Joey Magidson
Welcome back to my Home Movies! This week, we have a stacked lineup hitting shelves, led by the one two punch of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and Die My Love. There’s also Christy, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, and Primate, as well as the 30th anniversary 4K of Sleepers. In fact, look for a conversation with Sleepers filmmaker Barry Levinson this week on the site. Plus, there’s new Criterion Collection releases today, to boot. What else might be coming out? Read on for more…
Joey’s Top Pick
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Coming a bit out of nowhere, this sequel to 28 Years Later takes the 28 Days Later franchise in its most unique direction. 28 Years Later the Bone Temple is, at times, as brutal as any mainstream horror release, just with incredible ideas surrounding it. Bold and memorable, it sets up the end of this new trilogy as something that could go in any number of avenues. My rave review here on the site begins like so:
When 28 Years Later (reviewed here) hit theaters about seven months ago, it was not what a lot of audiences expected. The first effort in a purported new sequel trilogy to 28 Days Later (and it’s own sequel 28 Weeks Later), it felt very much like its own thing, full of original ideas and truly building on what’s come before. Now, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple continues that trend, while also exploring even bolder aspects of the story. In doing so, instead of being an unnecessary new edition, it’s the best of the franchise to date, and yes, that’s including the original.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is not just the quietest installment yet, it also manages to be, when it gets violent, the most brutal in the series so far. At one point it might be ruminating on agnosticism vs faith, while in the next, savage gore abruptly happens. What might have been tonal whiplash in lesser hands instead is the sort of heady horror that we now know to expect from this property.
Recommended Movies
Die My Love
Die My Love is not for everyone, admittedly, but it contains one of the absolute best performances of 2025 in Jennifer Lawrence. Teamed up with Lynne Ramsay, as well as Robert Pattinson in front of the camera, Lawrence absolutely owns the screen in this upsetting yet darkly funny tale. I spoke to Lawrence and Ramsay here, so give our conversation a look. My review highly positive review here on the site includes the following:
There’s nothing like watching an actor or actress at the height of their powers, unleashed in a showcase film. With Die My Love, you’re given the gift of watching Jennifer Lawrence absolutely own the screen. The film itself is a very strong psychological black comedy, consistently surprising, while often even being shocking, but Lawrence is the absolute centerpiece. Watching her just set the celluloid on fire with some of her best work to date is a pleasure. The movie won’t be for everyone, but in terms of an acting showcase, there have been few better in 2025.
Die My Love is very much Lawrence’s show, while still clearly being a Lynne Ramsay movie. That will limit the audience somewhat, as it does for all of her work, but it does mean that those who get on its wavelength are going to be very taken by what they see. Like any challenging cinema, there will be a divisive element as well, which I understand, but consider me very much in the pro column of things with this flick.
Also Available This Week
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (interview here with Gore Verbinski)
Jimpa
Mr. Saturday Night (Blu-ray)
The Ninth Gate (4K)
Send Help
Shelter
Sleepers (4K)
The Strangers: Chapter 3
Task: The Complete First Season (TV)
Criterion Corner
Point Blank
From The Criterion Collection: “Director John Boorman brought the gangster drama into new realms of modernist abstraction with this stylized revenge thriller, which transforms hard-edged pulp into a kaleidoscopic psychological puzzle. Lee Marvin is iconically cool as the enigmatic Walker, who, after he’s betrayed and left for dead by his best friend during a robbery, embarks on a brutal quest for vengeance, aided by a jaded ex-moll (a sensational Angie Dickinson) who has her own complex motives for helping him. Capturing Los Angeles locales with a surreal pop-art eye, Boorman locates the existential dread lurking beneath the city’s sunlit surface.”
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Resurrection
From The Criterion Collection: “With his ravishing third feature, visionary director Bi Gan takes his deepest plunge yet into the realm of pure dreamscape. In a world where humans have forsaken dreams in exchange for immortality, a dreaming monster (Jackson Yee) embarks on a shape-shifting odyssey through illusion, beauty, and terror that takes him across a century of cinema and to the end of time. Unfolding in five dazzlingly imagined chapters that encompass everything from silent-era expressionism to film noir to a delirious vampire love story shot in one of Bi’s signature long takes, Resurrection is a work of breathtaking imagination in which cinema is the ultimate portal to the unconscious mind.”
Stay tuned for more next week…
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