Joey’s Home Movies For the Week of May 26th – Giggle Along With ‘Bottoms’

Welcome back to my Home Movies! This week, we finally have Bottoms coming to home video with a Blu-ray edition. Other new releases today include The Alto Knights, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Toons Movie, and Queer. Throw in some 4K re-releases and a pair of Criterion Collection releases and you have quite the slate. So, what came out on top? Read on to find out…

Joey’s Top Pick

Bottoms

Is Bottoms incredibly silly? Yes. Is it also incredibly funny? Also yes. The ability for all involved (led by Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott, also co-writing) to thread the broad comedy needle, while still having something to say, is actually rather admirable. You can find my interview with filmmaker Emma Seligman here, which is well worth checking out. My review here at the time began like so:

Bold comedies aren’t really a thing anymore. Now, there’s a separate article that can be written about where all the big comedies have gone, but it’s an event when something actually does come out now. Ever since the success of the Judd Apatow stable of raunchy comedies, there hasn’t been much out there. This year had No Hard Feelings and Joy Ride, but they’re more the exception than the rule now. The big satire? Almost nonexistent. So, Bottoms is a bit of a unicorn. Luckily, it’s more than just unique. The film is also hilarious, smart, and with something actually meaningful to say.

Bottoms is not the standard issue raunchy comedy, or even the sort of comedic satire we see lately. About as far a cry from Shiva Baby but bearing the same sort of bold filmmaking, it’s exciting and unique work. While comparing anything to Mel Brooks isn’t fair, Bottoms is confident enough to have a Blazing Saddles reference (consider the name of the high school). It may not go down as a modern classic, but this movie is incredibly funny and impossible not to applaud.

Also Available This Week

The Alto Knights

Bang the Drum Slowly (4K)

A Better Place (Blu-ray)

Breathless (1983) (4K)

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

Dirty Work (4K)

The Golden Child (4K)

Kingdom of Heaven (4K SteelBook)

La Vie en Rose (Blu-ray)

Lean on Me (Blu-ray)

October 8

Outlander: Season Seven (TV)

Queer

Scent of a Woman (4K)

Starman (4K)

William Tell

The Woman in the Yard

Yellowstone: Season 5 – Part Two (TV)

Criterion Corner

Killer of Sheep

From The Criterion Collection: “A quiet revelation of American independent filmmaking, Charles Burnett’s lyrical debut feature unfolds as a mosaic of Black life in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), a father worn down by his job in a slaughterhouse, and his wife (Kaycee Moore) seek moments of tenderness in the face of myriad disappointments. Equally attuned to the world of children and that of adults, Burnett—acting as director, writer, producer, cinematographer, and editor—finds poetry amid everyday struggles in indelible images that glow with compassionate beauty. Largely unseen for decades following its completion in 1977, Killer of Sheep is now recognized as a touchstone of the groundbreaking LA Rebellion movement, and a masterpiece that brought Black American lives to the screen with an aching intimacy like no film before.”

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The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers: Two Films by Richard Lester

From The Criterion Collection: “Alexandre Dumas’s immortal tale of adventure and camaraderie received perhaps the finest of its numerous screen adaptations with this two-part swashbuckling spectacular from A Hard Day’s Night director Richard Lester. Featuring Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, and Richard Chamberlain as the swaggering swordsmen, who thrust and parry their way through courtly intrigue in seventeenth-century France, The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers are also graced with an all-star supporting cast that includes Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Geraldine Chaplin, and Charlton Heston. Lester’s exuberant epic breathes new life into an oft-told classic through its boisterous slapstick invention, its meticulous attention to period detail, and a sense of pure, unbridled bravado that is thrilling to behold.”

Stay tuned for more next week…