Joey’s Home Movies For the Week of September 12th – ‘Elvis’ and ‘Lightyear’ Compete For Attention

Welcome back to my Home Movies! This week, I’m reporting while at the Toronto International Film Festival, so I hope you’ll understand if I keep things a bit briefer than usual. That being said, big titles like Elvis and Lightyear are ones you’re already well aware of. Read on for more, nevertheless…

Joey’s Top Pick

Lightyear

This origin story for Buzz Lightyear really worked for me. It’s not Toy Story, but it’s also not trying to be, either. This is some of what I had to say in my review:

Buzz Lightyear is obviously not the only reason why the Toy Story franchise is so beloved, but he’s certainly a piece of the puzzle. So, making Lightyear, an origin story for the character (of sorts, as you’ll see), is a bit of a risky proposition. Then again, Disney and Pixar didn’t hesitate to make Toy Story 4 even though Toy Story 3 was literally the perfect ending for the franchise, so they don’t seem to be fazed by risk. Luckily, genre spirit and a creative hook help to make this movie something fairly unique. By embracing the science fiction aspect of it all, Pixar has a real epic adventure on their hands that truly does go to infinity…and beyond.

Also Available This Week

The Amusement Park

Cobra Kai: Season 4 (TV)

Eli Roth’s History of Horror: The Complete Third Season (TV)

Elvis

The Forgiven

Lucifer: The Complete Sixth Season (TV)

Real Genius (first time in 4K)

Where the Crawdads Sing

The White Lotus: The Complete First Season (TV)

Criterion Corner

Take Out

From The Criterion Collection: “The American dream has rarely seemed so far away as in Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou’s raw, vérité Take Out, an immersion in the life of an undocumented Chinese immigrant struggling to get by on the margins of post-9/11 New York City. Facing violent retaliation from a loan shark, restaurant deliveryman Ming Ding has until nightfall to pay back the money he owes, and he encounters both crushing setbacks and moments of unexpected humanity as he races against time to earn enough in tips over the course of a frantic day. From this simple setup, Baker and Tsou fashion a kind of neorealist survival thriller of the everyday, shedding compassionate light on the too often overlooked lives and labor that keep New York running.”

Stay tuned for more next week…