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.
It’s another light week on the new release front, but no worries: we’ve got a recent (and lovely) rom-com and a vintage slab of Ozploitation on the streamers, and a trio of forgotten but worthwhile catalogue titles making their Blu-ray debuts. Take some chances here, people!
ON HULU:
“The Weekend”: Before Stella Meghie got her shot at a big-studio, big-star romance via “The Photograph,” she wowed audiences with this low-budget charmer about a dissatisfied stand-up comic (“Saturday Night Live” standout Sasheer Zamata) who takes off for a weekend in the country with her ex-boyfriend – they’re friends now! – and his new girlfriend. Shockingly, it does not go smoothly. As with “Photograph,” Meghie doesn’t really throw you curveballs; events progress about as expected. Her gift is for creating an atmosphere of laid-back romanticism, and for spotlighting her performers. And Zamata steps up, crafting a performance that is funny, sexy, and sympathetic.
ON SHUDDER:
“Turkey Shoot”: When “The Hunt” hit theaters just before The Bad Time, its debt to the tradition of people-hunting-people movies was not exactly unnoted. “Battle Royale” and “Hunger Games” shout-outs abound, but the picture it most resembled – both in terms of plotting and style – was this 1982 blast of buckshot from Australian exploitation master Brian Trenchard-Smith, which just returned to Shudder. And hey, we could all use a little escapism right now, so please enjoy this story of (checks notes) a dystopian future in which a totalitarian government rounds up and imprisons its protestors.
ON BLU-RAY:
“The Public Eye”: Bill Murray’s “Quick Change” co-director and screenwriter Howard Franklin made one more great movie after that collaboration: this 1992 mystery thriller, starring Joe Pesci as a cigar-chomping, Weegee-style 1940s New York street photographer who stumbles into a giant criminal conspiracy. It something of a missing link between “Chinatown” and “L.A. Confidential,” and while it doesn’t match either of those pictures (few do), Franklin’s execution is impressive, and he again gathers a knockout cast of supporting players, including Stanley Tucci, Richard Schiff, Jared Harris, Dominic Chianese, and Jerry Adler. And Pesci, fresh off his Oscar win for “Goodfellas,” is wonderful, mixing his trademark bravado with the kind of quiet intensity and vulnerability (particularly in his interactions with Barbara Hershey, who catches his heart and then breaks it) that would make his work in “The Irishman” such a revelation. (Includes audio commentary and theatrical trailer.)
“Lorenzo’s Oil”: This 1992 medical drama, based on a true story, is mostly considered an outlier in George Miller’s directorial career. But you can see his fingerprints all over it: in the stylized camerawork, the intense acting, and especially the fits and episodes that plague the young, ALD-inflicted boy at the story’s center, which he shoots and cuts like a horror movie. It’s so hard to hear this kid suffer, and Miller does not softball it, adopting a visceral approach that goes a long way towards explaining the relentless drive of his parents to find a cure. Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon are terrific in those roles (the latter was nominated for an Oscar), crafting open, emotional, powerful performances; you’re with them all the way. (Includes audio commentary and theatrical trailer.)
“Raggedy Man”: Terrence Malick’s go-to production designer Jack Fisk made his directorial debut with this 1981 drama, and unsurprisingly, the details are impeccable – set in small-town Texas in the 1940s, the location and costume work (and Ralf D. Bode’s cinematography) are gorgeous. But Fisk isn’t just working on the surfaces, either. He tells a story of loneliness and longing, in which a divorced single mom (Sissy Spacek, Fisk’s off-screen partner) is caught with her guard down by a young, handsome sailor (Eric Roberts) who’s passing through town. People begin to talk, of course, and it turns her whole little world upside down. The film’s third-act turn to terror doesn’t really work; it’s best early on, when it’s quiet and understated, giving Spacek’s lived-in performance the room it needs to breathe. (Also streaming on Peacock.) (Includes audio commentary and trailer.)