What to watch at home in June

In a new month­ly col­umn, Anton Bitel high­lights a selec­tion of must-haves, from re-releas­es to stream­ing premieres. 

The Light­house, dir. Robert Eggers, 2018

“I’m prob­a­bly a fig­ment of your imag­i­na­tion,” observes Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) some way into Robert Eggers’ cin­e­mat­ic shan­ty, set in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. ​“This rock is prob­a­bly a fig­ment of your imag­i­na­tion too.”

For a fig­ment, Wake seems earth­i­ly real – a drunk­en, fart­ing, curs­ing, peg-legged old timer insis­tent­ly in charge of the light­house lamp. Yet as his four-week stint with a new assis­tant (Robert Pat­tin­son) turns into a much longer stay, this tiny, remote New Eng­land island will become a stag­ing ground for the two men’s haunt­ing pasts and buried desires.

There are unex­pect­ed, and pos­si­bly imag­ined, vis­its from a pesky seag­ull, a mer­maid, a ghost, a corpse and a Love­craft­ian mon­ster, there are night­mares, delir­i­um tremens and mad­ness to unmoor our grip on the nar­ra­tive – and as this ongo­ing mael­strom of mean­ing buf­fets the view­er, exis­ten­tial pre­oc­cu­pa­tions emerge, alle­gories offer them­selves, and myths (Pro­tean, Promethean) dis­place history.

Co-writ­ing with his broth­er Max, Eggers slow­ly spins a rich and strange sea yarn in mono­chrome (and in Acad­e­my ratio) that over­flows with Beck­et­t­ian absur­di­ty, as these men, per­haps both liars (lit­er­al gaslighters), look, while wait­ing for ​‘relief’, into the abyss of both their ele­men­tal iso­la­tion and their infer­nal companionship.

The Light­house is released on Lim­it­ed Edi­tion 4K UHD and Blu-ray, 12 June via Arrow Video

Red Sun, dir. Rudolf Thome, 1970

Thomas (Mar­quand Bohm) may roman­ti­cise him­self as a return­ing ​‘exile’, but in fact he is a feck­less, spong­ing ​‘spec­i­men’ of a man, who has left his wife and three-year-old daugh­ter in Ham­burg to recon­nect with old flame Peg­gy (Uschi Ober­meier). Cash­less and home­less, but with a ​‘cer­tain rot­ten charm’, he joins Peg­gy and her flat­mates Sylvie (Sylvia Kekulé), Isol­de (Gaby Go) and Chris­tine (Diana Körn­er) – all sin­gle, inde­pen­dent women who go through male admir­ers fast – in their Munich flat, only to dis­cov­er that he is in the mid­dle of a dan­ger­ous movement.

Com­ing out the same year the Red Army Fac­tion was found­ed, Rudolf Thome’s thriller focus­es on a rev­o­lu­tion­ary cell ded­i­cat­ed less to resist­ing state impe­ri­al­ism than to over­throw­ing patri­archy itself. For in a secret, self-declared war against men, these young good-time girls are also ruth­less mur­der­ers, some­times tak­ing out their own would-be lovers, and some­times tar­get­ing ran­dom strangers.

While, in this bat­tle of the sex­es, the women’s actions are uncon­scionable, and while they will – as so often hap­pens with under­ground cadres – even­tu­al­ly turn on them­selves, Thome makes it dif­fi­cult for the view­er sim­ply to root for their vic­tims either, who are oppor­tunis­tic cheats and mon­ey-chas­ing wom­an­is­ers to a man.

Red Sun is on Blu-ray from 19^th June through Radi­ance 

Revenge (Adauchi) dir. Tadasha Imai, 1964

Tadashi Imai’s jidaige­ki begins on a day in July of 1722 when an offi­cial pub­lic duel has been sched­uled for noon between proud but unti­tled samu­rai Shin­pachi Eza­ki (Kin­no­suke Naka­mu­ra) and the high­er class Tat­suno­suke Okuno. In fact this duel has been sanc­tioned by the local min­is­ter to mend the Okuno clan’s hon­our, dam­aged when Tastsunosuke’s two old­er broth­ers, Mago­dayu and Shume, had each chal­lenged Shin­pachi to less lic­it duels, and end­ed up dead at his sword. Now Shin­pachi must let Tast­suno­suke best him, to restore the social order – but faced with a pro­found­ly unfair sys­tem, Shin­pachi decides to go down fight­ing, and thus to expose honour’s emptiness.

Screen­writer Shi­nobu Hashimo­to, who also penned Masa­ki Kobayashi’s Harakiri two years ear­li­er, brings here too not only a cru­el decon­struc­tion of the samu­rai moral code, and even a final qui­et act of harakiri, but also a chrono­log­i­cal struc­ture that builds to a cli­mac­tic duel whose com­pli­cat­ed antecedents are revealed in flashback.”We shall not look back”, go the lyrics of the war song that Shin­pachi sings – but this bru­tal film’s back­ward-look­ing struc­ture ensures that all these events come weight­ed with trag­ic inevitabil­i­ty while look­ing for­ward to Japan’s self-enti­tled aggres­sion in the more recent past.

