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. If we were provided screener copies, we’ll have our own write-up, but if that’s not the case, one can find official descriptions from the distributors. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best 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.
Abuse Of Weakness (Catherine Breillat)
The draw of Catherine Breillat‘s newest, autobiographical film, Abuse of Weakness (known as Abus de faiblesse in its native tongue), is ultimately to watch how someone so desperately in need can be preyed upon no matter their own intelligence, wealth, or stature. When tragedy strikes, unannounced, via a debilitating stroke, the fear of death and paralysis eventually leads to newfound tenacity and strength — but what no one who isn’t absolutely indebted to the help of others for even the most menial tasks (such as opening a door) can know is that the simple act of showing up may prove all-powerful. A friend with the rare quality of not tainting every kindness with a healthy dose of pity is everything. When that person is the only one taking the time to call and visit each day, you can’t really be blamed for doing whatever possible to repay the favor. – Jared M. (full review)
The Shooting / Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman)
Here we enter the altar space of American totemology through the side gate, when no one’s looking, after grandeur and money and heroic individualism have wafted away with the night smoke and left only questions. Monte Hellman’s mitotic microwesterns The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind don’t define their era—which barely saw them—so much as manifest a broader existential modernity rivaled only by Antonioni’s in the same decade. Famously, they were both shot in 1965. Hellman, who’d toiled intermittently in the Roger Corman–verse, had recently finished making two tiny back-to-back thrillers with Jack Nicholson in the Philippines for Robert Lippert and was scrounging for work when Corman suggested he and Nicholson drop the proposed abortion drama Nicholson had written, head out into the Utah desert, and make not one low-budget western but two. Carole Eastman wrote the first (under the pseudonym Adrien Joyce), Nicholson wrote the second, and total production time amounted to six weeks. – Michael Atkinson (Read his full Criterion essay)
Also Available This Week
Abbas Kiarostami: A Report
Coldwater (review)
Happy Christmas
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (review)
James Cameron’s Deepsea Challenge
Jersey Boys (review)
Let’s Be Cops (review)
Mood Indigo (review)
Summer of Blood (review)
Tammy (review)
Recommended Deals of the Week
(Note: new additions are in red)
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (Blu-ray) – $9.95
The American (Blu-ray) – $6.25
Amelie (Blu-ray) – $6.74
An Education (Blu-ray) -$7.57
Animal Kingdom (Blu-ray) – $6.93
Beginners (Blu-ray) – $6.90
Black Swan (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Blue Ruin (Blu-ray) – $12.00
The Cabin in the Woods (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Casino (Blu-ray) – $8.99
The Fly (Blu-ray) – $6.99
Gangs of New York (Blu-ray) – $7.50
Goodfellas (Blu-ray) – $8.56
Gone Baby Gone (Blu-ray) – $6.00
The Grey (Blu-ray) – $6.96
Hot Fuzz (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Hugo (Blu-ray) – $6.99
Inglorious Basterds (Blu-ray) – $8.81
I Saw the Devil (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Jackie Brown (Blu-ray) – $9.29
Lost In Translation (Blu-ray) – $8.99
MacGruber (Blu-ray) – $6.78
The Master (Blu-ray) – $9.91
Melancholia (Blu-ray) – $10.99
Mud (Blu-ray) – $7.88
No Country For Old Men (Blu-ray) – $4.63
Observe & Report (Blu-ray) – $4.88
Office Space (Blu-ray) – $8.99
Persepolis (Blu-ray) – $7.64
Public Enemies (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Reality Bites (Blu-ray) – $8.99
The Secret In Their Eyes (Blu-ray) – $7.98
A Serious Man (Blu-ray) – $7.10
Seven (Blu-ray) – $7.50
sex, lies, and videotape (Blu-ray) – $7.12
Shutter Island (Blu-ray) – $7.99
A Single Man (Blu-ray) – $7.10
The Social Network (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Spring Breakers (Blu-ray) – $9.96
Source Code (Blu-ray) – $5.00
Synecdoche, New York (Blu-ray) – $8.58
There Will Be Blood (Blu-ray) – $8.69
Vanilla Sky (Blu-ray pre-order) – $8.58
Volver (Blu-ray) – $6.91
Waltz With Bashir (Blu-ray) – $7.49
We Own the Night (Blu-ray) – $7.00
The Wrestler (Blu-ray) – $6.99
Zodiac (Blu-ray) – $6.99
What are you picking up this week?