Clear eyes, pure Huppert, can’t lose! The two big releases this week (I’m not dignifying that Transformers bullshit) are the long-awaited Blu-Ray (from Criterion, although it would have been fine coming from anyone else, maybe even Twilight Time) of Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, featuring one of Isabelle Huppert’s most fearless performances (in a career not exactly defined by fearful performances), and the complete series Blu-Ray set of Friday Night Lights, just in time for its inexplicable removable from Netflix streaming. I don’t know whether an impassioned Coach Taylor speech or Huppert staring straight into Reed Hastings’ soul would get it back up, but until then, thank Mill Creek for making it available in HD in one handy package. Of course, Mill Creek will probably instantly piss away that goodwill, so maybe we need to get Chandler and Huppert down to Scotts Valley, California.
Elsewhere, there’s some good stuff and also the 1978 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band movie. Also probably not worthy of being fitted into the first category is the other Mill Creek release this week, a reissue of Joel Schumacher’s Flatliners, a bad movie getting released to prepare people for the bad remake. And then there’s one of the more unfortunate entries in Werner Herzog’s filmography, the limp Gertrude Bell biopic Queen of the Desert, which wastes the time of Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, and Damian Lewis (can you really waste James Franco’s time, considering what he would do with that time?). More promising are some of the boutique label titles, including the Blu-Ray debuts of Brigadoon and Waiting for Guffman from the Warner Archive Collection, Walter Hill’s The Long Riders from Kino, and the timely doc David Lynch: The Art Life from Criterion. And also SpaceCamp, for those who need another movie where Joaquin Phoenix befriends a piece of artificial intelligence.
47 Meters Down (Lionsgate)
Brigadoon (Warner Archive Collection)
David Lynch: The Art Life (Criterion)
The Death of Louis XIV (Cinema Guild)
The Devil’s Candy (Shout Factory)
Flatliners (Mill Creek)
Friday Night Lights: The Complete Series (Mill Creek)
The Legend of the Holy Drinker (Arrow Academy)
The Long Riders (Kino)
OSS 117: Five Film Collection (Kino)
The Piano Teacher (Criterion)
Queen of the Desert (Shout Factory)
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Shout Factory)
SpaceCamp (Kino)
Transformers: The Last Knight (Paramount)
Waiting for Guffman (Warner Archive Collection)
Wind (Sony Choice Collection)