Watch at Home: The Children Act, The Rider, Puzzle

What's newly available for home viewing this week? 

DVD/Blu-Ray
• Alpha - Kodi Smith-McPhee (The Road, X-Men Apocalypse) stars in this prehistoric adventure film about a boy and his wolf friend
• Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings -Marc Chao reprises his popular Detective Dee role. The previous title started with "Young Detective Dee" but I guess now that Chao is 34 they feel "Young" is pushing it? The previous film was ... bonkers. 
• Juliet, Naked  -Rose Byrne & Ethan Hawke star in this well-reviewed romcom
• The Meg -the campy giant-shark flick was a sleeper hit
• Mile 22 -Another gun-loving actioner from Peter Berg & Mark Wahlberg
• Puzzle - Two of our most reliable but underappreciated screen actors Kelly Macdonald and Irffan Khan star in this story about a woman who discovers a passion for solving puzzles

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• Death of Stalin -Armando Iannucci (of In the Loop and Veep fame) is back with another political comedy. This one was up for Best British Independent Film Awards last year but released in the US this year.
• The Rider  -Chinese director Chloé Zhao made one of the most celebrated debut films of the past two years. It was up for Indie Spirit prizes last year and is nominated for Best Film this year (when it was released) at the Gothams.
• Diner -Barry Levinson's beloved 1982 debut was a Golden Globe Best Picture nominee and an Oscar nominee for Best Screenplay in its time. The cast is a who's who of then rising stars: Ellen Barkin, Kevin Bacon, Steve Guttenberg, and Paul Reiser.

-What do they call you? Your Highness? Your Excellency? Your Honourable Something?
-In court it's "My Lady"

Brand New Streaming
• The Children Act -Amazon Prime has the Emma Thompson film about a no-nonsense judge whose marriage is faltering while she's working on a case involving a teenager (Fionn Whitehead) who refuses a blood transfusion that could save his life.
• Green Room - Netflix is streaming this brutal neo-nazi thriller from summer 2016 starring the late Anton Yelchin and Sir Patrick Stewart.

BIFA Nominations: Lady Macbeth and Three Billboards Boosts

by Nathaniel R

Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool received 4 nominationsHot on the heels of the Gotham Awards, the British Independent Film Awards have announced their 2017 nominations. Though they don't tend to get much press in the US due to the the first two words in their title, they're worth noting. And, we'd argue, they're worth noting precisely for their limited jurisdiction. Awards groups with their own identity / purview are all too rare. Lady Macbeth led the field (15 nominations) with gay romantic drama God's Own Country (11 nominations), political satire The Death of Stalin (13 nominations), I Am Not a Witch (12 nominations) and one big tragicomedy Oscar hopeful Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (11 nominations) also super popular

I think the nomination I'm happiest to see (just because it was no sure thing) is Jamie Bell in Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool for Best Actor. He's just brilliant in the film as I've mentioned before but it's the type of role -- nuanced / romantic / skewing "feminine" in its appeal -- for which male actors are rarely honored no matter how good they are. The complete list of nominees is after the jump...

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TIFF: Iannucci Goes to Russia for "The Death of Stalin"

by Chris Feil

Armando Iannucci has another high farce with The Death of Stalin, an almost operatic comedy of power struggles and masculine posturing. Based on the comic books by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin, the film is a gleefully anachronistic satire that will feel all too uncomfortably close to our current reality. This makes for a more charged tone than Iannucci’s previous contemporary political skewering. But fear not: his comic mind has stayed unpretentious. As ever, it’s his subjects that take themselves all too seriously.

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