There’s still a bit of post-holiday rust affecting this week’s release slate, but there are some goodies to be had. The big one is almost certainly Criterion’s release of The Breakfast Club, whose entry in the Collection I guess pisses off people who haven’t watched Border Radio and experienced the true worst the label has to offer. And besides, regardless of quality, it’s most definitely an “important classic and/or contemporary film”, and Criterion looks to have gone all out with the special features, so quit whining ya fucking goobers. Aside from that, catalog titles are quite dire this week, second-best going to the TV adaptation of Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, featuring Tommy Lee Jones’ breakthrough performance, and there being a steep drop-off from that to the loathsome sex farce Blame It on Rio and, uh, Snow Dogs (that’s only available for members of the Disney Movie Club, who I’m sure are grateful to be getting their money’s worth with sparkling Blu-Rays of lesser Cuba Gooding Jr. vehicles). New titles are actually quite better, while still not being much more than solid. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s Battle of the Sexes comes Mike Mills-approved and is a pretty good movie despite its clunky script (the worst part being an Alan Cumming speech late in the game that’s so on-the-nose as to be playing “got your nose!”), featuring one of Emma Stone’s finest performances and some quietly stunning cinematography by Oscar-winner for La La Land Linus Sandgren. And it has easily the most sensual haircut ever captured on film. I have admittedly not seen Mike White’s Brad’s Status and Doug Liman’s American Made, but they both sound from reviews to be the kind of movies that the “three-out-of-four stars” rating was invented for. And Andy Serkis’s directorial debut Breathe sounds like the movie the term “Oscar bait” was invented for, and I can safely say that Oscar gold will not lie in its future.

American Made (Universal)
Battle of the Sexes (Fox)
Blame It on Rio (Kino)
Brad’s Status (Universal)
The Breakfast Club (Criterion)
Breathe (Universal)
Cadillac Man (Kino)
The Executioner’s Song (Kino)
Hell Night (Shout Factory)
Rebel in the Rye (Shout Factory)
Snow Dogs (Disney)