I always forget that the week after Christmas is just as full of releases as any other week. In fact, many of the retailers put out new wares in the hopes that they’ll be on the front shelves just in time for people to make their gift exchanges (no, people, I don’t need a copy of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but thank you for the thought). So, I shouldn’t be surprised that some good movies are actually coming out this week.

The most acclaimed title is American Honey, the first American feature by British director Andrea Arnold. Winding up on numerous top ten lists, American Honey is an extended road trip across America with a group of at-risk teenagers from the south. Even though it runs an extended 162 minutes, with strong performances from the actors (Sasha Lane),  impressive visuals, and an exquisite soundtrack, most critics agreed that American Honey is the quintessential teen movie of the now.

Also getting end-of-the-year accolades is the Kate Winslet genre-defier The Dressmaker. Alternately a comedy, a drama, and a thriller, The Dressmaker has wound up on some best-of lists, even if it was panned in other circles. Back in its native Australia, it won three out of four acting awards at their version of the Oscars, the AACTA Awards. It’s divisive, but don’t you kind of want to see that?

Ti West is a master of the neo-genre, taking elements of film and heightening them to the limits. With The House of the Devil, he took the slow burn and really emphasized the slow. With The Innkeepers, he took the haunted hotel horror comedy, and dried out the humor. With The Sacrament, he took the found footage genre and gave it a real life situation. With In A Valley Of Violence, he takes the spaghetti western and turns it into a comic book. West maintains a wry sense of humor that threatens to turn Violence into a meta-genre film, almost being about itself being a western.

In more auteur releases, Paul Schrader’s Dog Eat Dog limps onto video, despite starring Nicholas Cage and Willem Dafoe in a mob movie gone wrong. And, yes, I’m talking the same Paul Schrader that wrote Taxi Driver scribe and directed The Canyons. Oliver Stone’s Snowden is a telling of the Edward Snowden story in a consumer-friendly format. But if you’ve read up on Edward Snowden, or seen Citizenfour (and if you haven’t seen Citizenfour, you really need to), it doesn’t provide additional insight.

And, in notable but inert releases, most critics seemed to hate When the Bough Breaks, a trashy psychological thriller starring Morris Chestnut and Regina Hall that sounds exactly up my alley. And, SXSW feature Pet is a twisty horror movie about some guy who keeps a woman locked in a cage in the basement…but people can’t decide whether those twists actually add up to something.

DVD and Blu-Ray
American Honey
Beast and the Vixens (sexploitation meets Sasquatch!!!)
Chicklit
Coming Through the Rye
Committed (MOD)
Dog Eat Dog
Eat A Bowl of Tea
Future Baby
A Gamer’s Life
Hero of the Underworld
The House That Screamed
In a Valley of Violence
Kill Command
Laurel Canyon (MOD)
A Man Called Ove
No Manches Frida
No Pay, Nudity
Pet
Snowden
The Strange One
The Strike
Underworld re-releases
The Week
When The Bough Breaks