Welcome back to my Home Movies! Today, we have some Oscar nominated films hitting shelves in Hamnet and Zootopia 2. There’s also a fun would be blockbuster in The Running Man, which deserved a better fate. This week does not include a Criterion release, but there’s plenty other titles coming out, so fear not, including…gulp…Ella McCay. What exactly else do we have on the slate? Read on to find out…
Joey’s Top Pick
Hamnet
Jessie Buckley is less than two weeks from winning the Academy Award for Best Actress. You can engrave the Oscar now, however, and really, you could have ever since its debut at the Telluride Film Festival. She’s the best part of Hamnet, not to take anything away from Paul Mescal, but the movie works because of her. My review out of Telluride (here) began like so:
Losing a loved one is devastating, especially when it’s an untimely loss. How people react, as well as how they cope and/or grieve, varies drastically. Some sink into a deep and dark depression. Others find purpose in work. There’s no right or wrong way to handle things. When I suddenly lost my mother two years ago, I dealt with my pain both privately and publicly, while still keeping up all of my work obligations. It’s just what made sense to me. How Agnes and William Shakespeare dealt with an unimaginable loss provides the backbone of Chloé Zhao‘s Hamnet, making its world premiere here at the Telluride Film Festival.
Hamnet is almost unbearably sad when it goes for the tears, but it’s a film based almost entirely in raw yet tender emotions. The fact that it’s not manipulative and feels organic really allows you to let loose with your own feelings. My Telluride screening had one sequence in particular, though really two, that featured almost an entire theater sobbing in unison. I can’t remember the last time a movie has been able to achieve that.
Also Available This Week
Chainsaw Man – Season One (TV)
Cobra Kai: The Complete Series (TV)
Kung Fu Panda 3 (4K)
Kung Fu Panda 4-Movie Collection (4K)
Lurker
Merrily We Roll Along
Piranha (4K)
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Season Three (TV)
The Wild Robot (4K)
Zootopia 2
*No Criterion Collection releases this week. They’ll be back next week, so sit tight!*
Stay tuned for more next week…
