Every week we dive into the cream of the crop when it comes to home releases, including Blu-ray and DVDs, as well as recommended deals of the week. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best (or most interesting) films one can take home. Note that if you’re looking to support the site, every purchase you make through the links below helps us and is greatly appreciated.
The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson)
Dense and lacking the playful quality of his more straightforward work, this represents a new multi-narrative direction for Maddin, and a kind of rabbit hole. Working within the art world verses the film world, Maddin’s work, style and influences have a tremendous amount of power applicable to cinema within the space of a gallery installation. Night Mayor, his first collaboration with the NFB, fictionalized the tension between the NFB’s mission and government controls, capturing the inherently cinematic story of an immigrant inventor who dreams of transmitting images made by Canadians to Canadians. The Forbidden Room, while often brilliant upon first viewing, seems to overstay its welcome. A challenging feature representing a new ambition for Maddin, it’s a step forward, a reinvention, and a difficult film to describe and process. I imagine my admiration for it may grow upon future viewings, even if a first viewing had me fearing it lacks substance beyond the disjointed narrative. – John F. (full review)
Kung-Fu Master! and Jane B. par Agnès V. (Agnès Varda)
A restless mother falls for a young boy — a classic tale of forbidden love. But under the hands of Agnes Varda, Kung-Fu Master! finds romantic anxiety at its most sympathetic. Jane Birkin wrote the script with Varda and allowed the filmmaker to use her own house and children, and Varda returns by casting her own son, Mathieu Demy, as the object of affection. The French superstar shows an emotional nakedness in the film’s slow glances as the woman stares out, hoping for anything to find youthful bliss again.
Birkin’s unique personality and celebrity made her perfect for one of Varda’s self-conscious portraits, and thus the masterful documentary Jane B. par Agnes V. Varda both investigates her real life (her relationships with French artists such as Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Doillon) and creates fantasy lives, re-creating famous portraits with Birkin and casting her in scenes of imaginary movies. What remains consistent is Birkin’s playful spirit, her ability to remain openly honest while seeming to hold something back — a chameleon personality caught by a film that shape-shifts as well. – Peter L.
Macbeth (Justin Kurzel)
When adapting perhaps one of William Shakespeare’s best-known and most-performed works, Justin Kurzel had no trouble giving it another reason to be told. Reteaming with his Snowtown cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, he paints Macbeth in a vibrant hellscape in which the skies feel soaked with blood as smoke fills the frame’s lungs. While Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard feel born to play their respective roles, captivating with each utterance of dialogue, it is Arkapaw’s bold approach that makes us feel emphatically trapped in this singular world. – Jordan R.
Paris Belongs to Us (Jacques Rivette)
One of the original critics turned filmmakers who helped jump-start the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette began shooting his debut feature in 1958, well before that cinema revolution officially kicked off with The 400 Blows and Breathless. Ultimately released in 1961, the rich and mysterious Paris Belongs to Us offers some of the radical flavor that would define the movement, with a particularly Rivettian twist. The film follows a young literature student (Betty Schneider) who befriends the members of a loose-knit group of twentysomethings in Paris, united by the apparent suicide of an acquaintance. Suffused with a lingering post–World War II disillusionment while also evincing the playfulness and fascination with theatrical performance and conspiracy that would become hallmarks for the director, Paris Belongs to Us marked the provocative start to a brilliant directorial career. – Criterion.com
The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)
Devoid of any spoken words, music, voice-over or even subtitles, Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy‘s debut feature film The Tribe is communicated through sign language, for all the characters are deaf. This provides a unique challenge for any audience member not versed with how to sign, as the filmmaker provides no direct explanation of what characters are actually saying. While this may initially seem daunting, a viewer’s patience and keen observation is rewarded by a haunting cinematic experience that truly is unlike anything else this year. – Raffi A. (full review)
Victoria (Sebastian Schipper)
Per se, single-shot films are hardly novel any longer. Even excluding sleight of hand à la Rope or Birdman’s digital suturing, there are plenty of films besides Russian Ark that solely consist of one unedited take, yet they were instantly forgotten because that was their only notable attribute. Victoria won’t suffer that fate and the reason is simple: it’s not merely impressive; it’s also intelligent, affecting, and thoroughly electrifying cinema. – Giovanni M.C.
Also Arriving This Week
The Benefactor (review)
Coming Home (review)
In the Heart of the Sea (review)
The Peanuts Movie (review)
Victor Frankenstein (review)
Recommended Deals of the Week
A Clockwork Orange (Blu-ray) – $7.99
A Serious Man (Blu-ray) – $9.39
The American (Blu-ray) – $6.95
Amelie (Blu-ray) – $8.99
The Assassin (Blu-ray) – $14.99
Attack the Block (Blu-ray) – $8.62
Beginners (Blu-ray) – $8.22
Brokeback Mountain (Blu-ray) – $10.22
The Brothers Bloom (Blu-ray) – $10.30
The Cabin in the Woods (Blu-ray) – $7.64
Captain Phillips (Blu-ray) – $9.88
Casino (Blu-ray) – $8.90
Dear White People (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Blu-ray) – $14.99
Eastern Promises (Blu-ray) – $8.87
Good Will Hunting (Blu-ray) – $7.95
Gravity (Blu-ray) – $8.00
A History of Violence (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Heat (Blu-ray) – $8.12
Holy Motors (Blu-ray) – $13.79
Inglorious Basterds (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Interstellar (Blu-ray) – $8.00
Jaws (Blu-ray) – $7.88
John Wick (Blu-ray) – $8.00
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Lady From Shanghai (Blu-ray) – $8.77
Looper (Blu-ray) – $8.00
Lost In Translation (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Magic Mike (Blu-ray) – $7.73
Magnolia (Blu-ray) – $9.53
Margaret (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Blu-ray) – $6.48
Michael Clayton (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Mud (Blu-ray) – $4.75
Munich (Blu-ray) – $12.49
Never Let Me Go (Blu-ray) – $8.00
No Country For Old Men (Blu-ray) – $7.50
Obvious Child (Blu-ray) – $9.99
ParaNorman (Blu-ray) – $9.45
Pariah (Blu-ray) – $6.48
Persepolis (Blu-ray) – $6.23
Pulp Fiction (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Re-Animator (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Road to Perdition (Blu-ray) – $8.99
Room (Blu-ray) – $14.99
Seven (Blu-ray) – $6.99
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Blu-ray) – $6.19
Short Term 12 (Blu-ray) – $9.89
Shutter Island (Blu-ray) – $7.35
A Single Man (Blu-ray) – $4.99
Snowpiercer (Blu-ray) – $6.99
The Social Network (Blu-ray) – $9.96
Synecdoche, NY (Blu-ray) – $6.25
There Will Be Blood (Blu-ray) – $9.15
The Tree of Life (Blu-ray) – $5.99
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Blu-ray) – $5.80
Volver (Blu-ray) – $5.95
Where the Wild Things Are (Blu-ray) – $7.99
While We’re Young (Blu-ray) – $8.00
Whiplash (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Wrestler (Blu-ray) – $6.97
What are you picking up this week?