Joey’s Home Movies For the Week of March 24th – ‘The Brutalist’ Brings Its Epic Vision to Your Living Room

Welcome back to my Home Movies! Today, we have another Oscar winner hitting shelves in Brady Corbet‘s The Brutalist. It’s obviously the top choice this week, but there are plenty of other interesting titles available. This week features some strong 4K re-releases, as well as a pair of Criterion options. Read on for more…

Joey’s Top Pick

The Brutalist

When I saw The Brutalist at the Toronto International Film Festival, the movie was first beginning to build up its buzz. Despite an oppressive runtime that initially was going to scare me off, I got onboard with what Corbet was putting forth. Was I as high on it as most? No. Did I consider it a good film? Of course. I spoke to star Adrien Brody here and co-star Felicity Jones here, so definitely give those a look/listen. Back at TIFF, my review here began like so:

Ambition runs rampant throughout the veins of The Brutalist. Not just in the protagonist’s vision for his work, but also in that of filmmaker Brady Corbet. For his third feature, the actor turned director has opted to make a big old American epic, the kind we almost never see anymore. Expansive and sprawling in narrative and scope, it’s the sort of big swing that usually is reserved for a veteran A-lister. Corbet may well be that now, director-wise, in some eyes, as this movie has been winning people over left and right. Here at the Toronto International Film Festival, I can’t quite match that enthusiasm, but boy do I respect the hell out of this work.

The Brutalist asks a lot of you. The over three and a half hour running time alone is evidence of that. Now, there’s an intermission, but still, This is not for the feint of cinematic heart. Hell, I’d been vocal on the Awards Radar Podcast that I thought I was out on something this long. Then, the raves out of Venice began, prompting me to give it a shot at TIFF. Lo and behold, I’m actually glad I did. Is the film way too long? Yes. Was I ever bored, though? Shockingly, no. The canvas being painted on ultimately turns into something I need to ponder more, but am glad to have experienced.

Also Available This Week

Antiviral (4K)

Delicatessen (4K)

Go Fish (Blu-ray)

The Magilla Gorilla Show: The Complete Series (TV)

Memoir of a Snail

Night of the Creeps (4K)

Star Trek: Lower Decks – The Complete Series (TV)

Criterion Corner

Choose Me

From The Criterion Collection: “An achingly romantic neon dream, Alan Rudolph’s comic and cutting exploration of the mysteries of human desire established him as one of the most boldly idiosyncratic independent auteurs of the 1980s. At the smoky dive Eve’s Lounge, a collection of strangers—including an insecure radio sexpert (Geneviève Bujold), a commitment-phobic former sex worker (Lesley Ann Warren), and a globe-trotting mystery man (Keith Carradine)—become entangled in a web of passion, jealousy, and self-discovery. Grooving to the rhythms of Teddy Pendergrass’s sexy slow jams, Choose Me exists on its own offbeat wavelength—knotty, surprising, and deeply tender in its vision of lost souls wounded by love yet still reaching out for human connection.”

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Night Moves

From The Criterion Collection: Arthur Penn’s haunting neonoir reimagines the hard-boiled detective film for the disillusioned, paranoid 1970s. In one of his greatest performances, Gene Hackman oozes world-weary cynicism as a private investigator whose search for an actress’s missing daughter (Melanie Griffith) leads him from the Hollywood Hills to the Florida Keys, where he is pulled into a sordid family drama and a sinister conspiracy he can hardly grasp. Bolstered by Alan Sharp’s genre-scrambling script and Dede Allen’s elliptical editing, the daringly labyrinthine Night Moves is a defining work of post-Watergate cinema—a silent scream of existential dread and moral decay whose legend has only grown with time.”

Stay tuned for more next week…