The Best Movies To Buy Or Stream This Week: ‘The Lost City,’ ‘Drive My Car,’ ‘Devil In A Blue Dress,’ & 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, catalogue titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This twice-monthly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.

This week’s new release shelf includes more 4K essentials from The Criterion Collection, a stellar slate of catalogue titles from the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Alan Parker, Barry Sonenfeld, and Michel Gondry, and some genuine obscurities that are worth a shot. 

PICK OF THE WEEK: 

“Devil in a Blue Dress”One of the gravest injustices of late-20th century cinema was the commercial failure of Carl Franklin’s adaptation of Walter Mosley’s first Easy Rawlins novel – an origin story, basically, of how the Black WWII veteran became a private detective, learning how it’s done and what to do (and what not to do). The dialogue crackles, Franklin’s sense of time and place is palpable, Denzel Washington exudes movie-star charisma, and the supporting players are on fire, particularly Don Cheadle’s now-legendary performance as trigger-happy right-hand man Mouse (“Easy, if you ain’t want him killed, why’d you leave him with me?”). It’s just terrific, and Criterion’s 4K edition is glorious. (Includes audio commentary, new interviews, screen tests, trailer, and an essay by Julian Kimble.)

ON 4K / BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:

“The Lost City”: “They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” we’re told, and that’s mostly true – but sometimes they do, and it’s delightful. This Sandra Bullock/Channing Tatum team-up from the Nee brothers (who made the similarly enjoyable, and widely unseen, Tom-and-Huck update “Band of Robbers”) is basically a “Romancing the Stone” remake, with Bullock as a romance novelist kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe, having a blast) whose cover model (Tatum) may be her only chance for escape. Their chemistry is bananas (they really are two of our last, genuine movie stars) and if the picture gets a bit bogged down in the unnecessary subplots of its supporting cast, it still offers plenty of pleasures. (Includes deleted scenes, bloopers, and featurettes.)

ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:

“Drive My Car”: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami‘s short story was an unsurprising Oscar winner for Best International Feature (and also something of a surprise nominee for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay). That much heat is a little surprising for such a seemingly modest picture, its conflicts and payoffs coming in conversations that rarely raise in temperature, or in moments of solitude. But there are storms of great magnitudes happening under its calm surfaces, and it’s a film about those storms, the secrets we all carry, as well as the shame, and regret, and the ways we learn to cope with them all. (Includes interviews, featurette, press conference, trailer, and an essay by Bryan Washington.)

“The Bob’s Burger’s Movie”The choice to turn the cult favorite animated comedy into a feature film was undoubtedly influenced by “The Simpsons Movie” (right down to the title), and it works in many of the same ways, expanding the universe of the show while retaining its considerable charm. But there’s also more than a touch of “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut” here, particularly in the charming and quietly savvy musical numbers (my favorites come early, a summertime set-up song and a number set in “Carneytown”). The animation sports a nice depth and some lovely compositions, while the script is fast and funny, using such old standbys as a threatened repossession and a murder mystery to juice up the show’s venerable characters – and, no small bonus, give plenty of screen time to the delightfully despicable Fischoedor brothers, as voiced by Kevin Kline and Zach Galifianakis. (Includes audio commentary, featurette, deleted scenes with commentary, storyboards and animatics, and theatrical short film.)

“We’re All Going to the World’s Fair”: Jane Schoenbrun’s risky experiment of a movie, new on Blu from Utopia, stars Anna Cobb as a perpetually online teenage girl who embarks on “the World’s Fair challenge,” billed as “the internet’s scariest online horror game.” And it is, indeed, quite scary, for her and for us; much of the picture is shot from the camera of her laptop, in the style of “desktop horror” movies like “Unfriended,” but far more haunting here. Schoenbrun isn’t going for traditional scares; she’s painting a picture of online solitude and self-destruction, skirting up to the edge of a far more omnipresent darkness. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, festival Q&As, and deleted and extended scenes.)

