Joey’s Home Movies For the Week of July 15th – ‘Perfect Days’ Comes to Criterion

Welcome back to my Home Movies! This week, the Criterion Collection gets one of the most elegant films of last year in Perfect Days. Also hitting shelves today is a 4K Rocky franchise collection. What takes top honors? Read on to find out…

Joey’s Top Pick

Perfect Days (Criterion)

A deceptively simple flick, Perfect Days is a tribute to the beauty of just living your life. It’s small and on the slower side, but there’s a lot to be gained from taking it in. The immediate induction by Criterion into its halls says as much. I spoke to filmmaker Wim Wenders here a lot about the film’s music. In my review of the movie here, I had the following to say:

There are a lot of ways in which Perfect Days could have gone wrong. Even in the hands of a strong filmmaker like Wim Wenders, such a little film could easily come off as pointless and pretentious. Arguably, most movies attempting this would end up with that sort of a result. So, kudos to Wenders for pulling this off. Perfect Days isn’t just a success story, but a quiet winner that has been slowly but surely gaining fans. Now, you’ll be able to see why.

Perfect Days is tender yet perceptive, unfolding in an unhurried manner that gradually reveals itself. What could just be a look at a janitor in Japan driving between jobs while listening to some rock music ends up being so much more. To some degree, what you put into it is what you get out of it, but rewards there to be found.

Also Available This Week

Brokeback Mountain (4K)

Captain Phillips (4K)

The Last Stop in Yuma County

Monk: The Complete Eighth Season (TV)

Rocky: Ultimate Knockout Collection (4K)

Criterion Corner

Black God, White Devil

From The Criterion Collection: “Myth, mysticism, and revolution collide in a blistering existential western from Glauber Rocha, a pioneer of Brazil’s socially committed Cinema Novo movement. After killing his swindling boss, ranch hand Manoel (Geraldo Del Rey) goes on the run with his wife, Rosa (Yoná Magalhães). In the stark hinterlands, they join forces with armed bandits and pledge allegiance to a self-styled holy man who preaches revolt against rich landowners while perpetrating unspeakable acts of violence against the innocent. Suffused with antiauthoritarian fervor and the intensity of life in the desert, this landmark work of radical cinema is a scorched-earth allegory about mindless fanaticism and the allure of dead-end ideologies.”

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Perfect Days

From The Criterion Collection: “A perfect song that hits at just the right moment, the play of sunlight through leaves, a fleeting moment of human connection in a vast metropolis: the wonders of everyday life come into breath­taking focus in this profoundly moving film by Wim Wenders. In a radiant, Cannes-award-winning performance of few words but extraordinary expressiveness, Koji Yakusho plays a public-toilet cleaner in Tokyo whose rich inner world is gradually revealed through his small exchanges with those around him and with the city itself. Channeling his idol Yasujiro Ozu, Wenders crafts a serenely minimalist ode to the miracle that is the here and now.”

Stay tuned for more next week…