Revenge is released in a 2K restora­tion for its world­wide Blu-ray debut, 19 June through Eure­ka! Video’s Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma series

Stephen King On Screen, dir. Daph­né Bai­wir, 2022

Though a doc­u­men­tary, Daph­né Baiwir’s fea­ture opens with a fan­ta­sy col­lage of motifs famil­iar from the dif­fer­ent film adap­ta­tions of best-sell­ing (most­ly) hor­ror author Stephen King. The first of these is a wide aer­i­al shot of a car dri­ving a for­est road. This ear­ly evo­ca­tion of The Shin­ing also involves a para­dox: for while Kubrick’s film is the most icon­ic and influ­en­tial cin­e­mat­ic ren­der­ing of King, it also rep­re­sents an out­er lim­it of adap­ta­tion, famous­ly very dif­fer­ent in both nar­ra­tive detail and spir­it from the source nov­el, and just as famous­ly despised by King himself.

Bai­wir assess­es King’s work through the medi­um of adap­ta­tion, turn­ing for insight­ful com­men­tary to near­ly all the direc­tors who have con­vert­ed his writ­ing to cin­e­ma, in a whis­tle-stop tour of this pro­lif­ic, often pre­scient author’s œuvre. From this impres­sive range of talk­ing heads, the only notable absences besides Kubrick and Romero (both deceased) are De Pal­ma, Rein­er, Car­pen­ter, Cro­nen­berg, Lam­bert, and King him­self (except in file footage).

Wrap­ping up the themes, Mike Flana­gan dis­cuss­es how he got King to accept an adap­ta­tion of Doc­tor Sleep which ends in an icon­i­cal­ly Kubrick­ian Over­look Hotel, allow­ing the author at last to find his own place in the long-repu­di­at­ed work of another.

Stephen King On Screen is on dig­i­tal from 26 June via Sig­na­ture Entertainment 

Lady Reporter, dir. Hoi Mang, 1989

“This case is being inves­ti­gat­ed by the Hong Kong police,” the local Super­in­ten­dent (Melvin Wong) tells under­cov­er FBI Agent Cindy (Cyn­thia Rothrock), ​“We need no help from an Amer­i­can Rambo!”

This kind of juris­dic­tion­al con­flict has long been the bread and but­ter of the cop movie – but Hoi Mang’s film is the first and only time that a Hong Kong flick has fea­tured a west­ern woman in its lead rôle. Cindy is vis­it­ing from the States to inves­ti­gate coun­ter­feit Amer­i­can bills being print­ed by The Asian Post, whose pub­lish­er (Ron­ny Yu) is a ruth­less crim­i­nal sur­round­ed by mar­tial arts experts. Still, as Cindy joins forces with a prosecutor’s daugh­ter (Eliz­a­beth Lee), a rival reporter (Mang) and an under­cov­er cop (Siu-Ho Chin) to bring down the gang, coher­ent plot­ting takes a back­seat to the fast-pun­ning dia­logue (inevitably mis­fir­ing in trans­la­tion) and the hard-hit­ting, acro­bat­ic action set-pieces (which work in any language).

This apes the fish-out-of-water polici­er com­e­dy of Mar­tin Brest’s Bev­er­ly Hills Cop, right down to Babida’s Fal­ter­mey­er-esque score – but Rothrock tru­ly is the film’s weapon of mass destruc­tion, tak­ing on an army of oppo­nents from East and West alike with a charm that is lethal.

Lady Reporter is released on Blu-ray, 26 June via Eure­ka! Entertainment

Le Mépris, dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1963

“It’s based on the nov­el by Alber­to Moravia,” says the voiceover that opens Jean-Luc Godard’s fea­ture, list­ing its key per­son­nel even as we watch a cam­era and crew track Gior­gia Moll walk­ing along a street. In oth­er words, this is a film about film, and about the anx­i­eties and com­pro­mis­es involved in filmmaking.

It begins with a quote from André Bazin about cin­e­ma being a sub­sti­tute for our gaze, and ends with a shot (of a shot) pur­port­ing to be Ulysses’ gaze across the ocean to his long-lost island home of Itha­ca. In between, the play­wright Paul Javal (Michel Pic­coli) also los­es his wife and sense of self as he agrees, in return for the promise of a large mon­e­tary pay­ment, to do sexed-up rewrites for Fritz Lang’s Hol­ly­wood-fund­ed epic Ulysses. Caught between Lang’s ded­i­ca­tion to high art and the prof­it motive of vul­gar Amer­i­can pro­duc­er Jer­ry Prokosch (Jack Palance), Paul’s inde­ci­sion, venal­i­ty and cow­ardice earn him the con­tempt of his wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot).

Godard, him­self work­ing with Amer­i­can co-pro­duc­ers and fac­ing demands to insert nude shots of Bar­dot (whose fees con­sti­tut­ed half the film’s bud­get), turns this con­flict between cul­ture and cash into an iron­ic, self-reflex­ive odyssey.

Le Mépris is released on 4K UDD, Blu-ray, DVD and dig­i­tal from 26 June via Stu­dio­canal