Two real feel-good movies are out this week, and I figure I might as well start with them. One of them is a new release, specifically Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest The Killing of a Sacred Deer. In many ways, it feels like the Only God Forgives designed to drive away any fairweather fans who came on board with The Lobster. Lobster, for its pitch-black absurdity and cynicism about the human condition, at least offered a fairly accessible story of love at its center. Sacred Deer offers no such comforting element, instead plunging the viewer face-first into as punishingly bleak a story as has been told recently, about a surgeon (a bearded Colin Farrell) haunted by the son of a man he killed on the operating table (a terrifyingly blank Barry Keoghan), who soon demands that he kill one of his family members to settle the debt, or all of them will die. Did I mention it’s also really fucking funny? Because it is, and it only gets funnier as it becomes more depraved, eventually settling into being Funny Games remade as a comedy of manners (or lack thereof, as in a scene where Farrell delivers a monologue about masturbation and hair-eating that should serve as his “In Memoriam” clip).

Then there’s Husbands and Wives. Twilight Time’s Blu-Ray of it comes at, um, an interesting time, when I can assume that demand is low for copies of movies about Woody Allen having an affair with a college student; plus, it comes with all the baggage of the ensuing scandal, including, yes, the Dylan accusations. But this movie does the job of systematically dismantling everything unsavory about Allen’s work better than any outraged thinkpiece ever could, telling a story of terrible people destroying each other and whichever innocent bystanders make the mistake of crossing their paths. I can’t say it was ever an easy watch, and it certainly isn’t one now, but there’s something cathartic in seeing loathing, both self- and otherwise, being laid this bare (wallflower and I examined this at length, by the way).

Elsewhere, things are not much cheerier (I realize that applies just as much to the outside world as it does to Blu-Rays). There’s the latest, expectedly dour entry in the Saw series, just called Jigsaw, the depressing movie about Iraq vets returning home, Thank You For Your Service, and the melancholy look at the origins of Winnie the Pooh, Goodbye Christopher Robin. The most we have for levity this week is My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, because implied cartoon drowning is the lightest we’re getting at this point.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Twilight Time)
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: Season Two (BBC)
Geostorm (Warner)
Goodbye Christopher Robin (Fox)
The Hanging Tree (Warner Archive Collection)
Husbands and Wives (Twilight Time)
Jigsaw (Lionsgate)
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Lionsgate)
My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (Shout Factory)
Opera (Scorpion)
Shakedown (Shout Factory)
Thank You for Your Service (Universal)