ON 4K:

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”: Writer Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry teamed up in 2004 to create a true portrait of 21st-century romance: wrapped up in technology and self-improvement, yet still at the service of such analog concerns as longing and regret. Newly reissued in a pip of a 4K restoration from KL Studio Classics, it’s a masterful, inventive examination of memory, loss, and the very nature of love, and a film of wicked intelligence and indelible warmth; this is a tightrope act, and one that gets no less impressive with subsequent viewings. Its romantic elements are absolutely enchanting, while craftily sidestepping all avoidable clichés, and its utterly perfect ending finds a way to ask (and answer) some of the most basic, timeless, and pressing questions of love. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, featurettes, deleted and extended scenes, and trailer.)

“The Killing”: Stanley Kubrick’s 1956 caper was so exquisitely crafted and tightly plotted, it – along with John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle,” which shared star Sterling Hayden – became a heist movie template that’s still adhered to. Adapting Lionel White’s book, with the help of the great hardboiled novelist Jim Thompson, Kubrick tells a tale as old as time, of a crew of anonymous professionals who assemble for what seems like a sure-fire job (an intricately timed racetrack robbery, to be precise), only to watch it go off the rails in a haze of double-crosses, deceptions, and bad decisions. The whole thing growls and snarls, and the improvisational necessities of its low-budget gives it a hyperactive energy that Kubrick’s more controlled projects often lacked. And the 4K scan (again from KL) is a treat, nicely capturing the crispness of Lucien Ballard’s striking black-and-white photography. (Includes audio commentary and theatrical trailer.)

“Men in Black”: “Independence Day” was, in many ways, the quintessential summer blockbuster: big, loud, lumbering, aggressively marketed, and dumber than a bag of hair. It was the picture that made Will Smith a movie star, so it was a relief when, the following summer (on the same weekend, even), he starred in another big blockbuster about aliens that was so witty and well-done, it almost seemed an apology for its predecessor. Based on the comic book series by Lowell Cunningham, “Men in Black” (out in a clean new 4K “25th Anniversary Edition” from Sony) was the work of director Barry Sonnenfeld, the entertainingly askew filmmaker behind the “Addams Family” movies and “Get Shorty.” It had all of the ingredients of a big summer movie—mind-boggling special effects, big action beats, cool cars, giant guns—but it also had (gasp) a sense of humor, a sharp screenplay (by Ed Solomon), and intelligent actors (including Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent D’Onofrio, Rip Torn, and Linda Fiorentino) given the room create characters and have a good time. That shouldn’t be as rare as it is. (Includes audio commentaries, extended and alternate scenes, featurettes, scene editing workshop, storyboard comparison, music video, and trailers.) 

“Angel Heart”The late Alan Parker helmed this unlikely but effective mixture of neo-noir, supernatural horror, and erotic thriller – a low-profile title for the 4K treatment, but a welcome one, as Parker fills the frame with shocking images, and cinematographer Michael Seresin makes stunning use of light and shadow. Grizzled private eye Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke, very good) is initially dispatched on an innocent missing person investigation, but as the case leads him into New Orleans’ voodoo underworld, he begins to suspect that his case—and his employer, the spookily monikered Louis Cyphre (Robert DeNiro)—is a bit more devilish than the norm. DeNiro underplays chillingly while Rourke turns in a rather DeNiro-ish performance; the film feels like the passing of the torch that it should have been. Parker ladles on the Bayou atmosphere and cooks up a wild little mystery, while the scrappily off-the-cuff Rourke generates enough heat with co-star Lisa Bonet to burn holes in the screen. (Includees audio commentary, introduction, interviws, behind-the-scenes footage, featurettes, and teaser trailer.) 

