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.
This week’s biggest new disc and VOD release is one of the few major studio pictures of the year to make it into theaters, so who knows, maybe it’s an Oscar contender? Also this week: favorites from Sundance and Cannes on Prime Video, new editions of a Hitchcock classic and a ‘90s fave on Blu-ray, and a pair of peculiar but fascinating late-‘60s titles from KL Studio Classics.
ON AMAZON PRIME:
“The Lighthouse”: The relentless blasting of the foghorn fills the soundtrack of Robert Eggers’s follow-up to “The Witch” like a warning bell; it’s the sound of the oncoming and inevitable madness of its protagonists. Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson star as a pair of late-19th century lighthouse keepers losing their bearings on their remote island outpost as a storm rails unceasingly, and both actors shine. However, Dafoe, sporting his customary wild-eyed intensity, walks away with the picture thanks to his magnificently grizzled, eccentric performance. Eggers pitches it like a fever dream, but has a way of composing his images for maximum comic effect (some of it plays like straight-up slapstick), and takes this strange story into some, to put it mildly, unexpected territory. It’s a wild piece of work, a twisted sea shanty, warbled by a lunatic.
“Selah and the Spades”: This Sundance 2020 selection from writer/director Tayarisha Poe concerns an exclusive boarding school and the “five factions” – a political system of corruption of hedonism, including staff and students – that run it. But the focus is the title character (Lovie Simone), queen bee of this elite hive, who is nearing the end of her senior year with no obvious successor in place. So she selects a wild card, young and unknown Paloma (Celeste O’Connor), and one of Poe’s particular insights is the way that attention from a popular upperclassman is, both implicitly and explicitly, a flirtation. But that admiration/attraction eventually curdles, and the film’s transformation from boarding school drama to De Palma-esque psychological thriller is unpredictable and engaging. Poe has a particular, disorienting way of placing and moving her camera, and she gets top-shelf performances from her cast. The whole doesn’t always add up to the sum of the parts – but most of the parts are electrifying.
ON AMAZON PRIME / BLU-RAY:
“To Catch a Thief”: Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 romantic thriller was his third straight collaboration with Grace Kelly, whom he pairs with another of his frequent leads, Cary Grant. The result is enough sexual chemistry to power a small city – like Cannes, where part of this sparkling heist picture was shot. Grant plays a reformed cat burglar (or so he says) who has to catch an imitator to prove his own innocence; Kelly is a rich tourist who could be a victim or accomplice, or more. It is, in many ways, the quintessential Hitchcock picture – playful, sexy, thrilling, and fun – and thus an ideal lead-off title for Paramount’s new line of collector-friendly “Paramount Presents” Blu-rays. (Also streaming on Amazon Prime.)
ON 4K / BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
“Bad Boys For Life”: There is something vaguely desperate about Will Smith and Martin Lawrence returning to the franchise that made them viable movie stars, 17 years after its last installment (it’s even articulated in dialogue like “I need this: bad boys, one last time”). But credit where due, and maybe it’s the quarantine-induced hunger for entertainment talking – I’ve seen people singing the praises of “Underwater,” for God’s sake – the simple pleasures of a big, dumb, slam-bang buddy cop movie hit differently these days.
ON BLU-RAY:
“Tin Cup”: When Kevin Costner reunited with his “Bull Durham” writer/director Ron Shelton for this 1996 sports comedy, it felt like he was getting a lifeline; after a series of misbegotten vehicles that failed to land with critics or audiences, Costner was going back to basics. But the resultant picture, while clearly capitalizing on Costner’s strengths (specifically his laid-back charm and natural athleticism), doesn’t feel calculated at all. Leisurely paced and casually appealing, with Rene Russo, Cheech Marin, and Don Johnson providing a welcome boost in supporting roles. (No bonus features.)
“Woman Times Seven”: Vittorio De Sica teamed with Shirley MacLaine for this 1967 comedy, in which MacLaine stars in seven Paris-set, blackout-style vignettes as a series of women (a mourning widow, a wronged housewife, a harried stewardess, a writer’s muse, a spoiled rich wife, a suicidal adulteress, and a married woman on the make), most of them wronged, in one way or another, by a man. It’s pretty hit and miss, as these things often are, swinging a bit too broad in spots, and confined by what passed for bawdy at that moment. But if the script is sweaty, the photography is picturesque, and Shirley shines – she’s funny and naughty and endearing, no matter who she’s playing. (Includes audio commentary and trailer.)
“Secret Ceremony”: You have to give Joseph Losey’s 1968 psychological thriller this much: it is fully batshit from the jump. Elizabeth Taylor and Mia Farrow both start at 11, acting directly at each other as a mourning prostitute and a disturbed young woman who enter into a strange kind of play-acting mother/daughter relationship; the dynamic only gets more upsetting when Robert Mitchum shows up as an incestuous stepfather. It’s overwrought and over-the-top (even by ‘60s Losey standards) but you’ve gotta give it this much: it certainly isn’t dull. (Includes audio commentary and trailer.)
