No bigger title this week than Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, which increasingly seems to have a non-zero chance of being the wildest Best Picture winner in recent memory. Even if you can’t bring yourself to call it a masterpiece (it’s merely in my top 15, not my top 10), it’s pretty goddamn undeniable in many respects, milking hearty laughs out of bleak subject matter until the laughs start to get stuck in your throat. Next to it are two of this year’s more interesting Oscar also-rans from actors-turned-directors; Kasi Lemmons’ Best Actress nominee Harriet, by all accounts trying for something a lot grander than simple Oscar bait, and Edward Norton’s completely shut-out Motherless Brooklyn, by most accounts a complete disaster of a vanity project that’s about as much an adaptation of the Jonathan Lethem book as this article is. Also well-timed to awards season is Criterion’s release of Pedro Almodovar’s first Oscar success story, All About My Mother; their release of Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe is more well-timed to the general debilitating dread going around.

All About My Mother (Criterion)
American Outlaws (Sony)
Angel Eyes (Sony)
Ballers: The Complete Fifth Season (Warner Archive Collection)
Bell, Book and Candle (Sony)
Black Angel (Arrow Academy)
Edge of the Axe (Arrow)
Fail Safe (Criterion)
Harriet (Universal)
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (Shout Factory)
Motherless Brooklyn (Warner)
Parasite (Universal)
Tammy and the T-Rex (Vinegar Syndrome)
Terminator: Dark Fate (Paramount)
Two on a Guillotine (Warner Archive Collection)
Underwater! (Warner Archive Collection)
Very Bad Things (Shout Factory)
Wild America (Sony)