Home Video Picks & Passes 05.28.17

Babies is among the picks.

(photo: Focus Features)

Babies (2010) — PICK

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) — PICK

Good Morning (1959) — PICK

I Am Not Your Negro (2016) — PICK


There’s something for almost everyone in recent home video releases.

For the whole family: Thomas Balmès’ delightful documentary Babies — a joyous portrait of the first year of life for four babies in California, Tokyo, Namibia and Mongolia — is a life-affirming celebration of new life, love, family and the wonder of the world.

For action/sci-fi fans: One of the most thoughtful genre films in recent years, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is now on Blu-ray.

A pessimistic look at a world in crisis, it’s also a critique of the “us vs. them” ideology that highlights how much easier it is to burn bridges than to build them.

For art-house slow-cinema fans: Yasujiro Ozu’s Good Morning comes to Criterion. A delicate, wry comedy of manners, it takes a sympathetic but not uncritical look at life and etiquette in a small 1950s Japanese village community.

For thoughtful older viewers, Raoul Peck’s acclaimed documentary I Am Not Your Negro brilliantly illuminates American race relations through the lens of James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House, based on his recollections of civil-rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Bonus Pick: The Wizard of Oz on Amazon Prime.

 

Caveat Spectator: Babies: Maternal and ethnographic nudity. Kids and up. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Brief, strong action violence; an obscenity and some crude language. Teens and up. Good Morning: Recurring body-function themes; an extended childish protest against parental authority. Kids and up. I Am Not Your Negro: Violent images, brief nudity, frequent ethnic slurs and other language. Mature teens and up.

Palestinian Christians celebrate Easter Sunday Mass at Holy Family Church in Gaza City on March 31, amid the ongoing battles Israel and the Hamas militant group.

People Explain ‘Why I Go to Mass’

‘Why go to Mass on Sundays? It is not enough to answer that it is a precept of the Church. … We Christians need to participate in Sunday Mass because only with the grace of Jesus, with his living presence in us and among us, can we put into practice his commandment, and thus be his credible witnesses.’ —Pope Francis

Palestinian Christians celebrate Easter Sunday Mass at Holy Family Church in Gaza City on March 31, amid the ongoing battles Israel and the Hamas militant group.

People Explain ‘Why I Go to Mass’

‘Why go to Mass on Sundays? It is not enough to answer that it is a precept of the Church. … We Christians need to participate in Sunday Mass because only with the grace of Jesus, with his living presence in us and among us, can we put into practice his commandment, and thus be his credible witnesses.’ —Pope Francis