Category: Digital Week

Blu-rays of the Week Fists in the Pocket (Criterion Collection) Marco Bellocchio’s remarkable and shocking 1965 debut is a fascinatingly repellent study of one of the most dysfunctional families ever presented onscreen. Lou Castel, who chillingly

Blu-rays of the Week The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (Criterion) As in most of his films, family disappointments are explored in this achingly exquisite 1952 drama by Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu (1903-63). As a marriage slowly but painfully

Blu-rays of the Week The Koker Trilogy (Criterion) Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, who died in 2016, was best-known for his loosely structured trilogy of films set in his country’s Koker region: 1987’s Where Is the Friend’s House?, 1992’s And

Blu-rays of the Week Buster Keaton Collection, Volume 3—Seven Chances/Battling Butler (Cohen Film Collection) The latest Buster Keaton release comprises two of the comic genius’ lesser-known efforts. 1925’s Seven Chances, an inspired piece of

DVD Boxed Set of the Week The Best of the Carol Burnett Show—50th Anniversary Edition (Time/Life) The funniest woman to ever appear on television—sorry, Lucille Ball—Carol Burnett hosted her comedy-variety show for 11 seasons (1967-78), and

Blu-rays of the Week Ash Is Purest White (Cohen Media) In Jia Zhangke’s latest saga about contemporary China, Qiao—devoted companion of crime boss Bin—goes to jail for five years after taking the rap for Bin’s unlicensed gun but finds he’s

4K/UHD Disc of the Week The Doors (Lionsgate) Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic tries to turn the Doors lead singer Jim Morrison’s drug-fueled personality—which culminated in his death at age 27 in a Paris bathtub—into something more than a simple

Blu-rays of the Week The Baker’s Wife (Criterion) In Marcel Pagnol’s hilarious and affecting 1938 classic, a baker in a French village stops making bread after his beloved wife leaves him for a local shepherd; meanwhile, desperate villagers decide to

Asher Angel and Zachary Levi are in fine form as teenage Billy and his superhero alter ego

Blu-rays of the Week Corvette Summer (Warner Archive) Matthew Robbins’ breathless 1978 comic romance stars Mark Hamill (fresh off Star Wars) as a high school mechanic who improbably sets out for Vegas when the beloved Corvette he was working on

Blu-rays of the Week War and Peace (Criterion Criterion) Sergei Bondarchuk’s massive four-part film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s sprawling novel about Russia’s victory over Napoleon’s invading army in 1812 has attained mythic status by virtue of

Blu-rays of the Week La vie de Jesus (Criterion Collection) French director Bruno Dumont has made alternately hypnotic and infuriating dramas about individuals approaching states of grace in their singular ways; in that sense, he’s a legitimate

Blu-rays of the Week A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman (Criterion) The films composing Ingmar Bergman’s so-called “faith” trilogy—1961’s Through a Glass Darkly and 1963’s Winter Light and The Silence, all masterly explorations of placing God and

4K Release of the Week Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin (Warner Bros) The Batman films made between 1989 and 1997 return in new 4K editions that provide more visual clarity than ever. Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman

Blu-rays of the Week Cold Pursuit (Lionsgate) Liam Neeson, who has played a mild-mannered, middle-aged regular guy action hero in his most recent movies, plays another wronged father who tracks down members of the drug gang he holds responsible

Blu-rays of the Week Funny Games (Criterion) German enfant terrible Michael Haneke made this provocative, self-reflexive thriller in 1997, and its defects—obviousness, humorlessness, pointlessness—are still in glaring evidence, although it must