Dead for a Dollar (2022)
Where’s it on? Blu-ray
Bypassing UK cinemas to arrive rather unceremoniously on Blu-ray, the new film from genre veteran Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 Hours) got a bit of a roasting in the press when it premiered at Venice last year. Yet esteemed Chicago critic Dave Kehr deemed it “one of the handful of morally serious films of the last decade”. Christoph Waltz plays the bounty hunter in New Mexico Territory in 1897 who is hired by a businessman to head south in search of the wife he says has been abducted by a deserting African American cavalryman. Co-starring Willem Dafoe as a wily card-sharp, Hill’s lean, low-budget western comes complete with a dedication to B-movie master Budd Boetticher.
Buck and the Preacher (1972)
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide
Enjoying a rediscovery more than half a century on, Sidney Poitier’s first film as director got the Criterion treatment on Blu-ray last year and now sees a big-screen reissue in the UK. It’s an enjoyable western set in the aftermath of the American civil war and the abolition of slavery. Poitier plays the former soldier aiding the passage of African Americans from the plantations of Louisiana to new lives in the west. It’s a journey fraught with negotiation and peril: the route goes through Native American territory, and there’s a gang of thugs in pursuit, hired by the plantation owners to raid the convoy. Harry Belafonte plays the rogue ‘preacher’ along for the ride.
Pain and Glory (2019) and The Human Voice (2020)
Where’s it on? BBC Two, Friday, 11.55pm
Late night on Friday, BBC Two is offering this double helping of latter-day Pedro Almodóvar: a feature and a short. Pain and Glory is his exquisite self-portrait, the rich and finely turned story of an ageing filmmaker (played by Antonio Banderas) looking back over his life and loves, including his rural childhood and his ascendancy as an artist in 1980s Madrid. Then 2020’s The Human Voice is his rapturous, pandemic-era digestif: a 30-minute adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s much-filmed play, starring Tilda Swinton as the housebound woman taking a phone call from her departing lover.
Imitation of Life (1934)
Where’s it on? Blu-ray
Nominated for the Oscar for best picture in 1935, this classic adaptation of Fannie Hurst’s 1933 novel has long since been eclipsed by Douglas Sirk’s towering 1959 Technicolor version. Yet it more than stands on its own two feet nearly 90 years later: a heartbreaking and thematically piercing melodrama which follows the divergent fortunes of an aspirational white working-class mother (Claudette Colbert), her Black housekeeper Delilah (Louise Beavers) and their respective daughters – notably Delilah’s embittered, white-passing Peola (Fredi Washington). No less than Sirk’s film, John M. Stahl’s version plumbs the hypocrisies and limitations inherent in the American dream with great emotional force and lucidity.
Another Young Couple (2023)
Where’s it on? Vimeo
With a soundtrack featuring D’Angelo, Bill Evans and Julius Eastman, this new short from Moonlight (2016) director Barry Jenkins resulted from screen tests for his 2018 film If Beale Street Could Talk. In his own words, he and cinematographer James Laxton “asked my friends Essence and Jihaari, newly transplanted to LA to allow us into their home for an afternoon tea about their lives and loves, apart and together. We were migrating to the Alexa 65 [camera] for Beale Street and wanted to see for ourselves how that large-format sensor would affect intimate portraiture within lived spaces… in particular the faces and spaces of Black folk.” No throwaway, Jenkins’ disarming miniature leaves a warm glow.
