Criterion has released a picture-perfect Blu-ray edition of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car.

That Hamaguchi’s masterful creation would win every critics group award for Best Foreign Language or International Film of 2021 was never in dispute. That it would win the Best Film award from the three most prestigious U.S. critics’ groups, the New York, Los Angeles, and National Society Film Critics, was. That distinction put it in contention to become the second film, following Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, two years earlier, to win both Best Film and Best International Film. That wasn’t to be, of course, but if vote tallies were to be released by the Academy, they might show that it came awfully close.

The three-hour Japanese film stars Hidetoshi Nishijima as a renowned stage actor and director who takes on the direction of a modernized production of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima while dealing with tragedy in his personal life.

The film begins with a provocative 40-minute prologue before the opening credits that is essential in understanding the lead character and his situation. From there it only gets better as he delves into the creative process that includes being forced to work with an actor who was his wife’s lover, a mute actress in an important speaking role, and a personal driver with problems of her own. How it all works out is fascinating to watch and see.

The film features inspired performances by Nishijima and Toko Miura as his driver as well as virtually the entire cast.

Extras include a new interview with Hamaguchi, the film’s Cannes Film festival press conference, and a making-of documentary.

Film Movement has released Ang Lee’s Pushing Hands on Blu-ray for the first time.

The Taiwan-born, Chinese-American director burst onto the international film scene with his second and third films, 1993’s The Wedding Banquet and 1994’s Eat Drink Man Woman, which forced the U.S. release in 1995 of his first film, Pushing Hands, first shown in Taiwan in December 1991. Both Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet were filmed in New York in English and Mandarin. Eat Drink Man Woman was filmed in Taiwan in Mandarin and French.

Sihung Lung, who would play major supporting roles in both The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman, has the lead in Pushing Hands as a former Kung Fu Master who emigrates to the U.S. to live with his only son (Bazhao Wang), blonde daughter-in-law (Deb Snyder), and precocious mixed-race grandson (the director’s real-life son, Haan Lee). Culture clashes as well as generational clashes ensue with the elderly gentleman only really happy when he teaches Kung Fu classes on alternate Saturdays at a local school. Attempts between his family and that of elderly cooking instructor Lai Wang to play matchmaker prove fruitless but the two remain friends.

With Lee’s other early films and Sense and Sensibility, also being released in 1995,
Pushing Hands kind of gets forgotten as one of his seminal films. It should really be as highly regarded as those films and such forthcoming treasures as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain, and Life of Pi.

Extras include a round table discussion with filmmakers James Schamus, Ted Hope, and Tim Squyres.

Kino Lorber has released a Blu-ray of the newly restored 1951 film version of Native Son.

Efforts to film Richard Wright’s 1940 novel had a troubled history. Orson Welles was able to produce a stage version of the novel about a young black Chicago man who accidentally kills the daughter of the white family he works for but was unable to produce a film version. Plans to film it in Argentina fell apart when stage star Canada Lee was unable to leave the country. Eventually, it was filmed in Argentina by French director Pierre Chenal with forty-something Wright playing protagonist Bigger Thomas. A heavily censored version of the film had showings in various parts of the U.S., but the film was not successful. Two remakes, one in 1986, and the other in 1999, proved just as unsuccessful. Finally, the 1951 version was restored to great acclaim in 2000.

Despite the fact that Wright was too old for his role and that most of the actors had to be dubbed because their South American accents didn’t fit the Chicago dialect, the film works as a good film noir filled with twists and turns while exposing the racial prejudices of the times, which sadly have not changed all that much in the intervening years.

Extras include a 32-page booklet on the film’s troubled production history.

Kino Lorber has also released a Blu-ray of Robert Siodmak’s Time Out of Mind.

Made on the heels of Siodmak’s three legendary 1946 films noir, The Spiral Staircase, The Killers, and The Dark Mirror, Time Out of Mind has elements of film noir, but this brooding drama fits more easily into the gothic love story genre.

Britain’s Phyllis Calvert (Mandy) had the lead as a servant in the home of a wealthy Maine shipping Magnate (Leo G. Carroll) who encourages his son (Robert Hutton) to leave his father’s home to study music in Paris after which she assumes he will return to her.

The film marked a rare lead for Hutton whose biggest previous role was in 1943’s Destination Tokyo in support of Cary Grant who had been married at the time to his cousin Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton. Like Calvert, he would have a long career, but mainly in supporting roles. Also receiving star billing was Ella Raines (Phantom Lady) as Hutton’s protective sister.

This one is more for fans of such composer-centrist dramas as 1945’s A Song to Remember and 1947’s Song of Love, which were popular at the time, than it is for fans of film noir.

Extras include an audio commentary.
This week’s new releases include the 4K Blu-ray releases of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Killing.