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.
De Palma (Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow)
Earlier this year, Kent Jones’ Hitchcock /Truffaut — a documentary on the famous interview sessions between the two directors — boasted perhaps the most chaotic, dignity-threatening queue of any film screened at Cannes. There is a craving for this sort of thing among cinephiles it seems and it’s easy to see why. Directors just seem to open up much more when speaking to one of their own kind. Brian De Palma, the subject of this fine documentary, says that they’re “the only ones who understand what we go through.” Over the last five years, fellow directors Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow shot over 30 hours of interviews with the movie icon and have distilled them down into this rich feature-length documentary. De Palma is a fascinating, revealing and compelling overview of a remarkably eclectic career, but it’s also a seldom-heard first-hand account of what it’s like to work inside and outside the Hollywood system. – Rory O. (full review)
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer)
While independent screens offered up the biggest laughs with Love & Friendship and Weiner, the funniest studio comedy of the summer was easily The Lonely Island‘s mockumentary Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, which failed to crack $10 million at the box office. Although the laugh-a-second barrage of gags means not every single joke works, we imagine that the ones that do will only improve on countless rewatches. – Jordan R.
Raising Cain (Brian De Palma)
What’s oddest about De Palma’s sublime experimental film, like several of his others — Body Double, Snake Eyes, Femme Fatale — is the pitless audacity of the thing. Never afraid to come off sounding superficial, De Palma’s best ideas are also his dumbest, suggesting feelings and forms as the true subject over any kind of theorized schema. Within this demented confusion of a thriller narrative, an abundance of ambiguous images hint at the representational experimentations sub-Cain: the ghostly images of the baby monitor — a Nosferatu-like Lithgow blurrily gliding around in a sea of pixels — that reappear again and again; the reimagining of Psycho’s swamp-sinking sedan as a cheapened, morbid image of evil, a flailing victim reawakening from the dead and pawing desperately, vengefully at the rear window; a psychiatrist’s fingertips pressed against the glass screen of a television set, recovering one image of a person in another; the urine-green hue of the final motel set-piece, as characters and objects alike glissade into position within De Palma’s great mechanism of simultaneous sensation. – Christopher S. (full feature)
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Kenji Mizoguchi)
This heartrending masterpiece by Kenji Mizoguchi about the give-and-take between life and art marked the first full realization of the hypnotic long takes and eloquent camera movements that would come to define the director’s films. Kikunosuke (Shotaro Hanayagi), the adopted son of a legendary kabuki actor who is striving to achieve stardom by mastering female roles, turns to his infant brother’s wet nurse for support and affection—and she soon gives up everything for her beloved’s creative glory. Offering a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of kabuki theater in the late nineteenth century, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum provides a critique of the oppression of women and the sacrifices required of them, and represents the pinnacle of Mizoguchi’s early career. – Criterion.com
Also Arriving This Week
Aliens: 30th Anniversary Edition
Captain America: Civil War (review)
The Fits (review)
The Measure of a Man (review)
Standing Tall (review)
Recommended Deals of the Week
Top Deal: A huge selection of Blu-rays are currently 3 for $19.99 at Amazon.
The American (Blu-ray) – $7.40
Amelie (Blu-ray) – $6.68
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Blu-ray) – $8.12
Beginners (Blu-ray) – $6.19
Bone Tomahawk (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Brothers Bloom (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Cabin in the Woods (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Casino (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Cloud Atlas (Blu-ray) – $7.90
Django Unchained (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Eastern Promises (Blu-ray) – $9.38
Far From the Madding Crowd (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Godzilla (Blu-ray) – $8.99
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Greenberg (Blu-ray) – $5.10
Heat (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Holy Motors (Blu-ray) – $10.19
The Informant! (Blu-ray) – $7.96
Inglorious Basterds (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Inherent Vice (Blu-ray) – $10.75
Interstellar (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Jaws (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (Blu-ray) – $9.56
The Lady From Shanghai (Blu-ray) – $8.99
Lincoln (Blu-ray) – $9.94
Looper (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Lost In Translation (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Magnolia (Blu-ray) – $8.49
The Man Who Wasn’t There (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Blu-ray) – $5.26
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Blu-ray) – $4.99
Midnight Special (Blu-ray) – $12.96
Michael Clayton (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Moneyball (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Nebraska (Blu-ray) – $8.90
Never Let Me Go (Blu-ray) – $7.50
No Country For Old Men (Blu-ray) – $4.96
ParaNorman (Blu-ray) – $8.99
Persepolis (Blu-ray) – $9.90
The Piano (Blu-ray) – $7.34
Pulp Fiction (Blu-ray) – $9.64
Road to Perdition (Blu-ray) – $8.88
The Searchers / Wild Bunch / How the West Was Won (Blu-ray) – $10.48
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Blu-ray) – $6.32
Short Term 12 (Blu-ray) – $9.42
Shutter Island (Blu-ray) – $6.79
A Serious Man (Blu-ray) – $7.49
A Single Man (Blu-ray) – $5.80
Somewhere (Blu-ray) – $5.20
There Will Be Blood (Blu-ray) – $5.99
Tinker Sailor Soldier Spy (Blu-ray) – $6.00
Volver (Blu-ray) – $5.95
Waltz With Bashir (Blu-ray) – $6.50
Where the Wild Things Are (Blu-ray) – $7.62
The Wolf of Wall Street (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Wrestler (Blu-ray) – $7.99
What are you picking up this week?