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 biweekly 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 disc and streaming debuts include the latest from an Oscar-winning international filmmaker, the latest from a Film Twitter favorite, a pair of great 2020 documentaries, and two classics getting the 4K Criterion treatment. Let’s start there:
PICK OF THE WEEK:
“A Hard Day’s Night”: Criterion’s selections for the big 4K bump-up have been pretty argument-proof thus far – but this may be the label’s best looking and sounding 4K release yet. It sounds tremendous, capturing the depth and heft of the many Beatles songs on the soundtrack (and the screaming crowds they’re greeted by), while the image restoration captures both the casual beauty and inherent grit of the 16mm, faux-verité cinematography. But you’ll stop noticing the tech specs by about the five-minute mark, since the film itself remains so offhandedly entertaining, capturing the Fab Four at the height of Beatlemania, their backstage lives given extra verve by Alun Owen’s witty screenplay and the endlessly energetic direction of the great Richard Lester. It remains one of the all-time great movie musicals. (Includes audio commentary, documentaries, featurettes, Lester short film, interviews, and essay by Howard Hampton.)
ON AMAZON PRIME:
“A Hero”: There really is no major filmmaker doing what Asghar Farhadi is: telling modern morality plays, filled with the complexities of the human spirit and the frustrations of contemporary life. Film after film, he’s preoccupied with the struggles of the working class, here in the form of struggling father (Amir Jadidi), temporarily out of debtors prison, who attempts to correct his situation by telling a small lie that unravels into a giant one. As ever Farhadi’s characters are admirably human – they never feel like symbols or placeholders, so the key antagonist is a stubborn man who nevertheless makes fair points, while our protagonist is undercut at every turn by his own pride and desperation. Sticky, tricky, and thought-provoking.
ON 4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY:
“The Piano”: Jane Campion’s 1993 Oscar winner gets a 4K edition from Criterion, and it looks incredible in the obvious ways, capturing the gorgeous, windswept New Zealand vistas of Stuart Dryburgh’s cinematography. But the beauty of the picture lies in its small moments – the way the camera searches and probes, emphasizing the sensuality of its characters’ hands and fingers (not unlike “The Age of Innocence” the same year), and the urgency in Holly Hunter’s eyes as she gives herself over to her desire. Hunter and Anna Paquin won acting Oscars, and deserved them – but don’t overlook the deceptively simple things Harvey Keitel is doing, how he easily surrenders his brutish masculinity to serve this sensitive story. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, featurette, Campion short film, trailer, and essay by Carmen Gray.)
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
“Last Night in Soho”: Let’s just get the bad part outta the way: Edgar Wright’s homage to the British cinema of the ‘60s (and, to a lesser extent, the giallo of the ‘70s) absolutely falls apart in its third act, undone by narrative monotony and the peculiar insistence of Wright, one of our most gifted comic filmmakers, to take all of this very seriously. But until then, it’s an absolute blast, with Wright deploying all of the visual trickery in his arsenal to tell the story of a modern-day fashion student (Thomasin McKenzie) who falls into a dream-state rabbit hole where she relives the Swinging London era alongside/in place of a beautiful would-be starlet (Anya Taylor-Joy). It moves fast and winks broadly; it’s a joy just to look at, a movie high on its sheer movie-ness. (Includes deleted scenes and featurettes.)
“Dick Johnson is Dead”: As documentarian Kirsten Johnson (“Cameraperson”) realized her father Dick was succumbing to dementia, she floated an unusual proposition: a film collaboration, in which they would imagine and dramatize the various ways in which he could die, and the afterlife that might await him. Making it into a film project makes it manageable for her – she can deal with logistics and specifics instead of the big picture, and can “direct” what is happening, rather than cede control to his illness. That work mirrors the details of caring for her deteriorating dad (packing him up, moving him closer to her, selling his car), and that is, unsurprisingly, the real heart of the film – a funny and thoughtful rumination on life, death, and the afterlife, told with affection and good humor. And then it will make you sob like an infant. (Also streaming on Netflix.) (Includes audio commentary, interviews, trailer, and essay by So Mayer.)
