Like a gift from the comedy gods (or like another part of an elaborate conspiracy; #staywoke), this week sees the release of both Barry Jenkins’ sophomore feature, the reluctant Best Picture winner Moonlight, and Warren Beatty’s first directorial effort in nearly 20 years, the ever-reliable Best Picture joke Rules Don’t Apply (they really didn’t, it turns out, or at the very least they took a backseat in the face of basic human error). I will not be the first to tell you that Moonlight is a tremendous experience both emotionally and stylistically, the furthest thing from the “eat your vegetables” chore it probably sounds like to those who haven’t seen it (if nothing else, the predominant scene of eating in it features maybe the best-shot, most delicious-looking food in a movie since Cypher’s steak in The Matrix). I will also not be the first to tell you that I haven’t seen Rules Don’t Apply, which sounds fairly simple from a synopsis but which received reviews that boiled down to “lol what”. I’m kind of fascinated in seeing what exactly the (minimal) fuss was about (after all, Bulworth similarly confused people and I liked that movie a lot), and if nothing else, it will almost certainly have crisp lensing from Caleb “The D” Deschanel.

Oh, and there’s other stuff too. Catalog titles are actually pretty sparse this week, with by far the biggest one being Criterion’s long-awaited box set for Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy (someday, the rightful fourth entry in it, Waking Life, will be released by them too) and the rest being lesser Joe Don Baker vehicles or hilarious King Kong knock-offs. Not that the rest of the new titles are too much better. On the good side, we get Andrew Dominik’s Nick Cave documentary/portrait of grief One More Time with Feeling and the latest Marvel film (now with interesting visuals!) Doctor Strange. On the other side, we get last year’s 78th Steven Seagal film Contract to Kill, which received a scorched-earth review for the ages from Ignatiy back at The AV Club. And somewhere in between is Allied, which, depending on who you ask, is either barely worth remembering or a very welcome throwback to old-style Hollywood filmmaking. Both sides can agree that Lizzy Caplan canoodles with women in it, though.

Allied (Paramount)
A*P*E (Kino)
The Before Trilogy (Criterion)
Contract to Kill (Lionsgate)
Deadtime Stories (Shout Factory)
Doctor Strange (Disney)
Framed (Kino)
Moonlight (Lionsgate)
Officer Downe (Magnolia)
One More Time with Feeling (Bad Seed, on Friday)
Rules Don’t Apply (Fox)
Shut In (Fox)
We Are the Flesh (Arrow)