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.
Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson)
Charlie Kaufman, the writer behind Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, teams up with animator Duke Johnson to create a complex emotional drama starring lifelike puppets. The premise is riddled with existential dread of modern-day life, presented uniquely through Kaufman’s idiosyncratic point-of-view. For protagonist and self-help author Michael Stone (voiced soulfully by David Thewlis), everyone around him has the same voice (thanks to Tom Noonan) and nothing feels right. It isn’t until he meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh) that all this changes, and the fleeting romance they engage in becomes one of the most heartfelt relationships of the year. Kaufman has a way of using the neurotic tendencies of his characters as a vehicle to expose deep philosophical quandaries of the mind and soul, a bit similar to Woody Allen in his prime. Add to that the brilliant stop-motion animation, which is so realistic and spectacular that you may forget what is real. For a film starring only puppets, Anomalisa is strangely more human than most from 2015. – Raffi A.
Hail, Caesar! (Joel and Ethan Coen)
Dozens of films try to copy the Coens every year, and yet no one ever comes close. They have developed such a delicate, fluid witches’ brew of talent behind and in front of the camera, and a writing style that’s consistently funny and melancholy (often at the same time), that it seems impossible to replicate. Hail, Caesar! is a film that could only ever be made by the Coens. Just as the brothers themselves love to present dialectics about the duality of triviality and seriousness, so, too, does Hail, Caesar! constantly skate back and forth between feeling slight and monumental. – Michael S. (full review)
Le Amiche (Michelangelo Antonioni)
This major early achievement by Michelangelo Antonioni bears the first signs of the cinema-changing style for which he would soon be world-famous. Le amiche (The Girlfriends) is a brilliantly observed, fragmentary depiction of modern bourgeois life, conveyed from the perspective of five Turinese women. As four of the friends try to make sense of the suicide attempt of the fifth, they find themselves examining their own troubled romantic lives. With suggestions of the theme of modern alienation and the fastidious visual abstraction that would define his later masterpieces such as L’avventura, L’eclisse, and Red Desert, Antonioni’s film is a devastating take on doomed love and fraught friendship. – Criterion.com
Also Arriving This Week
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (review)
99 Homes (review)
The Confirmation (review)
Every Thing Will Be Fine (review)
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
The Martian: Extended Edition (review)
A War (review)
Zootopia (review)
Recommended Deals of the Week
Top Deal: A selection of Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg Blu-rays are under $10 this week.
All the President’s Men (Blu-ray) – $7.89
The American (Blu-ray) – $7.85
Amelie (Blu-ray) – $8.99
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Beginners (Blu-ray) – $6.52
Bone Tomahawk (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Brothers Bloom (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Cabin in the Woods (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Casino (Blu-ray) – $9.49
The Conformist (Blu-ray) – $14.49
Cloud Atlas (Blu-ray) – $7.02
Dear White People (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Deer Hunter (Blu-ray) – $10.29
Eastern Promises (Blu-ray) – $8.14
Ex Machina (Blu-ray) – $8.99
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Guest (Blu-ray) – $9.49
A History of Violence (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Heat (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Holy Motors (Blu-ray) – $10.59
The Informant! (Blu-ray) – $8.13
Inglorious Basterds (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Inherent Vice (Blu-ray) – $12.99
Interstellar (Blu-ray) – $8.99
The Iron Giant (Blu-ray pre-order) – $9.99
Jaws (Blu-ray) – $7.99
John Wick (Blu-ray) – $8.99
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Lady From Shanghai (Blu-ray) – $8.99
Looper (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Lost In Translation (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Macbeth (Blu-ray) – $11.99
Mad Max: Fury Road (Blu-ray) – $11.95
Magnolia (Blu-ray) – $9.19
The Man Who Wasn’t There (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Margaret (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Blu-ray) – $6.99
The Master (Blu-ray) – $12.69
Michael Clayton (Blu-ray) – $8.07
Nebraska (Blu-ray) – $9.45
Never Let Me Go (Blu-ray) – $7.99
No Country For Old Men (Blu-ray) – $5.99
Non-Stop (Blu-ray) – $8.99
Obvious Child (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Pan’s Labyrinth (Blu-ray) – $10.39
ParaNorman (Blu-ray) – $7.98
Pariah (Blu-ray) – $7.13
Persepolis (Blu-ray) – $5.79
Prisoners (Blu-ray) – $10.49
Pulp Fiction (Blu-ray) – $8.49
Raging Bull: 30th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray) – $10.19
Re-Animator (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Rio Bravo (Blu-ray) – $5.99
Road to Perdition (Blu-ray) – $8.99
The Searchers / Wild Bunch / How the West Was Won (Blu-ray) – $10.66
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Blu-ray) – $6.43
Short Term 12 (Blu-ray) – $9.89
Shutter Island (Blu-ray) – $6.79
A Separation (Blu-ray) – $6.80
A Serious Man (Blu-ray) – $7.30
A Single Man (Blu-ray) – $6.00
The Social Network (Blu-ray) – $9.96
The Sting (Blu-ray) – $8.99
Straight Outta Compton (Blu-ray) – $12.99
Synecdoche, NY (Blu-ray) – $6.89
There Will Be Blood (Blu-ray) – $8.17
They Came Together (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Tree of Life (Blu-ray) – $7.07
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Blu-ray) – $5.99
Volver (Blu-ray) – $5.95
Where the Wild Things Are (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Whiplash (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Witch (Blu-ray) – $14.99
The Wrestler (Blu-ray) – $7.07
What are you picking up this week?