Body Double is the Pick of the Week

Over the last decade, Brian DePalma has become one of my favorite directors. His movies aren’t always great, some of them aren’t even good, but they are always interesting. In the 1980s he made a string of films that paid homage to Alfred Hitchcock, while also updating them to modern times and adding a thick layer of sleaze.

Body Double takes large doses of Rear Window and Vertigo, throws them in a blender, adds in lots of sex, nudity, pornography, and violence, and comes up with something utterly original, and absolutely fascinating.

For its 40th anniversary, it is getting a lovely looking 2-disc Steelbook in 4K UHD with loads of extras including multiple featurettes on the making of the film and lots of interviews.

Also out this week that looks interesting:

Longlegs 4K UHD: Pretty good horror film about a police officer investigating a series of murders. Nic Cage gives one of his most odd and unhinged performances. You can read my full review here.

Happiness: Todd Solandz’s sad, dark, disturbing film takes a look into the lives of some lonely, sad, sometimes disturbing people and makes you empathize with them. It can be a difficult watch, but also a rewarding one. Criterion has the release.

A Man On His Knees: Italian drama about a car thief who attempts to change his life for the better after doing a short stint in prison, but finds himself entangled in some mob drama. My review can be read here.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die: I really can’t remember if I’ve seen any of these or not. I wanna say I watched the first one when it first came out on home video but didn’t love it. Hot Fuzz, a movie I love and have seen often, references Bad Boys 2 several times and it always makes me wanna watch it. Now there is a new one because everything with any kind of fan base that is more than ten years old gets a reboot/sequel thing.

Friday the 13th. The original Friday the 13th was nothing more than a cheap knock-off of Halloween. But it was successful so they made a sequel, then another one, and another one. Jason, the hockey mask-wearing psycho became a horror icon. They took him to Manhattan and to space and fought him against Freddy Kreuger. In 2009 they rebooted the franchise with this film that’s now getting a 4K release from Arrow Video. Honestly, I don’t think any of the films are very good, but I kind of love them just the same.

Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy: Gregg Araki took the typical teen movie formula and infused it with Gen X sensibilities while amping up the sex and violence. Criterion is releasing three of his films – Totally F***ed Up, The Doom Generation, and Nowhere in a nice-looking boxed set.

Tattooed Life: Radiance Films is releasing this Seijun Suzuki drama about a hitman forced to run for his life while his brother tags along.

The Threat: Kinji Fukasaku’s drama about two escaped criminals who kidnap a baby and then make a decent family man collect the ransom, gets the Arrow Video treatment.