“Time”: Documentarian Garrett Bradley tells the story of Fox Rich, whose husband is serving a 60-year sentence, with no possibility of parole, for an armed robbery in 1997. But this is not another true-crime documentary, where guilt and innocence are in question; he did it, and Fox drove the getaway car (“Desperate people do desperate things,” she explains, “it’s as simple as that”). The question Rich – and the filmmaker – asks is if the crime matches the punishment and if this man should continue to be absent from the lives of his now-grown sons, after missing so much so far. We feel like we’re fighting alongside her, during scenes of agonizing silence as she waits on the phone for news and updates, and we’re with her in the incredible moment where her carefully composed façade finally, forcefully crumbles. She is patient, but she is furious, and this profoundly human and empathetic portrait reminds us that no matter how our society may demonize those behind bars, these are real people, with real lives, hopes, and dreams. (Also streaming on Amazon Prime Video.) (Includes audio commentary, interviews, Bradley short film, trailer, and essay by Doreen St. Felix.)
ON BLU-RAY:
“The Celebration”: A highly dysfunctional family gathers for their patriarch’s 60th birthday party – shortly after burying one of his children – and, well, the shit hits the fan in Thomas Vinterberg’s influential 1998 drama, new to the Criterion Collection. It starts out like dark comedy, with the family’s various screw-ups gathering and skewering each other, and even after the announcement of the darkest family secret, Vinterberg mines the social discomfort for the bleakest possible laughs. But the moments of psychological and physical brutality ultimately take over; it’s an emotionally merciless movie, and the much-discussed “Dogme 95” approach (digital video camera, natural lighting, and other attempts to reduce cinematic “dishonesty”) gives the proceedings the look of an ugly home movie, which becomes a real case of the medium equaling the message. (Includes audio commentary, documentaries, featurettes, deleted scenes, Vinterberg short films, deleted scenes, trailer, and essay by Michael Koresky.)
“Inherit the Wind”: The beloved Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee play’s second film adaptation was this made-for-television version from 1999 – though it’s more a remake of the first film interpretation, from 1960, aping many of the specifics of that film’s script and Stanley Kramer’s direction. But the pedestrian nature of the filmmaking is ultimately no big deal; the text remains razor sharp, a fictionalized dramatization of the Scopes “monkey trial” regulating the teaching of evolution in schools, a story that has sadly grown relevant once again. And the acting is marvelous – Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott are terrific in the leading roles as celebrity orators, sometimes allies and sometimes rivals (based on Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan), on opposite sides of the case. Their courtroom face-off remains one of the great acting duets, but the scenes of Scott’s subsequent fall from grace mark some of his finest, and most vulnerable, late-career work. (Includes audio commentary and trailers.)
“Stage Fright”: Nestled at the end of a run of near-misses that finally ended with the following year’s “Strangers on a Train,” this 1950 thriller (new on Blu from Warner Archive) finds director Alfred Hitchcock making his way back to the kind of sexy contemporary thriller that would be his bread and butter in the decade to come. Jane Wyman is a likable, true blue heroine, pulled into a murder investigation by her affection for the likely suspect, and Marlene Dietrich is delicious as the femme fatale who makes it all happen. Hitch weaves a sticky web of romantic pining and betrayal, and if it occasionally sags, it comes together nicely by the end. (Includes featurette and trailer.)
“Song of the Thin Man”: The “Thin Man” series was running out of gas by this sixth and final entry, at least in terms of writing and directing (director Edward Buzzell and co-writer Nat Perrin were responsible for several lesser Marx Brothers movies). But stars William Powell and Myrna Loy had lost none of the easy chemistry or sexy charm, Gloria Grahame makes a brief but memorably slinky appearance, and little Dean Stockwell is a delight as Nick Jr., with his father’s disciplinary difficulties providing some early laughs. (Includes comedy short, cartoon, and theatrical trailer.)