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.
City of Women (Federico Fellini)
Federico Fellini‘s epic 1980 fantasia introduced the start of the Maestro’s delirious late period. A surrealist tour-de-force filmed on soundstages and locations alike, and overflowing with the same sensory (and sensual) invention heretofore found only in the classic movie-musicals (and Fellini’s own oeuvre), La città delle donne [City of Women] taps into the era’s restless youth culture, coalescing into nothing less than Fellini’s post-punk opus. Marcello Mastroianni appears as Fellini’s alter ego in a semi-reprise of his character from 8 1/2, Snàporaz. As though passing into a dream, the charismatic avatar finds himself initiated into a phantasmagoric world where women–or an idea of women–have taken power, and which is structured like an array of psychosexual set-pieces, culminating in a bravura hot-air balloon that decisively sticks the “anti” up into “climax.” – Official Synopsis
Horse Money (Pedro Costa)
Horse Money is a different beast than Ossos, In Vanda’s Room, and Colossal Youth, the designated Fontainhas trilogy to which Horse Money provides a sort of epigraph. The film is most explicit with its interest in history, as it dramatizes the past extensively; but instead of focusing on a community, director Pedro Costa imparts allegorical and communal significance on an individual. As such, those bored by previous Costa films will find this is an entry point and a more streamlined approach. For all its hallucinatory and temporal digressions, it has a relative clarity that even allows newcomers to enter. At the same time, Costa’s thematic focus is sharper than ever, granting the story the same allegorical potency of previous films while also offering critiques of Eurozone neoliberalism through increasingly surrealist devices. – Forrest C.
Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy
While a low-budget feature shot in black-and-white on 16mm, the first installment of the trilogy contains a kind of sprawl not afforded to many today, filming on-location in New York, South Carolina, Germany, and the Netherlands. Yet this is wholly appropriate for the subject of a German photojournalist, Philip — played by Rudiger Vogler, who stars in every film of the trilogy — assigned with capturing America. Being past his deadline, there’s a palpable frustration over the dwindling romanticism of his trek: spending too much of his time in cheap hotel rooms watching television, at one point early in the film taking to destroying his set — even if it’s John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln gracing the screen. This predates a later sentiment by Wenders in his 1985 documentary Tokyo-Ga, on his own journey to capture a foreign land that inspired him so, that “every shitty television set has become the center of the world.” – Ethan V. (full feature)
Also Arriving This Week
Gods of Egypt (review)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (review)
Race (review)
Triple 9 (review)
Recommended Deals of the Week
All the President’s Men (Blu-ray) – $7.89
The American (Blu-ray) – $7.89
Amelie (Blu-ray) – $8.99
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Beginners (Blu-ray) – $6.39
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) – $6.79
Dear White People (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Deer Hunter (Blu-ray) – $10.37
Eastern Promises (Blu-ray) – $8.52
Ex Machina (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Guest (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Hateful Eight (Blu-ray) – $14.99
A History of Violence (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Heat (Blu-ray) – $9.41
Holy Motors (Blu-ray) – $10.59
The Informant! (Blu-ray) – $8.07
Inglorious Basterds (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Inherent Vice (Blu-ray) – $12.99
The Iron Giant (Blu-ray pre-order) – $9.99
Jaws (Blu-ray) – $7.99
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) – $9.49
Macbeth (Blu-ray) – $11.99
Magnolia (Blu-ray) – $9.19
Margaret (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Blu-ray) – $6.48
The Master (Blu-ray) – $12.09
Michael Clayton (Blu-ray) – $8.63
Nebraska (Blu-ray) – $9.48
Never Let Me Go (Blu-ray) – $7.99
No Country For Old Men (Blu-ray) – $5.99
Obvious Child (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Pan’s Labyrinth (Blu-ray) – $10.39
ParaNorman (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Pariah (Blu-ray) – $7.31
Persepolis (Blu-ray) – $5.79
Pulp Fiction (Blu-ray) – $8.50
Raging Bull: 30th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray) – $10.19
Re-Animator (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Road to Perdition (Blu-ray) – $6.99
The Searchers / Wild Bunch / How the West Was Won (Blu-ray) – $9.45
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) – $7.14
A Single Man (Blu-ray) – $6.00
Snowpiercer (Blu-ray) – $7.96
The Social Network (Blu-ray) – $9.96
Synecdoche, NY (Blu-ray) – $6.89
There Will Be Blood (Blu-ray) – $6.99
They Came Together (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Tree of Life (Blu-ray) – $7.07
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Blu-ray) – $6.88
Volver (Blu-ray) – $5.95
Where the Wild Things Are (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Whiplash (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Witch (Blu-ray) – $14.96
The Wrestler (Blu-ray) – $7.07
What are you picking up this week?