Joey Magidson
Welcome back to my Home Movies! Today, we have a modern classic in No Country for Old Men coming to the Criterion Collection, alongside an all-time classic in 8½ (and that’s not even the only Criterion selections hitting shelves). Throw in Interstellar getting a new 4K release and this week has some really nice goodies. Read on for more…
Joey’s Top Pick
No Country for Old Men (Criterion Collection)
From The Criterion Collection: “A deadly game of chance and destiny plays out against the stark backdrop of early-1980s West Texas in Joel and Ethan Coen’s powerful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel. When he happens upon more than two million dollars from a drug deal turned desert massacre, a retired welder and Vietnam veteran (Josh Brolin) sets into motion a wave of senseless, inexorable violence as he’s stalked across the plains by a soul-weary sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) and a psychopathic hit man (Javier Bardem). Winner of four Academy Awards—including Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actor for the indelibly disturbing Bardem—this darkly deadpan borderlands noir keeps both the tension and the existential unease mounting through each cruelly ironic twist of fate.”
Also Available This Week
Duchess
Hellboy: The Crooked Man
Interstellar (4K)
Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Cracking Collection (4K / TV)
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey II
Criterion Corner
8½
From The Criterion Collection: “Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s 8½ (Otto e mezzo) turns one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. An early working title for 8½ was The Beautiful Confusion, and Fellini’s masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus, and a magic act. Also featured is Fellini’s rarely seen first film for television, Fellini: A Director’s Notebook (1969). Produced by Peter Goldfarb, this “imagined documentary” of Fellini on Fellini is a kaleidoscope of unfinished projects, all of which provide a fascinating and candid window into the director’s unique creative process.”
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The Beast
From The Criterion Collection: “By the year 2044, artificial intelligence reigns, and human emotions are a liability that must be surgically removed to produce a more pliant workforce. But this procedure triggers Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) to experience haunting memories of her past lives, as she encounters different incarnations of her paramour, Louis (George MacKay), first in belle epoque Paris and then in 2014 Los Angeles. As she once more undergoes the pains and pleasures of romance—and rediscovers what it means to be truly alive—Gabrielle awaits the erasure of her humanity with growing fascination and dread. In his most ambitious film yet, visionary director Bertrand Bonello freely adapts Henry James’s novella The Beast in the Jungle into a visually stunning science-fiction labyrinth that is as metaphysically mysterious as it is emotionally powerful. Powered by Seydoux’s heartrending performance, The Beast poignantly imagines the consequences of humankind becoming too afraid to risk the inherent vulnerability of love.”
*No Country for Old Men is also out today on Criterion and is our Top Pick*
Stay tuned for more next week…
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