Joey’s Home Movies For the Week of January 5th – Kick Off 2026 with the Indie ‘Plainclothes’

Welcome back to my Home Movies! Today, we have our first column for the new year, welcoming in 2026. This week doesn’t have much in the way of 2025 releases, aside from top pick Plainclothes and TRON: Ares, but the weeks to come will be very full, so sit tight. That being said, today does feature the return of the Criterion Collection releases, so there’s that. What else is hitting the shelves? Read on to find out…

Joey’s Top Pick

Plainclothes

I wasn’t blown away by Plainclothes, given my initially mixed reaction. At the same time, I did ultimately feel like I somewhat reviewed the movie I’d hoped they made, as opposed to the one that was actually made. So, I’m giving top honors to the flick because it deserves a revisit. My review here out of last year’s Sundance Film Festival begins like so:

When you hear the log-line for Plainclothes, fear of a mockable melodrama that a comedy would parody is palpable. Especially as a Sundance Film Festival title, it’s almost a joke that writes itself. Luckily, this movie is not that, so fears of a train wreck are unfounded. Unfortunately, it’s also not what it could be at its best, resulting in a decent title that can’t quite pull it all together. It’s somewhere between middle of the road and lower tier for the fest in 2025.

Also Available This Week

Falling Skies: The Complete Series (TV)

It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley

K-Pax (Blu-ray)

Roots: The Complete Original Series (TV)

Shameless: The Complete Series (TV)

Shelby Oaks

TRON: Ares

Under Siege (4K)

Criterion Corner

Dead Man

From The Criterion Collection: “With Dead Man, his first period piece, Jim Jarmusch imagined the nineteenth-century American West as an existential wasteland, delivering a surreal reckoning with the ravages of industrialization, the country’s legacy of violence and prejudice, and the natural cycle of life and death. Accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) has hardly arrived in the godforsaken outpost of Machine before he’s caught in the middle of a fatal lovers’ quarrel. Wounded and on the lam, Blake falls under the watch of the outcast Nobody (Gary Farmer), who guides his companion on a spiritual journey, teaching him to dispense poetic justice along the way. Featuring austerely beautiful black-and-white photography by Robby Müller and a live-wire score by Neil Young, Dead Man is a profound and unique revision of the western genre.”

Stay tuned for more next week!