Manchester by the Sea

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.

Fireworks Wednesday (Asghar Farhadi)

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After a festival tour back in 2006, Asghar Farhadi’s Fireworks Wednesday was theatrically re-released by the newly established Grasshopper Films, and now it’s arriving on DVD. The drama is another precisely calibrated, culturally specific demonstration of Farhadi’s skills in constructing empathy machines. Further in line with the director’s filmography, this story has a nesting-doll structure that combines ingrained social hierarchies, domestic drama, and a tragic intersection of misunderstandings. And while it doesn’t feel as revelatory as the other recent Farhadi re-release, the claustrophobic, L’Avventura-esque About Elly, it’s more than merely an artifact from one of our best contemporary directors. If anything, it’s a testament to the fastidious construction of latter-day work such as A Separation and The Past.Mike S. (full review)

Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)

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When we meet Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), he’s already shattered. Hidden from life, Lee works as a handyman for an apartment building, shoveling snow and replacing lightbulbs. He can barely make eye contact, even when informed that his older brother has died, rendering him the sole guardian of his 16-year-old nephew, Patrick. As he returns to his hometown of Manchester, Massachusetts, so too do the searing feelings of regret – memories once blocked now reemerging with shocking clarity. Kenneth Lonergan’s third feature, Manchester by the Sea, is a howling study of loss and grief, of how life pushes forward even when we cannot. Young Patrick has an existence outside the feelings for his father, thus forcing Lee, like a sleepwalker rudely awakened by fate, into the world and exposing his own buried anguish. Lonergan finds remarkable contrarieties in the material as he nudges these seemingly unfixable lives toward a dawning sense of hope. There’s little catharsis to be found, for Manchester by the Sea regards its subject with an unflinching gaze, but Lonergan executes this heartbreaking exploration of grief’s universalities with a tenderly redemptive embrace. – Tony H.

Nocturnal Animals (Tom Ford)

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“You have to learn to enjoy the absurdity of our world,” says Michael Sheen’s L.A. socialite to Amy Adams‘ disillusioned art gallery owner at the after party of her latest flash contemporary vernissage. It’s the kind of line that suggests we might be in for some sort of highbrow Hollywood satire, but there’s so much more to Nocturnal Animals than that. Based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel “Tony and Susan,” and helmed by fashion designer turned polymath Tom Ford (A Single Man), Animals is the sort of narratively bold exercise in page-turning suspense and cinematic class that used to be synonymous with Hollywood. Adams stars as Susan Morrow, a wealthy gallery proprietor working in the upper echelons of the L.A. art scene, currently lost in a loveless second marriage to a dashing, younger art dealer named Walker (Armie Hammer). Susan’s past resurfaces when a manuscript from her ex-husband arrives in the mail titled Nocturnal Animals (dedicated to her and with a title taken from an old pet name they had), and with Walker out of town on “business,” Susan is left alone to devour it.  – Rory O. (full review)

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar)

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Women reign supreme in the cinema of Pedro Almodóvar and with the film that helped introduce him to the rest of the world, he crafts some of his most indelible characters. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown presents a lavish, hilarious clash of a variety of elements that the director would further perfect: melodrama and screwball comedy, love and abandonment, the real and the artificial, life and death. From its gorgeous opening titles through to the chaotic finale, Almodóvar is delightfully in full control of this tale that has an equal dose of dangerous Gazpacho, classic Hollywood, and terrorism. Also included on the Criterion disc is a trio of informative interviews with Almodóvar, his brother producer Agustín Almodóvar, and actor Carmen Maura, as well as a brief talk with Richard Peña, who helped to introduce this film to the United States at New York Film Festival, where it would go on to earn an Oscar nomination. – Jordan R.

Also Arriving This Week

3 Classic Films by Claude Chabrol
Hacksaw Ridge (review)
Mildred Pierce

Recommended Deals of the Week

10 Cloverfield Lane (Blu-ray) – $10.16

99 Homes (Blu-ray) – $7.99

Ali (Blu-ray) – $9.99

The American (Blu-ray) – $9.97

Amelie (Blu-ray) – $8.33

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Blu-ray) – $8.30

The Babadook (Blu-ray)  – $7.88

Beginners (Blu-ray) – $5.98

The Beguiled (Blu-ray) – $7.16

Blackhat (Blu-ray) – $9.96

Bone Tomahawk (Blu-ray) – $9.27

Brooklyn (Blu-ray) – $9.99

Carrie (Blu-ray) – $7.99

Casino (Blu-ray) – $9.94

Chi-Raq (Blu-ray) – $11.99

Cosmopolis (Blu-ray) – $4.97

The Deep Blue Sea (Blu-ray) – $9.99

The Deer Hunter (Blu-ray) – $9.96

Godzilla (Blu-ray) – $9.05

Glengarry Glen Ross (Blu-ray) – $6.09

Gone Girl (Blu-ray) – $8.03

Greenberg (Blu-ray) – $4.80

Green Room (Blu-ray) – $10.48

Haywire (Blu-ray) – $5.50

Heat (Blu-ray) – $9.96

Hot Fuzz (Blu-ray) – $5.99

Holy Motors (Blu-ray) – $9.33

The Informant! (Blu-ray) – $7.20

Inglorious Basterds (Blu-ray) – $7.99

Inherent Vice (Blu-ray) – $10.70

In the Loop ( Blu-ray) – $8.99

It Follows (Blu-ray) – $7.88

Jane Eyre (Blu-ray) – $7.46

Jaws (Blu-ray) – $7.88

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Blu-ray) – $9.99

Knight of Cups (Blu-ray) – $9.99

Kubo and the Two Strings (Blu-ray) – $11.99

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (Blu-ray) – $9.89

The Lobster (Blu-ray) – $9.99

Lost In Translation (Blu-ray) – $8.75

Magic Mike XXL (Blu-ray) – $7.99

Magnolia (Blu-ray) – $9.99

The Man Who Wasn’t There (Blu-ray) – $9.49

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Blu-ray) – $5.12

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Blu-ray) – $5.96

Michael Clayton (Blu-ray) – $8.96

Midnight Special (Blu-ray) – $12.99

Never Let Me Go (Blu-ray) – $8.05

No Country For Old Men (Blu-ray) – $4.96

Persepolis (Blu-ray) – $6.50

The Piano (Blu-ray) – $7.99

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (Blu-ray) – $10.99

Pulp Fiction (Blu-ray) – $7.99

The Raid: Redemption (Blu-ray) – $7.99

The Searchers / Wild Bunch / How the West Was Won (Blu-ray) – $11.16

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Blu-ray) – $8.39

Short Term 12 (Blu-ray) – $9.89

Shutter Island (Blu-ray) – $6.70

A Serious Man (Blu-ray) – $7.28

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Blu-ray) – $9.64

Somewhere (Blu-ray) – $6.50

Sunshine (Blu-ray) – $7.65

Swiss Army Man (Blu-ray) – $11.71

Taxi Driver: 40th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray) – $9.99

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Blu-ray) – $9.69

There Will Be Blood (Blu-ray) – $7.36

The Third Man (Blu-ray) – $9.99

Tinker Sailor Soldier Spy (Blu-ray) – $8.22

Two Lovers (Blu-ray) – $9.87

Volver (Blu-ray) – $6.79

Waltz With Bashir (Blu-ray) – $6.50

Where the Wild Things Are (Blu-ray) – $7.88

Whiplash (Blu-ray) – $9.99

The Wolf of Wall Street (Blu-ray) – $9.99

Zero Dark Thirty (Blu-ray) – $7.88

See all Blu-ray deals.

What are you picking up this week?

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