What to watch at home in November

Anton Bitel pro­vides a look at six titles head­ing to stream­ing and phys­i­cal media releas­es this month that you should add to the top of your view­ing list.

Fierce­ly indebt­ed to low-rank­ing mafioso Louie (John Tormey) who once saved him from being killed, ​“Ghost Dog” (For­est Whitak­er) car­ries out pro­fes­sion­al gang­land hits for his ​‘mas­ter’ – until internecine plot­ting dri­ves him to have to take out the entire mob, and face his own death with an hon­our that most of them lack.

Where the none-too-bright mafiosi end­less­ly watch TV car­toons, Ghost Dog him­self has broad­er inter­ests, rig­or­ous­ly adher­ing to an Ancient Japan­ese war­rior code (whose pre­cepts reg­u­lar­ly punc­tu­ate the film), lis­ten­ing to RZA’s hip-hop in stolen cars, com­mu­ni­cat­ing only by car­ri­er pigeon, befriend­ing a fran­coph­o­ne man (Isaach de Bankolé) whom he can­not under­stand, and exchang­ing with a girl (Camille Win­bush) a range of books as eclec­tic as writer/​director Jim Jarmusch’s own influ­ences, includ­ing the col­lec­tion of short sto­ries by Ryūno­suke Aku­ta­gawa that inspired Aki­ra Kurosawa’s film Rashomon, with its par­al­lel mix of per­spec­tives and motives.

With sev­er­al nods to Sei­jun Suzuki’s sur­re­al Brand­ed To Kill and to Jean-Pierre Melville’s sim­i­lar­ly titled, sim­i­lar­ly exis­ten­tial Le Samouraï, what might sound like an ordi­nary gang­ster pic­ture is in fact a rich amal­gam of criss­cross­ing gen­res, where East meets West and cul­ture itself fol­lows more than one Way.

Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samu­rai is avail­able on 4K UHD/​Steelbook, Blu/​DVD/​digital, dis­trib­uted by StudioCanal

Set dur­ing the Qing dynasty, and adapt­ed from Jin Yong’s nov­el The Deer and the Caul­dron (pub­lished seri­al­ly 1969 – 1972), Wong Jing’s com­ic wux­ia fol­lows Wei Xiaobao (Stephen Chow), a low­ly broth­el racon­teur who is ele­vat­ed by dumb luck as much as his own wits into a For­bid­den City dra­ma not unlike one of the shag­gy dog sto­ries he used to tell, all the while receiv­ing end­less unde­served pro­mo­tions to sur­re­al­ly niche posts.

Wei is a mer­cu­r­ial anti­hero and venal time­serv­er whose picaresque pres­ence always places him at the cen­tre of key events — and Chow, already a huge­ly cel­e­brat­ed actor whose lat­er, sim­i­lar­ly cel­e­brat­ed direct­ing career would not begin for anoth­er two years, imbues this slip­pery rogue with a real charm.

Here there is court­ly intrigue, pow­er strug­gles, dou­ble- and triple-cross­es, crazy con­spir­a­cies, impos­tures both mag­i­cal and more mun­dane, sev­er­al sutra-sized Macguffins, grav­i­ty-defy­ing wire-fu, tele­path­ic tick­ling, behead­ings, scalp­ings and bodymelts (graph­ic if weird­ly blood­less) from the get-go, and a litany of dick jokes, as Wei cross­es paths with roy­al­ty, reli­gious lead­ers and var­i­ous oth­er pre­tenders from all sides of a strife-rid­den nation. A sequel, clear­ly promised at the end, would come lat­er that year.

Roy­al Tramp is released on Blu-ray along with Roy­al Tramp II (1992) as part of The Roy­al Tramp Col­lec­tion, 13 Nov via Eure­ka! Video

“I just hap­pen to sell pic­tures and fan­tasies and maybe 90-minute vaca­tions of escape from all that mad­ness in the street.”

George Fuller (Ter­rence Howard) owns the Warn­er Grand, the clas­sic Los Ange­les ​‘movie palace’ where he projects a reper­toire of film reels from the 80s and the 90s. These most­ly star Eston­ian ​‘Force from the North’ Claude Luc Hal­ly­day, a com­pos­ite of Rea­gan-era he-men, apt­ly played by Dolph Lund­gren. Hal­ly­day is as fad­ed as the films in which he appears, all post-apoc­a­lyp­tic trash, daft west­erns, erot­ic cyberthrillers and vamp-slay­ing action. Yet as dodgy devel­op­ers cir­cle to take over George’s prop­er­ty by any means, George finds him­self liv­ing out the plot of his beloved films, valiant­ly defend­ing his old-fash­ioned work­place from aggres­sive cor­po­rate takeover, with help from the vis­it­ing Hal­ly­day him­self and armed with old film props.

Writer/​director Orson Oblowitz has lov­ing­ly craft­ed a fea­ture pre­sen­ta­tion as meta-cin­e­mat­ic as it is nos­tal­gic, con­jur­ing a dying breed of scuzzy old-school cinephil­ia in an age of dig­i­tal uni­for­mi­ty. John Sav­age turns up too, as George’s pawn­broking neigh­bour Lucky who, like George or indeed this film, deals in the aban­doned trea­sures of yes­ter­year with an incor­rupt­ible affection.

