Celine Sciamma has now officially made one of the greatest movies ever made, and she followed it up with something even better. Petite Maman is not the readymade masterwork that Portrait of a Lady on Fire was, its petite runtime and lack of much happening besides children playing invite that dreaded word “minor”. But it’s an overwhelming, devastating, and profound work within its simple approach, a whisper in your ear that speaks of all the secrets of life and childhood (it’s gotten many Miyazaki comparisons and it earns all of them). It’s about everything, but only as much as it’s about the feeling of being a kid and removing your wet clothes after running inside from the rain. An incredible movie, very likely the magnum opus Sciamma has building up to her whole career, and the kind of bravura contemporary filmmaking that merits a Criterion release beyond it being easy money. While I wish Criterion had put a little more work into their disc, they’ve at least included My Life as a Zucchini as a bonus feature, the Sciamma-written animated film with a similar sad but casually playful view on being young.

Also out this week is Creed III, which arrives just two months past when Jonathan Majors went from The Next Big Movie Star (on the back of this movie) to persona non grata, and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, one of the biggest recent examples of audiences no longer seeing whatever superhero swill you put in front of them. Its failure is in spite of the fact that I got the trailer in theaters with such frequency that I can still, months out, recite lines from it (and from the Eminem song they play in it) from memory. I just threw a truck at a dragon, I love my life.

Brotherhood of the Wolf 4K (Shout Factory)
Creed III 4K (Warner)
My Man Godfrey (1957) (Kino)
Petite Maman (+ My Life as a Zucchini) (Criterion)
Shazam! Fury of the Gods 4K (Warner)
V/H/S/99 (RLJ)
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (Film Movement)