Joey’s Home Movies For the Week of June 21st – ‘Nobody’ Should Sleep on This Action Film

Welcome back to my Home Movies! Today, the Bob Odenkirk action vehicle Nobody gets top honors, while nothing else really leaves much of a mark. This week is another light one, but between the top pick and two Criterion releases, there are options. So, at least there’s that. As always, we press on. Read on for more…

Joey’s Top Pick

Nobody

This action flick was a surprise hit earlier this year. Making Bob Odenkirk an action hero, however unlikely, is an inspired bit of casting. Nothing here is high art, but the movie is more fun than you might expect. Keep your expectations in check, but for mindless entertainment, it sure does the trick. Here is an interview with Nobody director Ilya Naishuller, while here is a bit from our review, which you can see below:

Nobody knows exactly what it wants to be and delivers. It is a witty, wild violent romp that finds its groove in its mix of stylish action and dark humor.

Also Available This Week

Death In Texas

Georgetown

Siberia

The Umbrella Academy: The Complete First Season (TV)

Criterion Corner

The Signifyin’ Works of Marlon Riggs

From The Criterion Collection: “There has never been a filmmaker like Marlon Riggs: an unapologetic gay Black man who defied a culture of silence and shame to speak his truth with resounding joy and conviction. An early adopter of video technology, Riggs employed a bold mix of documentary, performance, poetry, and music in order to confront the devastating legacy of racist stereotypes, the impact of AIDS on his community, and the very definition of what it means to be Black. Bringing together Riggs’s complete films—including his controversy-inciting queer landmark Tongues Untied and Black Is . . . Black Ain’t, the deeply personal swan song that was completed after his death at the age of thirty-seven—The Signifyin’ Works of Marlon Riggs traces the artistic and political evolution of a transformative filmmaker whose work is both an electrifying call for liberation and an invaluable historical document.”

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Visions of Eight

From The Criterion Collection: “In Munich in 1972, eight renowned filmmakers each brought their singular artistry to the spectacle of the Olympic Games, capturing the joy and pain of competition and the kinetic thrill of bodies in motion for an aesthetically adventurous sports film unlike any other. Made to document the Olympic Summer Games—an event that was ultimately overshadowed by the tragedy of a terrorist attack—Visions of Eight features contributions from Miloš Forman, Kon Ichikawa, Claude Lelouch, Juri Ozerov, Arthur Penn, Michael Pfleghar, John Schlesinger, and Mai Zetterling, each given carte blanche to create a short film focusing on any aspect of the Games that captured his or her imagination. The resulting films—ranging from the arresting abstraction of Penn’s pure cinema study of pole-vaulters to the playful irreverence of Forman’s musical take on the decathlon to Schlesinger’s haunting portrait of the single-minded solitude of a marathon runner—are triumphs of personal, poetic vision applied to one of the pinnacles of human achievement.”

Stay tuned for more next week…