Joey Magidson
Welcome back to my Home Movies! This week, we have another light slate, but in a minor hiccup, today’s top pick actually hit shelves last week but never was listed. So, a week late, we have The Smashing Machine taking top honors. There’s also a new Criterion Collection release, so the cupboards aren’t fully bare. What else is coming out? Read on to find out…
Joey’s Top Pick
The Smashing Machine
Dwayne Johnson does his most impressive work to date in this sports biopic, showing that he does indeed have dramatic chops. His recent Golden Globe nomination was certainly warranted, while suggesting even brighter days ahead for him. The Smashing Machine is an almost documentary-like film from Benny Safdie, with Johnson the highlight. Emily Blunt is good as well, even if the movie doesn’t support her as well as you’d have liked. Back at the Toronto International Film Festival (here), my review of the flick began like so:
Once upon a time, the UFC was not the giant sports industry that it is now. In the sport’s early days, the mixed martial artists and other tough guys competing did so in something more closely resembling anonymity. That obviously begs the question of why these guys would put their bodies through such carnage? Well, The Smashing Machine, playing currently at the Toronto International Film Festival, seeks to answer that question. In doing so, it becomes one of the more compelling movies of the year so far.
The Smashing Machine takes a quasi documentary-like approach to telling the story of UFC pioneer Mark Kerr. Interestingly, it’s doing so while more or less adapting the documentary on the same subject, The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr. Obviously, Kerr’s story is fascinating, as is the way it’s depicted here, which takes all of the sports drama cliches and dials them back. That way, the film is far more observational and even quiet than you might be expecting.
Also Available This Week
1408 (4K)
Babe (4K)
Babe: Pig in the City (4K)
Bringing Out the Dead (4K)
Cabin Fever (4K)
Dante’s Peak (4K)
Evil Dead Rise (4K)
Ladder 49 (Blu-ray)
Criterion Corner
Yi Yi
From The Criterion Collection: “The extraordinary, internationally embraced Yi Yi, directed by the late Taiwanese master Edward Yang, follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral. Whether chronicling middle-aged father NJ’s tentative flirtations with an old flame or precocious young son Yang-Yang’s attempts at capturing reality with his beloved camera, the filmmaker deftly imbues every gorgeous frame with a compassionate clarity. Warm, sprawling, and dazzling, this intimate epic is one of the undisputed masterworks of the twenty-first century.”
Stay tuned for more next week!
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