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Welcome back to my Home Movies! Today, we have a horror classic kicking off October by joining the Criterion Collection. Yes, Night of the Living Dead is getting that wonderful treatment, in 4K no less! Joining it as a top option on shelves this week is the indie genre effort Watcher, plus lots of other titles. Read on for more…
Joey’s Top Pick
Watcher
Maika Monroe is always a pleasure to see in a horror film. Watcher is no exception, and this Sundance 2022 alum proudly wears its own genre influences on its sleeve, making for a good time. My review (here) out of the festival included this bit:
Watching a young American go to pieces in a strange European country is not exactly a new premise. Sometimes you wind up with exploitative trash, but other times, you get captivatingly dark cinema. It all just depends on the execution. Watcher is decidedly in the latter category, presenting a strong psychological thriller as part of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. With lots of style, a good lead performance, and a sense of menace, there’s a lot to like here. The movie isn’t perfect, but it does manage to leave a very strong impression on its audience. What more can you ask for?
Watcher wears its influences on its sleeve with pride. A lesser filmmaker, or a film with a lesser leading lady, would just come off as derivative. That’s not the case here, so you can just appreciate it as homage. If you’re in the right mood (being a genre fan won’t hurt), this is an incredibly fun movie, albeit one that’s on the bleaker side.
Also Available This Week
Bel Air: Season One (TV)
DC League of Super Pets
Dead for a Dollar
Dexter: The Complete Series + Dexter: New Blood (TV)
Downton Abbey: 2-Film Collection
Fright Night (4K)
The Immaculate Room (Interview with Emile Hirsch here)
Into The Deep
Monty Python’s Flying Circus: The Complete Series (TV)
Mr. Mayor: The Complete Series (TV)
The Purge Ultimate 5-Movie & TV Series Collection
Scream 2 (4K)
Star Trek: Picard – Season Two (TV)
Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber Season 1 (TV)
The Twilight Zone (2019): The Complete Series (TV)
Walker: Season Two (TV)
Winning Time – The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty: The Complete First Season (TV) (Interview with Max Borenstein here)
Criterion Corner
Night of the Living Dead
From The Criterion Collection: “Shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget, by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark, Night of the Living Dead, directed by horror master George A. Romero, is a great story of independent cinema: a midnight hit turned box-office smash that became one of the most influential films of all time. A deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of recently dead, flesh-eating ghouls, Romero’s claustrophobic vision of a late-1960s America literally tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre, combining gruesome gore with acute social commentary and quietly breaking ground by casting a Black actor (Duane Jones) in its lead role.”
(Night of the Living Dead was restored by the Museum of Modern Art and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation and the Celeste Bartos Preservation Fund.)
Stay tuned for more next week…
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