‘WATER’ WORKS AS A BEST PICTURE WINNER
New on Blu-ray The Shape of Water 20th Century Fox DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.99; 4K, $39.99; also available on VOD
One of the most commercially and creatively successful films of writer-director-producer Guillermo del Toro’s career, the bestpicture winner stars Sally Hawkins as a mute movie-lover who works as a cleaner in a mysterious government facility, where she meets and falls in love with a super-powered humanoid Amazonian fish-creature. Her plan to help the beast escape puts her at odds with a viciously bigoted military officer, played by Michael Shannon. Equally informed by Universal monster pictures, old Hollywood melodramas, and Del Toro’s antifascist politics, “The Shape of Water” is an broad but lyrical fairy tale — completely artificial, yet often transcendent. Special features: Comprehensive featurettes
VOD The Forgiven Available 3/16
Forest Whitaker plays Desmond Tutu in the film, director Roland Joffé’s adaptation of Michael Ashton’s play “The Archbishop and the Antichrist,” set during the Nobel-winning priest’s time chairing South Africa’s postapartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Eric Bana plays a convicted murderer who has a series of conversations with Tutu in which he reckons with his racist past — and his nation’s. Though a little stagey (in keeping with its origins), “The Forgiven” is tense, well acted, and consistently thoughtprovoking, exactly what one should expect from the veteran director of “The Killing Fields” and “The Mission.”
TV set of the week The Handmaid’s Tale: Season One MGM DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.99
Hulu’s Emmy-winning adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel is set in a frighteningly plausible authoritarian/theocratic near-future, where a middle-aged wife, mother and publishing industry professional (played by Elisabeth Moss) is forcibly separated from her family and assigned to work for a high-ranking government official as a sex slave and childbirth surrogate. The heroine soon joins a growing underground resistance, but even as she’s subverting the system, she realizes how miserable everyone is in this new society — even the people in power. “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a bracing drama featuring uncommonly layered performances, with character playing out highly contrived roles in this new world order, while constantly checking themselves and one another. Special features: Behind-thescenes featurettes
From the archives The Age of Innocence Criterion Blu-ray, $39.95
Martin Scorsese began the ’90s on a roll, with the award-winning masterpiece “Goodfellas” and his blockbuster remake of the thriller “Cape Fear.” He then used his renewed Hollywood clout to make a 1993 adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel “The Age of Innocence,” telling the story of an illicit romance between 1870s New York City socialites, played by Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer. Scorsese’s sudden swerve into costume drama confused some critics and audiences at the time, but in retrospect, this isn’t just one of his best films, it’s possibly his most quintessential: a true New York movie, set in a community with restrictive rules, featuring a protagonist wracked with guilt and shame, all shot in the style of the grand Hollywood spectaculars that the director loved as a young movie buff. Special features: A vintage documentary, plus new interviews with Scorsese and others
Three more to see
Call Me by Your Name Sony DVD, $17.64; Blu-ray, $30.99; also available on VOD The Disaster Artist Lionsgate DVD, $29.95; Blu-ray, $39.99; also available on VOD I, Tonya Universal DVD, $19.96; Blu-ray, $22.99; also available on VOD