I don’t read the trades or anything so I have no idea how many DVDs/Blu-rays/4K UHD disks are sold monthly. I don’t know how those decisions are made or what the margins are. I imagine there are still loads of homes that don’t stream. Whether it is a rural area without access, or older people who don’t understand how to connect, or people who simply can’t afford it. Or whatever. Lots of folks don’t stream movies and TV to their home. Some of those folks likely do buy the occasional disk. Lots of nerds like me collect physical media.

I’m fascinated by the rise of Boutique Blu-ray companies. Arrow, Criterion, Severin, Kino Lorber, and others are regularly putting out nice editions of all sorts of movies. Many of them are quite obscure and cultish. Yet here they are getting HD releases, often given new transfers and loaded with extras. I can’t imagine there are huge profit margins for these things. They seem to be put out by people who truly love movies and I’m all for it.

Radiance Films is relatively new to the market and they’ve been doing a phenomenal job. They seem to specialize in cult foreign language, genre films. But unlike Arrow Video and others, they seem to stray away from trashy films and b-movies. Their focus seems to be more on more artistic, meaningful cinema. They seem a lot like Criterion except they are choosing much lesser-known films.

I’m using the word “seem” a lot while discussing them. That’s because I don’t really know them that well. I’ve only reviewed a few of their films, and haven’t spent a huge amount of time digging through their stacks. So I could be wrong. I’m sure they sell some less-than-award-winning films as well.

My real point is that the films I’ve seen by them have been excellent. And now we’ll finally get to the film at hand. A Man On His Knees is an Italian crime film about a former bank robber just trying to get by. But when a mob lawyer’s wife is kidnapped and kept for days in secret in a building next door to his drink stand, our hero gets mixed up in trouble.

That sounds like a thriller, but in the hands of Damiano Damiani it becomes more art-house than grind-house and it is all the better for it. You can read my full review here.