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 Look of Silence (Joshua Oppenheimer)
Calling Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence the year’s finest documentary is not inaccurate; the film certainly deserves that crown. Yet it’s hard not to feel like such a classification does Silence a slight injustice. The film is, after all, an overwhelmingly emotional modern classic. Like Oppenheimer’s 2012 masterpiece The Act of Killing, this stunning follow-up features the actual perpetrators of the Indonesian killings of 1965–66. With shocking openness, these men discuss and even demonstrate how they killed. Killing was one of the most powerful films of the last decade, but The Look of Silence is even stronger. This time, Oppenheimer narrows his focus to one man’s tale: an unidentified (for safety reasons) Indonesian eye doctor who talks to the men responsible for the horrific death of his brother. He and the audience discover terrifying truths together. The result is extraordinarily upsetting and startlingly moving. – Christopher S.
The Martian (Ridley Scott)
If the last few years are any indication, Hollywood has a revitalized interest in turning their head towards the vastness of space. Rather than a focus on alien-occupied science-fiction, we’ve seen a string of major-budget fall releases that question our place in the universe and the boundless exploration therein. The latest in this category, Ridley Scott‘s The Martian, lacks the wall-to-wall tension of Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity or the ambition of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, but for the most part, it’s a rollicking space procedural that depends on some logic, and a great deal of luck. – Jordan R. (full review)
Out 1 (Jacques Rivette)
If there’s any truth to the old chestnut that great works of art teach you how to experience them, few films exemplify it quite so fully as Jacques Rivette‘s Out 1. Then again, when so few films akin to Out 1 in the first place, comparisons will only go so far before discourse hits a wall. Or so I, in the two weeks since seeing it, have been inclined to think of a conspiracy-filled, paranoia-fueled, melancholy-drenched 13-hour movie that’s no less indebted to Fritz Lang and classic melodrama than Aeschylus and Balzac. If this weren’t a particularly good film, its restoration and subsequent theatrical release, which begins at New York’s BAMcinématek this evening, would still be something to celebrate — mostly as a signal that people with a power to save rare films are placing their resources where it counts. But given what is, to my mind, the grand scope of Rivette’s achievement — something that, if you feel it at all, might only be perceivable in full sight of the thing, when every piece can click together in one’s mind —Out 1 now stands as the great cinematic happening of 2015. – Nick N. (full review)
Also Arriving This Week
The American Friend
Bitter Rice
Irrational Man (review)
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
The Stanford Prison Experiment (review)
Recommended Deals of the Week
Top Deal: A selection of Blu-rays on The Criterion Collection are under $20, including In the Mood for Love, Persona, The Wages of Fear, The Kid With a Bike and many more.
A Clockwork Orange (Blu-ray) – $9.65
A Most Violent Year (Blu-ray) – $10.00
A Separation (Blu-ray) – $7.96
A Serious Man (Blu-ray) – $7.49
The American (Blu-ray) – $7.47
Amelie (Blu-ray) – $8.99
Beginners (Blu-ray) – $8.92
Black Swan (Blu-ray) – $9.20
The Brothers Bloom (Blu-ray) – $8.35
The Cabin in the Woods (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Captain Phillips (Blu-ray) – $9.48
Casino (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Dear White People (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Eastern Promises (Blu-ray) – $7.06
Enemy (Blu-ray) – $9.96
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Far From the Madding Crowd (Blu-ray) – $12.99
Goodfellas (Blu-ray) – $7.23
Goodnight Mommy (Blu-ray) – $12.99
Good Will Hunting (Blu-ray) – $5.99
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Blu-ray) – $9.99
A History of Violence (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Inglorious Basterds (Blu-ray) – $9.47
Kingdom of Heaven 10th Anniversary (Blu-ray) – $8.99
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Blu-ray) – $9.69
The Lady From Shanghai (Blu-ray) – $8.77
Looper (Blu-ray) – $9.93
Lost In Translation (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Magic Mike (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Magnolia (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Margaret (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Blu-ray) – $5.99
Matchstick Men (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Michael Clayton (Blu-ray) – $9.34
Mission: Impossible – The 5 Movie Collection (Blu-ray) $34.99
Never Let Me Go (Blu-ray) – $8.40
No Country For Old Men (Blu-ray) – $4.96
ParaNorman (Blu-ray) – $7.05
Pariah (Blu-ray) – $6.48
Persepolis (Blu-ray) – $6.23
Pulp Fiction (Blu-ray) – $7.68
Reality Bites (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Re-Animator (Blu-ray) – $7.89
Rio Bravo (Blu-ray) – $5.99
Road to Perdition (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Seven (Blu-ray) – $7.50
Seven Psychopaths (Blu-ray) – $6.99
Short Term 12 (Blu-ray) – $9.89
A Single Man (Blu-ray) – $6.14
Synecdoche, NY (Blu-ray) – $6.25
There Will Be Blood (Blu-ray) – $9.19
The Tree of Life (Blu-ray) – $6.89
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Blu-ray) – $6.80
Trick ‘r Treat (Blu-ray) – $9.84
True Grit (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Volver (Blu-ray) – $5.98
We Own the Night (Blu-ray) – $6.89
Where the Wild Things Are (Blu-ray) – $7.99
The Wrestler (Blu-ray) – $7.36
What are you picking up this week?