Brian Tallerico

We’re back! Full of turkey, ready to sit down in front of the TV and zone out with a full Netflix queue. What’s the latest and greatest to hit the streaming service du jour? There are some major Hollywood hits like “Skyfall,” “Dances with Wolves,” and “Apocalypse Now” new to the Netflix universe but we here at HC try to focus on what you might not have seen.

Paul Walker, star of the “Fast & Furious” movies, has passed away at the age of 40 after being involved in a fiery car crash, according to TMZ. Reports are vague but the actor reportedly died in a single-car crash in Southern California on Saturday afternoon when the Porsche he was driving in lost control and slammed into a tree.

Eric England’s “Contracted” has the potential to turn into a truly disturbing slice of bodily horror a la some of David Cronenberg’s best work. The tale of a lesbian woman who literally starts falling apart after a sexual encounter at a party could have been a commentary on sexuality, a riff on our national obsession with looking perfect, a cautionary tale about drinking, or even just a twisted slice of grotesque horror.

Disney’s marvelous “Frozen” fits snugly in the lineage of princess stories that the studio has been crafting for decades while also looks forward to empower girls in ways that its predecessors never considered. It is a remarkably fun movie, especially in 3D, alive in ways that so many of its peers in this lackluster year for animation simply are not.

The three comedies made by writer/director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg & Nick Frost — “Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz,” and “The World’s End” — have become collectively known as The Cornetto Trilogy and Universal has been collectively smart enough to release them in one edition, complete with Ultraviolet versions of each beloved film. “The World’s End” is also newly available on Blu-ray and DVD, sure to find legions of loyal fans this holiday season. I like but don’t love “End,” finding it the least satisying of the three films but consider that criticism as coming from someone who adores both “Shaun” and “Fuzz.” There’s still a lot to like here, especially if you want to buy all three.

It’s not surprising that filmmakers led the way in the reappraisal of Ozu’s beloved “Tokyo Story,” which recently ranked #3 on the Sight & Sound poll of all-time best films and was remastered for a Criterion Blu-ray/DVD combo pack release now in stores. Ozu’s film is such a perfect blend of realism and conscious filmmaking. What I men is that it clearly strives to be about relatable, believable human behavior and yet one can also so clearly see the techniques which Ozu uses (or lack thereof given his never-moving camera) to achieve such realism.

A woman who works at a massage parlor/sauna is beaten with money by a man who demands she service him as a prostitute. A coal miner goes through life stunned that the villagers around him pay honor to a man who has given nothing back to them. A young worker is injured on the job and given nothing in compensation because he happened to be making “small talk” at the time.

CHICAGO – What to Watch is back! Miss us? Every week, we roll out 5-10 of the latest films and TV shows to be released on DVD, Blu-ray, and various streaming services. This week’s highlights include a few classics, a cult hit, a couple of recent comedies, and a family flick. In the order we’d advise buying or renting them…

CHICAGO – Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights” used to be more widely considered to be one of the best films ever made. In early editions of the Sight & Sound poll (the every-decade poll of film historians and critics), it appeared in the top ten regularly. Its esteem seems to have slipped a bit over the decades as some now prefer other Chaplin to “Lights” (me, I adore “Great Dictator” and “Gold Rush,” both available in Criterion Blu-ray editions as well) but the new Criterion edition reminds one why so many people consider this one of the best. It’s still a glorious gem.

CHICAGO – Second acts to incredibly popular and entertaining mainstream fare can be a tough prospect. For every “The Dark Knight,” there are too many films like “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” – works that essentially just repeat what audiences fell in love with instead of trying to expand on the world of their predecessors.