Martin Scorsese is my favorite living director (he’s tied with Alfred Hitchcock overall, but he’s long dead). Not every film Scorsese has made is great, but they are all interesting. Even the ones I don’t necessarily love have something about them that is worth watching. He is someone who clearly puts in all the effort in each and every one of his films. He tries to make the very best film he possibly can so that even when he fails, the movie is still worth watching.
Buy Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Criterion Collection)Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is the fourth feature-length film he ever directed. It is interesting for a variety of reasons. Most notably because it was the first time he’d really ventured out from his comfort zone on his own terms. He’d previously directed Who’s That Knocking on My Door and Mean Streets. Both films were semi-autobiographical. Both films were about life on the streets of New York City, running in the same circles as gangsters. In between those two, he made Boxcar Bertha, but that was a paid assignment for Roger Corman, and it doesn’t count (at least not for the point I’m making). With Alice, he made a film set in the Midwest about a recently single woman trying to forge a new path in the world. It was different than anything Scorsese had ever done (and in many ways it remains the biggest outlier of his career).
It isn’t his best film, but it is a fascinating one. It also boasts an incredible performance by Ellen Burstyn. The Criterion Collection is giving it a new 4K restoration and loading it with extras that include interviews, an audio commentary with Scorsese, Ellen Burstyn, Jodie Foster, Kris Kristofferson, Diane Ladd, and Alfred Lutter, plus a making-of documentary and more. I’m excited to get more Scorsese in the Criterion Collection and thrilled to make Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore my pick of the week.
Also coming out this week that looks interesting:
Obsession: This small-budget horror film helmed by a YouTuber has been making headlines for making more money at the box office than recent Star Wars and DC Comics movies. I’m not sure I buy into the hype that this proves movies are changing in any dramatic way, but it is always cool to see an underdog do well. The film is a curious one. It’s about a dude who is obsessed with a girl and makes a wish on a magic doodad that she’ll fall in love with him. It works, and things don’t turn out so well for either of them. It does some really interesting things with that concept. Not all of them work, and I’m not entirely sure I even liked the film, but I love that films like this continue to exist.
Hud: The Criterion Collection brings us this classic Paul Newman film, where he plays a rebellious rancher continually at odds with his respectable father.
Red Sun: Charles Bronson, Toshirô Mifune, Alain Delon, and Ursula Andress star in this western about a gang of thieves who rob a train and, with it, a special sword that was supposed to be given to the President of the United States by the Japanese ambassador. Arrow Video has the release.
Normal: Bob Odenkirk continues his trend of playing action stars in this flick about a small-town sheriff who uncovers a major conspiracy.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: My first thought when I first heard of this film was, “Who the heck is Lee Cronin?” The answer is he’s the guy who directed one of the recent Evil Dead movies. Why his name is checked in the title of this film is unclear. It isn’t really a Mummy movie either. At least, it has very little to do with the previous The Mummy movies. But whatever, that’s all marketing nonsense. The film itself isn’t great. It relies too heavily on gore and not enough on story. That story follows a girl who gets kidnapped and then is possessed by an evil mummified spirit or something.
Howard the Duck 40th Anniversary Steelbook: Long before Marvel learned how to create an unstoppable cinematic universe, they floundered with this epic dud. Based on a subversive, satirical, relatively underground (for Marvel anyway) comic, this big-budget film stars Leah Thompson as a rock and roller who discovers a wise-cracking alien duck and tries to keep him safe from some dudes who would do him harm. It is a terrible film and was a huge bomb at the time, but it has found a cult audience.
The Christophers: Steven Soderbergh directs this film about the children of a once-famous artist who hire a forger to finish his incomplete works.
The Crying Game: I remember when this film came out, there was a huge stir over its ending. There was a surprise reveal that was supposedly super shocking. But it was also something you weren’t supposed to tell anyone about. The media did a pretty good job of keeping the secret safe, and this was before social media, so I had no idea what the shock was. I’ve since learned what it is, and I won’t spoil it, but I suspect it is far less shocking now than it was back then. I still haven’t seen the film, but now Criterion is putting it out, so I’d say it is time to remedy that. The plot involves the unlikely friendship between a British soldier and a member of the IRA.
The Office: The Complete Series – Superfan Extended Episodes: Contains over 25 hours of scenes that were not in the original broadcast. I am not a superfan, so I’ll be skipping this, but I know plenty of folks who will be excited to see the extra footage.
Michael: Michael Jackson was one of the world’s greatest pop stars. He was also a very weird dude and very likely a pedophile. This film completely leaves out all the allegations of the latter part of that sentence. I find that fairly unforgivable, so I’ve not seen it. But I’m sure the music is great.
