Top new realease dvd online shopping on dvdshelf.com.au? Disciplined in its approach and unapologetic about its contrivances, Ben Affleck’s basketball coach in crisis drama The Way Back is a sports movie that understands the fundamentals. What it lacks in flashiness or ingenuity — the underdog narrative of a crappy team hitting its stride under the leadership of a gruff coach hits all the requisite Hoosiers notes — it makes up for with an oddly enthralling downbeat craftsmanship. Little details, like the freeze-frame when the scores of games pop up on screen or the click-clack percussion-heavy music, accumulate emotional power over the film’s brisk runtime. Playing a washed-up ex-athlete with an immediately apparent drinking problem and a number of strategically hidden personal demons, Affleck delivers a weary performance that resonates with his off-screen persona (and his recent tabloid headlines) in ways both obvious and surprising. In brief stretches, director Gavin O’Connor, who helmed the similarly intense melodramas Miracle and Warrior, pulls off the ultimate sports movie trick of making you believe the character’s redemption isn’t inevitable. Every win is a battle — even if you know the results going in.
A few words about streaming services : Netflix’s originals are generally more successful than Hulu’s, including mega-budget productions like The Crown, animated hits like Bojack Horseman, genre pieces like Stranger Things, and adaptations such as The Witcher. Other streaming services also outclass Hulu. For example, Amazon has a growing list of top-notch originals, including Bosch, Fleabag, Patriot, Hunters, The Boys, The Expanse, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Undone. HBO Max offers a substantial catalog of quality past and current shows including Barry, Big Little Lies, Deadwood, Silicon Valley, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, The Wire, Westworld, and VEEP. Hulu’s library of movies is decent with mainstream movies such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, High Fidelity, Parasite, Rocketman, Superbad, Terminator: Dark Fate, and Twilight at the time of publishing. Things are looking up in 2021, however, with Hulu snagging the same-day release premieres of Nomadland and The United States vs. Billie Holiday, both of which won Golden Globe awards. That said, movie fans will likely want to subscribe to one of the available channel add-ons.
Dramas don’t come much bleaker than Beanpole, director Kantemir Balagov’s wrenching story about the damage caused by war, and the exceedingly high cost of survival. In a 1945 Leningrad still recovering from the end of WWII, lanky Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), aka “Beanpole,” works as a nurse even though her military service has left her with a condition in which she becomes temporarily frozen. Iya cares for Pashka (Timofey Glazkov), the young son of her frontlines friend Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), and when Masha appears to reclaim her child – only to learn of an unthinkable tragedy – their relationship buckles under the weight of grief, guilt, regret, resentment and need. Cruel blackmail soon proves to be Masha’s means of coping with loss, but healing is in short supply in this ravaged milieu. Shot in alternately tremulous and composed handheld, director Balagov’s long takes place a premium on close-ups, the better to convey the dizzying anguish of his subjects, who are as decimated as their environment. Overpoweringly desolate and moving, it’s a vision of paralyzing individual, and national, PTSD – and, ultimately, of women banding together to forge a new future. Discover even more details at dvd stores.
The rhythms of Kelly Reichardt’s hardscrabble 19th-century Pacific Northwest frontier drama are idiosyncratic if not inscrutable, which is why you’re unprepared for sudden revelations or flashes of connection. Her focus (after some throat-clearing) is the bond between two criminally endearing men: a mild-mannered baker (John Magaro) and an enterprising Chinese immigrant (Orion Lee), who hatches a plan to squeeze milk every night from the region’s lone bovine (owned by the county’s wealthiest man). The doughnuts they fry up make them gobs of money while leaving them open to mob justice, and you’re torn between elation (take that, rich ass!) and dread. It opens with a line from Blake: “The bird, a nest, the spider, a web, man friendship” — an assertion that home isn’t a place or thing but a connection to someone not you. This haunting movie transports you to another world — and redefines home.
Historical changes often have humble beginnings, as was the case with the American Disabilities Act (ADA), whose origin is Camp Jened, a 1970s summer getaway for disabled men and women in New York’s Catskill mountains. James LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham’s documentary is the story of that quietly revolutionary locale, where disrespected and marginalized handicapped kids were finally given an opportunity to simply be themselves, free from the judgement of those not like them. What it instilled in them was a sense of self-worth, as well as indignation at the lesser-than treatment they received from society. Led by the heroic Judy Heumann and many of her fellow Jened alums, a civil rights movement was born, resulting in the famous San Francisco sit-in to compel U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Wellness Joseph Califano to sign Section 504 of 1973’s Rehabilitation Act, and later, the ADA. Intermingling copious footage of Camp Jened and the movement it produced with heartfelt interviews with some of its tale’s prime players, Crip Camp is a moving example of people fighting tooth-and-nail for the equality and respect they deserve – and, in the process, transforming the world. See more info on this website.