Quality over quantity is what this week is about, fitting some high-quality cinema into what seems like a short list. For new releases, the big one will be Spectre, which managed to out-“red-headed stepchild in the Craig Bond movies” Quantum of Solace, which is a rather impressive accomplishment, all things considered (I’ll be covering it for the cinematographers series eventually, to see if it does indeed possess that Hoyte van Hoytema magic). You’re better off going for Crimson Peak, whose magic was honed in on seemingly exclusively by Film Twitter and this website, and whose reputation will hopefully grow with time (having Guillermo del Toro outline all his decisions on the audio commentary should probably help rehabilitate it, given the insanely high quality of his other commentaries). And I’ve heard very good things about both 99 Homes and Grandma, so you should probably give those a look too. Moving onto catalog titles, the big get is Criterion’s long, long, long-awaited release of Jan Troell’s The Emigrants and The New Land, which marks those films’ home video debuts in the U.S. There’s also Warner Bros. finally giving Christopher Guest’s A Mighty Wind a well-deserved Blu-Ray, plus Arrow resurrecting yet another Pam Grier blaxploitation classic, Sheba, Baby.
Also, lest I once again forget to bring up Hooded Justice’s most-wanted title of the week, I should mention Hangman, a found-footage thriller which actually sounds fairly intriguing from its synopsis (a man breaks into a family’s house and quietly terrorizes them from the shadows), and which prominently features this guy.
99 Homes (Broad Green)
Convergence (MPI)
Crimson Peak (Universal)
The Emigrants / The New Land (Criterion)
Freaks of Nature (Sony)
Grandma (Sony)
Hangman (Alchemy)
The Leftovers: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros.)
A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (Mondo Macabro)
Love the Coopers (Lionsgate)
MI-5 (Lionsgate)
A Mighty Wind (Warner Archive Collection)
The Passage (Kino Lorber)
Paulette (Cohen Media Group)
Pokémon: The Movies 1-3 Collection: Pokémon: The First Movie / Pokémon: The Movie 2000 / Pokémon 3: The Movie (Warner Bros.)
Sheba, Baby (Arrow)
Spectre (Fox)