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.
Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
Wes Anderson’s leap through the animated realm was a key moment that shifted his filmic characterization toward metaphysical poignancy, thus making way for Moonrise Kingdom, an impressionistically stylized portrait of a pre-Vietnam adolescent bliss. It’s not just Pierret Le Fou for children, but a story about the recreation of storytelling, appropriating aesthetics from low and high arts to burn memories of innocent times as a protection against the fears of adulthood, portrayed here as a melancholic, mid-life stasis (Norman Rockwell’s hard faces as imprints of immobility). What sympathizers to his visual language often miss is that his imperceptible framing not only engages a constant succession of spatial humor (cuts always matter), but, ultimately, a type of storybook visual prose that plays out into Anderson’s larger stakes of mixing brief penetrations of emotional honesty into carefully calculated pictoral surfaces, an update of Renoir’s A Day in the Country (the ending implied by the impressionistic image that is the final shot). The past is all prologue here, and it matters. – Peter L.
Pitch Perfect 2 (Elizabeth Banks)
Part of the joy of the first Pitch Perfect was how unexpected it was. Every moment of heightened reality, every non sequitur, every cartoonish facet of each performers’ character was a blindsiding delight. Watching this zany group of misfits learn to work together, build up their strengths, and take down the competitions was a comedic romp that was highlighted by genuinely enjoyable music numbers. The movie as a whole was a strange, inventive, entertaining surprise that brought together a great group of comedic performers and let them loose in the most charming way possible. Needless to say, a sequel, while beside the point and utterly unwarranted, is not wholly unwelcome. – Brian R. (full review)
Results (Andrew Bujalski)
Certain movies coast by on the charm of their cast, and that’s pretty much the case with writer-director Andrew Bujalski‘s Results. That’s not to say the film completely rests on the shoulders of the talent assembled, but if there’s one major reason why the film ultimately succeeds, it’s because of this pack of reliable actors turning in entertaining performances. Starring Guy Pearce, Kevin Corrigan, Cobie Smulders, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Anthony Hall, and Brooklyn Decker, Results shows some of the ins-and-outs of the physical fitness world. – Jack G. (full review)
Saint Laurent (Bertrand Bonello)
Definitive proof that the common bias against biopics is bullshit. Most indicative of this, sadly, is its mild reception, for if Bertrand Bonello’s latest picture had approached a fictional figure with the exact same film, shot-for-shot and perfect-cue-for-perfect-cue, much of the “critical wisdom” that surrounded it — e.g. claims that he’s been forced to adhere to genre conventions and serve a specific, pre-set trajectory — would melt away. But the fact that it’s chronicling a real-life figure with whom we’re all at least a bit familiar (or so the director very much seems to assume) is the crux of this drama, one of the year’s most elegantly mounted for its manipulation of reflective services, time jumps, title cards, and, in what is perhaps its master stroke, a Proustian third act that jumbles distinctions between time, memory, the real, and the imagined. Bonello is bold enough to make “I Put a Spell on You” Saint Laurent’s declaration to audiences at the outset, and the film stakes its claim through nearly every one of its 150 intoxicating minutes. – Nick N.
Also Arriving This Week
The American Dreamer
Breaker Morant
In the Name of My Daughter
Mister Johnson
Recommended Deals of the Week
(Note: new additions are in red)
Top Deal: A massive selection of The Criterion Collection titles are on sale, including the essential Apu Trilogy for 50% off.
Adaptation (Blu-ray) – $7.99
A Most Wanted Man (Blu-ray) – $9.60
The American (Blu-ray) – $8.48
Amelie (Blu-ray) – $6.58
Anna Karenina (Blu-ray) – $12.22
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Beginners (Blu-ray) – $7.25
Black Swan (Blu-ray) – $6.75
The Brothers Bloom (Blu-ray) – $8.23
The Cabin in the Woods (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Casino (Blu-ray) – $8.49
Captain Phillips (Blu-ray) – $7.70
Children of Men (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Cloverfield (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Collateral (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Drive (Blu-ray) – $7.99
The Fly (Blu-ray) – $5.96
Gangs of New York (Blu-ray) – $7.50
Goodfellas (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Good Will Hunting (Blu-ray) – $7.50
The Graduate (Blu-ray) – $7.88
The Grandmaster (Blu-ray) – $5.00
A History of Violence (Blu-ray) – $6.99
Hot Fuzz (Blu-ray) – $7.82
Inglorious Basterds (Blu-ray) – $7.99
In the Loop (Blu-ray) – $7.69
It Follows (Blu-ray) – $13.07
Jane Eyre (Blu-ray) – $8.28
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Blu-ray) – $9.69
The Lady From Shanghai (Blu-ray) – $8.99
The Last of the Mohicans: Director’s Definitive Cut (Blu-ray) – $7.50
Looper (Blu-ray) – $9.96
Lost In Translation (Blu-ray) – $8.71
Magic Mike (Blu-ray) – $6.99
Magnolia (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Margaret (Blu-ray) – $8.99
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Blu-ray) – $5.17
Michael Clayton (Blu-ray) – $9.34
Never Let Me Go (Blu-ray) – $9.20
No Country For Old Men (Blu-ray) – $4.96
Observe & Report (Blu-ray) – $7.49
Pariah (Blu-ray) – $6.74
Persepolis (Blu-ray) – $6.49
Public Enemies (Blu-ray) – $8.49
Pulp Fiction (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Reality Bites (Blu-ray) – $8.72
Rear Window (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Road to Perdition (Blu-ray) – $9.29
The Secret In Their Eyes (Blu-ray) – $6.52
Seven (Blu-ray) – $7.50
Seven Psychopaths (Blu-ray) – $7.99
The Shining (Blu-ray) – $9.99
A Single Man (Blu-ray) – $6.14
Singin’ in the Rain (Blu-ray) – $7.17
Snowpiercer (Blu-ray) – $9.96
Synecdoche, NY (Blu-ray) – $6.25
There Will Be Blood (Blu-ray) – $7.88
The Tree of Life (Blu-ray) – $6.81
The Truman Show (Blu-ray) – $7.84
They Came Together (Blu-ray) – $9.99
True Grit (Blu-ray) – $9.98
This is the End (Blu-ray) – $8.15
Under the Skin (Blu-ray) – $7.99
We Own the Night (Blu-ray) – $6.89
Where the Wild Things Are (Blu-ray) – $7.99
While We’re Young (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Wrestler (Blu-ray) – $7.06
Zero Dark Thirty (Blu-ray) – $9.99
What are you picking up this week?