This week provides us with a better balance of good new titles and good catalog titles than we’ve seen in a while. In fact, the two best titles this week are new, and they’re Arrival and The Edge of Seventeen. The former is a wonderful, devastating piece of Hollywood sci-fi and an indisputable (except to the Academy) showcase for the talents of Amy Adams (it’s also a great companion piece to Soderbergh’s Solaris, which I am contractually required to mention), and the latter is a very funny, surprisingly honest look at teenage self-loathing, anchored by a superb Hailee Steinfeld and a delightful bit of deadpan Woody Harrelson. There’s also the instantly-forgotten boxing biopic Bleed for This and Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which I am very curious to watch even if it sounds like it might make my eyes bleed. As a way to balance with the new titles, the catalog titles are a little sleepy, but we’ve still got some gems, including Criterion’s release of Ermanno Olmi’s Palme d’Or winner The Tree of Wooden Clogs, Universal releasing the three totally related films October Sky, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, and It Came From Outer Space, and the Warner Archive Collection upgrading The Yazuka, a combination of the talents of Robert Mitchum, Sydney Pollack, Robert Towne, and Paul Schrader.

Arrival (Paramount)
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Sony)
Bleed for This (Universal)
The Edge of Seventeen (Universal)
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (Universal)
Interiors (Limited Edition to 3000) (Twilight Time)
It Came from Outer Space 3D (Universal)
King Cobra (Shout Factory)
Kiss of Death (Limited Edition to 3000) (Twilight Time)
Mercy Street: Season 2 (PBS)
October Sky (Universal)
One Million Years B.C. (Kino)
Star Trek Enterprise: The Complete Series (Paramount)
Steamboat Bill, Jr./College (Kino)
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Criterion)
We Are the Flesh (Arrow)
The Yakuza (Warner Archive Collection)