Show­down at the Grand is on dig­i­tal plat­forms from 13 Nov via Sig­na­ture

“Can an indi­vid­ual rise above a species? Is death a species’ vic­to­ry over an individual?”

So asks Mika­mi (Yuichi Mika­mi), an earnest pupil in his final year at the rur­al Ota Junior High. Shin­ji Somai’s fea­ture, writ­ten by Yuji Kato, cap­tures a class­room of chil­dren on the cusp of ado­les­cence, as they start to nego­ti­ate their sex­u­al­i­ty, even their mor­tal­i­ty, and to dis­cern the dif­fer­ence between their dreams and the more like­ly real­i­ty that their futures will bring.

This is a com­ing-of-age dra­ma, but with­out any sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty towards its young char­ac­ters. In the open­ing sequence, Aki­ra (Toshiyu­ki Mat­suna­ga) is near­ly drowned by a group of girls who find him watch­ing them from the pool. Com­ing from a love­less home­life, dis­turbed Ken (Shigeru Beni­bayashi) tries to express his desire for Michiko (Yuka Ohnishi) by pour­ing acid down her back — and lat­er will attempt to rape her. Two girls are explor­ing their emerg­ing les­bian­ism, while Mikami’s neigh­bour Rie (Yûki Kudô) runs away to Tokyo, in flight from the con­strained des­tiny she sees for herself.

The typhoon that these school­mates use an excuse not to go home also serves as an objec­tive cor­rel­a­tive for their rag­ing, poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous emo­tions, as death makes its first encroach­ment on their not-so-inno­cent lives.

Typhoon Club is released on Blu-ray (4K dig­i­tal remas­ter from orig­i­nal neg­a­tives), 27 Nov via Third Win­dow Films

Some years after the events of Ron Underwood’s orig­i­nal film, with Kevin Bacon com­mit­ted to Apol­lo 13 Val McK­ee now hap­pi­ly mar­ried, it is left to his broke friend Earl (Fred Ward), and even­tu­al­ly also to divorced mil­i­tary nut Burt (Michael Gross), to elim­i­nate a new pop­u­la­tion of ​‘Graboids’ ter­ror­is­ing an oil­field in Chi­a­pas, Texas. ​“Maybe this is your big sec­ond chance,” Earl is told by new hunt­ing part­ner Grady (Christo­pher Gartin), prac­ti­cal­ly announc­ing that this is a sequel – although the giant Pre-Cam­bri­an worms now reveal their own sec­ond chance, in the form of an addi­tion­al meta­mor­phic stage that resem­bles the ostrich­es which Earl has been fail­ing to breed back home.

These bird-like aggres­sors rep­re­sent a new kind of threat, influ­enced by the rap­tors in Juras­sic Park, while them­selves influ­enc­ing the aliens in A Qui­et Place. The hun­gry, heat-seek­ing preda­tors repro­duce asex­u­al­ly, which might at first make them resem­ble the ter­mi­nal­ly sin­gle Earl— until, that is, Earl ends up meet­ing his lit­er­al dream girl, geol­o­gist Kate (Helen Shaver), who admires his rear as enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly as he admires hers. This is a charm­ing, know­ing­ly sil­ly com­e­dy crea­ture fea­ture, direct­ed by S.S. Wil­son who also co-wrote the franchise’s first four films.

Tremors 2: After­shocks is released on 4K UHD/Blu-ray, 27 Nov via Arrow

The War of the Worlds: Next Cen­tu­ry (Woj­na swiatów – nastep­ne stule­cie), Piotr Szulkin, 1981

Piotr Szulkin’s SF alle­go­ry begins with a text ded­i­ca­tion to H.G. Wells and Orson Welles — the for­mer the author of influ­en­tial Mar­t­ian inva­sion nov­el The War of the Worlds (1898), the lat­ter famous for adapt­ing the nov­el into a live radio dra­ma so con­vinc­ing that some lis­ten­ers believed they were hear­ing a report of a real alien takeover.

Szulkin’s own ver­sion devi­ates con­sid­er­ably from Wells’ orig­i­nal. For here the Mar­tians are humanoid ​‘midgets’ in sil­ver puffer jack­ets, briefly vis­it­ing in the lead-up to the year 2000 in search of love and blood, and fac­ing not so much resis­tance as accom­mo­da­tion from the local Pol­ish authorities.

Yet tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from Welles, Szulkin focus­es on how this oth­er­world­ly encounter is medi­at­ed. For his pro­tag­o­nist Iron Edem (Roman Wil­hel­mi) is an ordi­nary mid­dle-aged mar­ried man who dons a wig to become the trust­ed pre­sen­ter of Inde­pen­dent News, and now finds him­self coopt­ed into a bizarre pro-Mar­t­ian pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign. As he bears wit­ness to the way tele­vi­sion is used to numb the peo­ple (him­self includ­ed) into sub­mis­sion, and comes to ques­tion his own dual nature as every­man and enter­tain­er, Szulkin’s bit­ter satire shows the state play­ing us all as semi-will­ing pup­pets to some­one else’s script.

The War of the Worlds: Next Cen­tu­ry is released in a 2K restora­tion togeth­er with O‑Bi, O‑Ba: The End of Civil­i­sa­tion (1985) and Ga-ga: Glo­ry to the Heroes (1986) as part of the three-disc Blu-ray lim­it­ed edi­tion set The End of Civ­i­liza­tion: Three Films by Piotr Szulkin, via Radi­ance Films