Oh, dear reader, I have been looking forward to this day for a while (to the point that I started writing this two weeks in advance of when I would normally write it), for this is the day when I get to write about my favorite film of last year, and my favorite film made since The Tree of Life, Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women. Essentially a filmic collage of memories, songs, and influences, all joined together by narration which frequently leaves the film’s 1979 setting to muse on skateboard tricks, Y2K, and the coming death of both punk and one of its characters, it’s kind of like The Tree of Life, if The Tree of Life was also hilarious. It’s full of some of last year’s best performances, obviously from the main trio of Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, and Greta Gerwig but also from Billy Crudup (essentially playing a more earnest, only slightly more “with-it” version of Russell Hammond, right down to the long locks and ‘stache) and newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann (as Mills’ surrogate). And on a pure level of matching images (mostly roving, naturally-lit images courtesy of Green Room‘s DoP Sean Porter, but also many still images and even at one point footage from Koyaanisqatsi) and audio (a mixture of 70s needledrops, both semi-obvious and more underground, big-band numbers, a gorgeous Eno-influenced score by Roger Neill, and Jimmy Carter speeches), it’s extraordinary. And all that still feels like I’m just not getting at what makes it so special for me, what made it stick so stubbornly with me since I saw it twice in theaters (there were at least three weeks when I literally could not stop thinking about it). I really don’t know if you’re going to be as destroyed by it as I was, but I hope you take its release on home video as an invitation to give it a shot and hopefully enjoy it to some degree.

Hey, my second-favorite film of 2016 is out this week as well! It’s Martin Scorsese’s Silence, a patient, devastating, utterly gorgeous film about religious persecution, religious imperialism, and one man’s crisis of faith. I’m about as staunchly secular and you can get and this still wrecked me, especially one scene late in the film that calls to mind Goodfellas‘ switch into Karen narrating, and maybe almost outdoes that in terms of awe-inspiring effect.

And hey once again, we got a lot of pretty damn good catalog titles out this week as well. After maybe a decade of desiring it, there is now finally a Criterion of Antonioni’s Blow-Up, complete with new and archival interviews and a mammoth booklet that includes the short story the film was (very loosely) based on. Plus, Philip Kaufman’s The Wanderers finally gets a Blu-Ray, as do the insanely talent-loaded omnibus film Aria (with contributions from Jean-Luc Godard, Nicolas Roeg, Robert Altman, Ken Russell, Derek Jarman, and five others), Peter Bogdanovich’s Saint Jack, Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive Trilogy, the Elio Petri’s Property is No Longer a Theft, and Walerian Borowczyk’s Story of Sin. The last three all come from Arrow, and that just represents their American output this week. In the UK, they’re also giving us a huge box set for all four House films and spiffy releases of Luchino Visconti’s Ludwig and Juan Piquer Simón’s Pieces, the film graced with the immortal tagline “It’s exactly what you think it is!”. And also in the UK, there’s Indicator releasing region-free, affordable Blu-Rays of Marvin Ritt’s The Front, John Huston’s Fat City, and Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat.

Oh, and some other new stuff comes out this week. I will punctuate my descriptions with 20th Century Women gifs, because I may never get this opportunity again.

Sony is giving Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden the Blu-Ray it should’ve gotten in the first place!

Wait, it took Sony this long to figure out a visual treat like The Handmaiden deserves to be released in high-def? That’s fucking stupid, Sony!

Oh dear, Peter Berg’s latest exercise in jerking off Mark Wahlberg, Patriots Day, comes out this week.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them comes out this week. People kinda liked that, maybe? I dunno.

John Hamburg’s Why Him? is a movie that was approved to be made by a major studio.

I haven’t seen A Monster Calls, but I’ve heard it’s sad, so I guess this maybe could be how people process it after watching it.

Seriously people, see 20th Century Women. It’s a very good motion picture.

20th Century Women (Lionsgate)
Aria (Entertainment One)
The Big Heat (Indicator, UK-only, region-free)
Blow-Up (Criterion)
Cool Runnings (Disney)
The Creeping Garden (Arrow Academy)
Dakota (Kino)
Dead or Alive Trilogy (Arrow)
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Warner)
Fat City (Indicator, UK-only, region-free)
The Front (Indicator, UK-only, region-free)
The Handmaiden (Sony)
House: The Complete Collection (Arrow, UK-only, region-free)
Ludwig (Arrow Academy, UK-only, Region B)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Kino)
A Monster Calls (Universal)
Patriots Day (Lionsgate)
Pieces (Arrow, UK-only, Region B)
Property Is No Longer a Theft (Arrow Academy)
Saint Jack (Scorpion Releasing)
Silence (Paramount)
Story of Sin (Arrow Academy)
The Wanderers (Kino)
What’s the Matter with Helen? (Shout Factory)
Why Him? (Fox)
World Without End (Warner Archive Collection)