Here we have a week with a little something for everybody, and a lot for fans of high-quality cinema. Criterion gives the Italian drama Bitter Rice its U.S. home video debut, and it gives Wim Wenders’ unorthodox Tom Ripley adaptation The American Friend a well-deserved spotlight. And yet it might very well be Kino and Carlotta who win the week, on the basis of Kino’s trio of Richard Lester titles, The Knack… and How to Get It, The Bed Sitting Room, and How I Won the War, and Carlotta finally resurrecting Jacques Rivette’s 13-hour opus Out 1 on U.S. home video.
As far as new titles go, the one most will be gravitating towards is The Martian, which I have still not seen, although I fully expect it to be a veritable laugh riot. The one the entirety of this site will likely gravitate towards is The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer’s chilling sister film to The Act of Killing. But the one I want to once again evangelize about is Irrational Man. I know, there are people who comment on this site who absolutely do not like Woody Allen, and that’s fine, and this isn’t directed towards them, but to everyone else. If you’re avoiding Irrational Man because of the unanimously bad press (which I have a feeling is complete bullshit) or because it looks like another mopey-teacher-boinks-his-student movie (or maybe because it has awful cover art, which, with the red-green color scheme, title band, and focus on the contrast between sullenness and peppiness, makes it look like an inspirational Christmas movie), seek it out on Blu-Ray, because it’s really good (although I must admit that it starts off slowly) and it’s not a movie about a middle-aged guy getting his groove back thanks to a younger woman. It’s pretty hilarious, it has a typically excellent Joaquin Phoenix lead performance, and it’s got that patented Darius Khondji magic (I’ll go into some depth on those last two things in two articles I’m still working at for this site).
The American Friend (Criterion)
The Bed Sitting Room (Kino Lorber)
Bitter Rice (Criterion)
Bolero / Ghosts Can’t Do It (Shout Factory)
Hotel Transylvania 2 (Sony)
How I Won the War (Kino Lorber)
Howl (Alchemy)
Irrational Man (Sony)
The Knack… and How to Get It (Kino Lorber)
The Look of Silence (Cinedigm)
The Martian (Fox)
Mr. Robot: The Complete First Season (Universal)
Out 1 (Carlotta)
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (Paramount)
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (Image)
Sherlock: The Abominable Bride (BBC)
Sinister 2 (Universal)
The Stanford Prison Experiment (MPI)
(Seriously, look at this goddamn thing.)
