A 4K Val Lewton twofer from Criterion is the easy highlight of a lukewarm week with a few real pieces of shit, starting most forgivably with Devil, a reminder that, whatever you think of him, M. Night Shyamalan is the only person who should be making M. Night Shyamalan movies (cool opening credits, though). Then there’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, the beloved children’s book whose journey to the screen began with Spike Jonze and ends with Zachary Levi in his last “grown-ass man playing a child” performance before he officially became a Trump guy. And then there’s MaXXXine, an idealess, toneless disaster that reeks of Ti West believing that he’s blowing your mind with this 80s L.A. costume party. I didn’t like House of the Devil besides the one thing that of course got me, but it committed to its bit, and more to the point I could tell what that bit was.

I’m a bit surprised Kinds of Kindness isn’t in the “piece of shit” category after how much I hated watching (or just looking at) Poor Things and how this marked many’s bridge too far with Yorgos Lanthimos’ mean-spirited button-pushing. But it may as well be a triumphant return to form for how it only annoyed me sometimes and was only tedious for a stretch of its extensive runtime. Mostly it reminded me that I still find Lanthimos’ robots being hostile to themselves and each other quite funny (months later, I can make myself smile by remembering Jesse Plemons saying “There was a step in the men’s room…”), that Robbie Ryan is an amazing cinematographer when not shackled to constant fisheyes and zooms and appalling CG backdrops, and that Lanthimos is generally quite good with actors when the tone isn’t that of a punishing SNL skit. Of course Plemons takes naturally to playing violent toadies and creeps, but Emma Stone’s performance in the final third of this justifies that second Oscar a lot more than anything she did in that movie (I’d already forgiven her for that because she put her money behind I Saw the TV Glow, now I’m back to loving her). And Margaret Qualley gets an actual part this time, even two of them within that last third.

Arcane: Season One 4K (Shout Factory)
The Convent 4K (Synapse)
Devil 4K (Shout Factory)
Friday Night Lights 4K (Universal)
Harold and the Purple Crayon (Sony)
I Walked with a Zombie / The Seventh Victim: Produced by Val Lewton 4K (Criterion)
Interview with the Vampire: Season Two (RLJ)
Kinds of Kindness (Disney)
Las Vegas: The Complete Series (Universal)
Late Night with the Devil (RLJ)
MaXXXine 4K (Lionsgate)
Monsieur Vincent (Kino)
A Quiet Place: Day One 4K (Paramount)
Robot Dreams (Decal)
Thelma (Magnolia)