A weak slate this week salvaged by two big-deal Criterions. Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad was previously available on Blu-Ray as part of Criterion’s mammoth Olympics set, and for those understandably hesitant to drop hundreds of dollars on that, it’s now on a standalone Blu-Ray, complete with new special features to make the chumps who bought the Olympics set feel duped. But no such qualifications are necessary for this week’s other Criterion, Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Quite simply, this movie is The Real Deal, a rich text about the artist-muse relationship, the idea of looking without touching, the possibility and potential of a matriarchy, and how we perceive art in relation to the people we share it with, one that still unfolds with the gentleness of a hangout movie (it helps that there are few actors you’d want to hang out with more than Adele Haenel). Plus, it’s one of the most purely beautiful movies of recent memory, the cream colors of skin in particular never looking richer in a film than here. And it has the guts to not only borrow the most iconic shot from a certain Jonathan Glazer film, but come pretty close to topping it too.

Corpus Christi (Film Movement)
Dream Demon (Arrow)
Hans Christian Andersen (Warner Archive Collection)
House of Wax 3D (Warner Archive Collection)
The Mad Fox (Arrow)
Murder by Decree (Kino)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Criterion)
The Road to Wellville (Shout Factory)
Strike Up the Band (Warner Archive Collection)
Tokyo Olympiad (Criterion)