“God Told Me To”: Larry Cohen was one of the great New York exploitation filmmakers, inserting sly wit and improvisational energy into blaxpoitation pictures like “Black Caesar” and horror movies like “Q: The Winged Serpent.” This 1975 ripper, newly out on 4K from Blue Underground, has many of the earmarks of his filmography – guerilla-style photography, savvy use of NYC locations, a rough-and-tumble approach – but it feels like his most driven and personal picture, a story of random violence and chilling helplessness that, coincidentally enough, hit theaters just before the “Son of Sam” started popping random citizens. Tony LoBianco is terrific as the police detective on the case, and Cohen gives him a real character to play, with real issues and insecurities, in the middle of this bonkers supernatural thriller. It’s the kind of movie that should fall apart, so disparate are the tones and ideas, so legion are the opportunities for silliness. And yet it never steps wrong. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, rep screening Q&As, trailers, and TV spots.) 

ON BLU-RAY:

“They Call Me Mister Tibbs! / The Organization”: KL Studio Classics bundles its previous stand-alone releases of these two “In the Heat of the Night” sequels (also included with their 4K edition of that film) into a single, double-feature package, and it’s something of a fascinating exercise. Sidney Poitier’s Virgil Tibbs was the audience favorite in Norman Jewison’s 1967 mystery, but it’s sort of strange to see him transformed from the co-star of a Best Picture winner into the star of two straight-up action movies. “Mister Tibbs,” the better of the two, feels like something of a proto-blaxpoitation effort, thanks to Quincy Jones’ funk score and Gordon Douglas’s pulpy aesthetic. But Poitier clearly relishes the opportunity to deepen the character, and it’s a good mystery with an excellent supporting turn by Martin Landau. “The Organization” opens with a taut, wordless robbery sequence that the picture rarely tops, but it explores a compelling moral grey area as Tibbs falls in with a group of young criminals looking to reform by shutting down a Mob-controlled drug ring. This second (and last) sequel feels even more like a standard ‘70s police procedural, but it’s a sturdy one, with well-executed chases and early turns by some excellent character actors. (Includes trailers.)

“Giallo Essentials: The Black Edition”: Arrow Video’s two previous “Giallo Essentials” collections (released last November and December), while solid collections and serviceable introductions to the genre, were comprised of previously released, repackaged titles. Collectors will be happy to hear that the latest installment features titles making their domestic Blu-ray debut, and all are worth a spin. “Smile Before Death” is the most traditional giallo of the bunch, set in the world of high-fashion photography, with its copious opportunities for nudity, exploitation, and intrigue. “The Weapon, The Hour, The Motive” is as much nunsploitation as giallo, with a hot priest, caught up in torrid affairs with women in and out of the church, murdered in grisly fashion. And “The Killer Reserved Nine Seats” finds a bunch of rich assholes congregating at an abandoned theater and soon locked in with a killer, making it something like a manor house mystery. All three films are worthy examples of the genre – sexy, bloody, sleazy, and scary. (Includes audio commentaries, interviews, deleted scenes, and trailers.)

“Requiem for a Village”: Indicator Films dug up a real hidden gem with this short, strange, compelling, stylistic hybrid from director David Gladwell, best known as editor for Lindsay Anderson. Gladwell uses a quietly observational camera – the picture borders on documentary – to create a hypnotic vibe that’s periodically broken by acts of brutality, as the dead begin to rise from their graves in the churchyard of a seemingly quiet English village. It’s such a sui generis work that some viewers may find it alienating (or simply baffling), but Gladwell’s direction is atmospheric and surprising, and he takes the story into thematic realms that would seem unapproachable in its slender running time. (Includes audio commentaries, seven Gladwell short films, and essays by Ben Nicholson and Adam Scovell.) 

“Sampo”Yes, “Mystery Science Theater 3000” fans, you heard right – this is a proper Blu-ray release of the film that was recut, dubbed, and re-titled “The Day the Earth Froze,” and the subject of a classic fourth-season episode of the movie-riffing show. And, well, you’d be surprised what a difference a proper presentation (this one via Deaf Crocodile) can make; with scenes restored, the original language track intact, and the widescreen photography in place, it really is an entirely different, and much less ridiculous, piece of work – gorgeous, epic folk filmmaking. (Includes audio commentary, interview with “MST3K” host Mike Nelson, trailer, and essay by Alan Upchurch.)