(Welcome to Not Dead Yet, a feature dedicated to new Blu-ray releases and what special features you should be excited about. Because yes, some of us still like to own physical copies of our movies.)
This week’s physical media round-up brings you two of the best films of 2018 – A Quiet Place and You Were Never Really Here. There’s also the Criterion release of Bowling for Columbine, Arrow Video’s The Addiction, and Shout! Factory’s release of John Carpenter‘s Memoirs of an Invisible Man.
Here are the new Blu-ray releases and their special features you should check out this week and beyond.
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Good job guys, we’ve made it halfway through 2018! Now there’s only six months left of this hellish year to go. But we’ll always have movies, and thank goodness this year’s movies have been more than up to the task of alternately letting us escape reality or tapping into our deepest intimate and sociopolitical anxieties.
Each day this week, a different member of Team /Film has been counting down his or her favorite films of the year so far. I’m the last to go this week and may have a few surprises on my list — which ranges from heartwarming family films, to pitch-black comedies, to meditations on life, love, and grief. So without further ado, here are my top 10 movies of 2018 so far.
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The nightmare that is 2018 is almost over! Current events may be terrifying, but movies have been pretty damn good this year. Each day this week, a different member of the /Film team will be counting down his or her favorite films of the year so far, and now it’s my turn. My favorite films this year run the gamut from indie curiosities to films of absolute horror. And just to keep things from being a complete dour-fest, there’s a very nice movie about a very nice bear as well. These are the top 10 movies of 2018 so far, according to Chris Evangelista.
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You know you’re not going to see an average genre piece from writer-director Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin). With her new Joaquin Pheonix-led movie, You Were Never Really Here, Ramsay has made an unflinching thriller that follows its own rules instead of conventions. Based on Jonathan Aames‘ (Bored to Death) novel, Ramsay uses a few familiar genre elements to tell a story that’s as much about PTSD as it is about an assassin searching for a kidnapped teen.
A thriller told through Ramsay’s lens has the physical action play off-screen, and what’s going on within Phoenix’s character take center stage in almost every frame. The way Ramsay and her collaborators depict the character’s point-of-view and New York City is unnerving, sometimes hellish. Even a shot of a jelly bean is hard to shake after watching You Were Never Really Here.
We recently spoke with Ramsay about her fourth feature film, her first experience shooting digitally, making her first genre piece, Johnny Greenwood‘s score, and more.
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(In our Spoiler Reviews, we take a deep dive into a new release and get to the heart of what makes it tick…and every story point is up for discussion. In this entry: Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here.)
There’s a lot going on in Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, and we see almost none of it. And yet, we still see everything we need to see. With a shockingly sparse presentation, Ramsay has concocted a lean, mean movie that skimps on specifics yet still packs a wallop. It’s one of the most remarkable examples of less-is-more storytelling in recent memory.
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Revenge thrillers are usually a dime a dozen. A bad guy messes with the wrong guy at the wrong time in the wrong way, and all hell breaks loose. These kind of movies seem to have gotten even more redundant ever since Taken became a hit and revitalized this subgenre of action films, but thankfully there are also standouts like Blue Ruin and John Wick proving that these kind of movies can still kick-ass and feature quality filmmaking. Now, another revenge thriller has come along, this time for the arthouse crowd to eat up.
You Were Never Really Here follows Joaquin Phoenix as a hired gun recruited on the down-low through a simple but secretive operator service to deliver pain to people who have done some bad things. In the hands of a blockbuster filmmaker, this would be a straightforward action movie, but in the hands of We Need to Talk About Kevin director Lynne Ramsay, the experience is so much more cerebral. This film, based on Jonathan Ames’ novel of the same name, is also painfully brutal and intense. Read More »
After a six year break from features, director Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin) is back with You Were Never Really Here, a film that looks to be a cross between Taken and Taxi Driver. This violent drama debuted at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and earned high praise from those who caught it, and it’s easy to see why: this movie looks like it rules. Check out a new UK trailer for the film below.
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Joaquin Phoenix channels Taxi Driver‘s Travis Bickle in Lynne Ramsay‘s intense You Were Never Really Here. We won’t get to see the film for a few months, but audiences who had a chance to catch the film at Cannes earlier this year have already showered Ramsay’s new movie with praise, particularly when it comes to Phoenix’s performance. The new You Were Never Really Here trailer provides a fierce look at the film. Watch it below.
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We’ve reached the point where Joaquin Phoenix deciding to star in a movie is nothing short of an event. He’s picky these days, but that pickiness tends to work out for just about everyone – he works with some of the best and most interesting filmmakers alive and he consistently turns in phenomenal performances. Everybody wins, especially movie fans.
So that brings us to You Were Never Really Here, a thriller that will team Phoenix with director Lynne Ramsay. This news doesn’t bring me to Joaquin Phoenix/Paul Thomas Anderson levels of interest quite yet, but it’s certainly close.
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