Home Video Picks & Passes 05.28.17
Babies is among the picks.
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.