‘FLORIDA PROJECT,’ ‘LOVING VINCENT’ AND MORE
The Girl Without Hands Shout! Factory/GKIDS DVD/Blu-ray combo, $22.97
Casual moviegoers may be baff led by the inclusion of “Loving Vincent” in the Oscars’ best animated feature category this year, but devotees of the medium know that Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman’s hand-painted Vincent Van Gogh biopic is part of a mini-movement of filmmakers pursuing nontraditional approaches to bigscreen cartoons. Another example is Sébastien Laudenbach’s Cannes Film Festival-approved adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The Girl Without Hands,” about a virtuous youngster who keeps defying a cruelly persistent Devil. Like “Loving Vincent,” “The Girl Without Hands” was produced through the laborious, oldfashioned application of paint to cels, in a successful attempt to create something dreamier and more abstract than conventionally bright, clean-lined animation. Both films represent an art form in the middle of a creative boom. Special features: Extensive featurettes on both and bonus Laudenbach short films on “The Girl Without Hands”
The Florida Project Lionsgate DVD, $15.98; Blu-ray, $19.99; also available on VOD
Academy Awards voters didn’t give it much love, but writerdirector Sean Baker’s vibrant, soul-shaking drama has been rightly recognized by critics as one of last year’s best. The film’s lone Oscar nominee, Willem Dafoe, plays the benevolent manager of a ragged Orlando motel, nestled amid low-rent tourist traps on the fringes of Walt Disney World. The story follows a mischievous gradeschooler named Moonee (Brooklynn Kimberly Prince), who roams freely with her friends while her unemployed mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), parties hard and hustles for rent money. Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch find the wonder and humor in a life on the margins without ever discounting how fragile and dangerous their heroines’ existence really is. “The Florida Project” is an all-time great, regardless of how many trophies it takes home. Special features: Outtakes and a featurette
VOD Half Magic Available Friday
Actress Heather Graham channels some of her experiences with Hollywood’s screwy gender politics into this broad comedy that marks her debut as a writer-director. Graham plays Honey, a screenwriter whose strict religious upbringing warped her relationships with men and sex. When she meets two similarly messed-up women (Stephanie Beatriz and Angela Kinsey) at a female empowerment seminar, the ladies form a pact to date only good guys, which proves difficult but rewarding. The jokes in “Half Magic” are blunt and rooted in well-worn stereotypes; but the three leads are terrific, and there’s a satisfying edge to the way Graham savages ingrained showbiz sexism.
Golden Exits Available now
Talented young American independent filmmaker Alex Ross Perry maintains his preoccupation with artsy, self-absorbed New Yorkers in this muted drama about two affluent couples strained by the arrival of an attractive outsider. Emily Browning plays the newcomer, an Australian college student who lands an internship with an archivist (Adam Horowitz) and creates tension between him and his wife (Chloë Sevigny), as well as between an old family friend (Jason Schwartzman) and his partner (Analeigh Tipton). Unlike Perry’s lively, more experimental “Listen Up Philip” and “Queen of Earth,” “Golden Exits” is a straightforward tale of smart folks struggling with relationships. But it’s beautifully photographed and acted, with the ring of truth.
TV sets of the week The Master: The Complete Series
Kino Classics DVD, $49.95; Blu-ray, $59.95 A stubbornly enduring bit of ’80s action cheese, this short-lived TV series has become a cult classic, in part because it features one of the last performances by legendary movie tough guy Lee Van Cleef and in part because it’s so endearingly goofy. Van Cleef plays a knowledgeable ninja, who roams the country with his protégé (played by Timothy Van Patten), looking for good deeds to do while settling old scores with rivals. This ill-considered attempt to cash in on the martial arts craze of the era — with two awkward white dudes as the leads — is the best kind of bad TV. Special features: None
The Deuce: The Complete First Season HBO DVD, $49.99; Blu-ray, $59.99
“The Wire” creator David Simon calls on sophisticated crime novelists George Pelecanos, Lisa Lutz, Megan Abbott and Richard Price to help dramatize the sex trade in early 1970s New York City in this HBO series primarily interested in the complex underworld caste system. James Franco plays twin brothers in league with the mafia, while Maggie Gyllenhaal’s an entrepreneurial prostitute who sees the potential profit in pivoting to X-rated movies. Their intertwining story — teased out slowly by Simon — doubles as a savvy deconstruction of “the American dream” in all its possibilities and pitfalls. Special features: Commentary tracks on select episodes, plus featurettes about bringing a seedy history to life
From the archives Underground Kino Classics DVD, $39.95; Blu-ray, $44.95
Controversial Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica made his career-defining film with 1995’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner, a semisatirical history of Yugoslavia, from World War II to the beginning of the violent ethnic division that split the country. Miki Manojlovic and Lazar Ristovski play sleazy war profiteers who have a tumultuous relationship across the decades, exacerbated by one buddy’s decision to lock the other one in his basement, feeding him lies about what’s happening out in the streets. Though it’s been criticized for its slanted perspective on what Yugoslavia used to be, “Underground” is nonetheless an absorbing and impressively ambitious piece of storytelling, filtering a complicated conflict through an amusing tall tale. Special features: Interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and the five-hour TV miniseries version of the film
Shoes Milestone DVD, $29.95; Blu-ray, $34.95
D.W. Griffith is often called the movies’ great pioneer for applying innovative techniques to mature subject matter. But he was matched in productivity, ambition and popularity by his contemporary Lois Weber, who in the 1910s and ’20s helmed more than 100 shorts and features, many of which dealt frankly with sexuality, gender roles, religion and social inequality. The 1916 hit “Shoes” is one of the few of Weber’s films that survived, and it’s a fine example of what made her a standout. The story of a cash-strapped shopgirl who considers prostituting herself to earn enough money to replace her worn-out footwear, the film uses expressionistic techniques to illustrate how one woman’s anxieties drive her to desperation. Special features: A scholarly commentary track, featurettes and a bizarre 1932 parody version of “Shoes”