Welcome back to my Home Movies! Today, we have an eclectic mix of titles coming out, including the canine horror film Good Boy, Bradley Cooper‘s Is This Thing On?, and the comedic take on Anaconda. This week also brings a host of 4K re-release alongside a pair of Criterion Collection debuts. What else is hitting shelves? Read on to find out…
Joey’s Top Pick
Good Boy
I was quite enamored with Good Boy, which puts Indy the Dog in the lead role. I’m still stunned at how good the “performance” filmmaker Ben Leonberg got out of his pet. It’s kind of incredible. You can see my interview with Leonberg here (special appearance by Indy). My rave review here on the site began like so:
There are few horror films that would be able to simultaneously compel and stress me out in equal measure like Good Boy. On the one hand, as a dog lover, a fright flick where a canine is the lead and the sole perspective? That’s incredibly creative and interesting, so count me in. On the other hand, as a dog lover, putting one of our four legged friends as the center of a movie like this puts them in (fake) danger, which stresses me the hell out. So, mission accomplished, Good Boy. I feared for this dog’s well being every second of this emotional and unsettling genre tale. By the end, I knew I’d seen something wholly unique, while also needing to immediately give a scratch to my own dog, who also is a very good boy.
Good Boy gets an all-timer of a dog performance out of Indy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever playing himself. We’ve seen some great animal performances of late, especially with Anatomy of a Fall, but this sees a dog as the lead and also the hero of a scary movie. That’s truly one of one. The film simply wouldn’t work if you don’t believe the dog and his performance. That you do is one of the great accomplishments of the year.
Also Available This Week
The Choral
David
For All Mankind: Season Two (TV)
The Housemaid
Is This Thing On? (Interview with Will Arnett and Laura Dern here)
Jurassic Park (4K)
Jurassic Park III (4K)
Jurassic World (4K)
Leprechaun (4K)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (4K)
Mimic (4K)
Rebuilding
The Substitute (4K)
We Bury the Dead
Zodiac Killer Project
Criterion Corner
Classe tous risques
From The Criterion Collection: “After hiding out in Milan for nearly a decade, fugitive gangland chief Abel Davos (Lino Ventura) sneaks back to Paris with his children, despite a death sentence hanging over his head. Accompanied by appointed guardian Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo, fresh off his star turn in Breathless) and beset by backstabbing former friends, Abel begins a throat-grabbing, soul-searching journey through the postwar Parisian underworld. A character study of a career criminal at the end of his rope, this rugged noir from Claude Sautet is a highlight of 1960s French cinema.”
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Testament
From The Criterion Collection: “Taking a hauntingly intimate approach to an often sensationalized subject, the singular Testament depicts one family’s daily life in the wake of nuclear devastation. After an atomic attack near her small California town, Carol Wetherly (Jane Alexander, in a fearlessly vulnerable, Oscar-nominated performance) must find the strength to care for her three children as the family contend with radiation sickness and the realization that their close-knit community will never be the same. With a diaristic focus on the emotional toll of unimaginable events, director Lynne Littman puts forth a wrenchingly humane vision of what it means to go on living in a shattered world.”
Stay tuned for more next week…
