over and over, announcing, “Photography is truth, and cinema is truth 24 times a second.” It is, by definition, a political thriller, set during the Algerian War, and Godard’s off-the-cuff style and de-glamming instincts mesh well with the thriller conventions (“Torture is monotonous and sad,” our protagonist informs us, and Godard dramatizes it as such). And his dialogue scenes – particularly in a direct-to-camera address towards the end – actually bother to engage with the politics behind the bombings and assassinations. Imagine that. (Includes archival interviews and essay by Nicholas Elliott.)
“Ulzana’s Raid”: One of the most compelling journeyman filmmakers of the 1960s, Robert Aldrich’s filmography ran the gamut from “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” to “The Dirty Dozen” to “The Killing of Sister George.” But this tough, unforgiving 1972 Western was one of his most complicated pictures, adroitly mixing the aesthetics of his early ‘50s Westerns with the moral ambiguity of ‘70s genre reinventions. Burt Lancaster – who starred in two of Aldrich’s earlier oaters, “Apache” and “Vera Cruz” – is strikingly hard-edged as an Army scout leading a revenge mission, anchoring the picture as Aldrich stares down the rough violence of the Old West, and doesn’t blink. (Includes audio commentary, interview, and trailers.)
“Semi-Tough”: “All you care about is fuckin’ and football,” laughs Barbara Jane Bookman (Jill Clayburgh), the owner’s daughter at the tip of love triangle with two of the team’s star players (Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson) in this raucous comedy. Their story, based on Dan Jenkins’ novel, begins as a “Slap Shot”-style “bad boys of pro sports” affair, full of easy shots and punch lines that are certainly, um, of their time. But director Michael Ritchie (“The Candidate,” “Downhill Racer”) has more on his mind than that, deftly exploring the era’s self-help obsessions and shifting notions of masculinity; it may be the only football movie where the climax isn’t the Super Bowl, but the wedding ceremony that follows it. The leads ooze charisma, finding the subtleties and sore spots within their complicated dynamic, and Robert Preston is a hoot as the cheapskate owner. (Includes trailer.)
, Jean Luc Godard and many, many, many more.){kind=link}