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By Eugene Kang

The films being released this October on home media skew to more recent releases, but the two releases from the 20th century have their own significant impact on film history. From the deep and expansive Warner Archive Collection comes Waterloo Bridge, starring Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Vivien Leigh was fresh off the immense success and hype of Gone With the Wind, so this small, romantic drama featuring a disgraced ballet dancer forced into streetwalking was a considerable step down in terms of scale. Yet Leigh easily carries the picture with her considerable skill. It’s clear that the qualities that made her the perfect Scarlett O’Hara, her innate fire mixed with her poise that is only sometimes threatened by emotional vulnerability, are also at play in this role. Waterloo Bridge’s most important contribution may be that it showed that Leigh’s success in Gone With the Wind was far from a fluke and that she would rightly have a long, fruitful career full of memorable roles.

Our second oldest featured release was actually released by the Criterion Collection several years ago, but because of issues with the rights, was quickly pulled off shelves. Now, Pierrot Le Fou is returning to DVD and Blu-Ray, and perhaps no older film is better suited for a 2K restoration as it receives here. Jean-Luc Godard‘s film about a married man bored with his life (Jean-Paul Belmondo) who finds himself on the run from the law with his ex-girlfriend Marianne (Anna Karina) is a heady mix of genres, pop culture and film styles. The visual theme of using predominantly primary colors gives the film a pop art feel and the constant use of fourth-wall breaking and surprising editing looks back to the works of Frank Tashlin and forward to the likes of Quentin Tarantino. It’s also arguably one of Godard’s most accessible films and an easy gateway to an appreciation of this complex, often controversial, artist.

Fast forwarding nearly 50 years, the postmodern noir The Pledge comes to Blu-ray. Much lauded by Roger Ebert who included it as one of his “Great Movies”, The Pledge follows a retired police officer (Jack Nicholson) who gets sucked into one last case: the grisly murder and rape of a little girl. As directed by Sean Penn, The Pledge is an understandably dark and moody piece, but it is also a lot more thoughtful about the emotional toll it takes on Nicholson’s character and how it means that he will never lead a happy life because he can’t help to pull the people around him into his own trauma. This is perhaps one of Nicholson’s best performances in the latter half of the career and the grim yet surreal tone that Penn strikes with this film is perfectly suited to the material.

Speaking of more modern crime dramas, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie will also be released later this month. The hit series created by Vince Gilligan and starring Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul followed Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin, as he sinks further into immorality and corruption. The series was almost unremittingly dark and challenging, yet it was anchored by excellent storytelling and stellar performances by the whole cast. El Camino takes place immediately after the events of the finale, and the presence of Bryan Cranston is sorely missed. It focuses mainly on Jesse and his attempts to leave his life behind with the occasional flashback to how he got to his situation in the first place. If El Camino had not been associated with Breaking Bad, this would have been a pretty middle-of-the-road crime movie, but it is fun to see Gilligan get to flex his cinematic muscle with some more ambitious compositions and cinematography. And any chance to revisit even some of these rich characters makes El Camino worth it for a die-hard fan or completionist.

And finally, the much-hyped Parasite will be making its debut on the Criterion Collection. Bong Joon-ho‘s tightly constructed and masterful thriller is a film that demands repeat viewing and deconstruction since Bong follows very much in the footsteps of Alfred Hitchcock in terms of how meticulously he constructs his set-ups and Chekov’s guns (an artillery in this case) and how beautifully they resolve by the end. Parasite enthusiasts will no doubt delight in the commentary by Director Bong and interviews with key collaborators such as editor Yang Jinmo and production designer Lee Ha Jun. The Criterion edition even throws in the black-and-white version for good measure. One could argue that this is a film that need to be in anyone’s collection, whether enjoy collecting physical media or not, since the significance of how Parasite so perfectly commanded worldwide attention should not be forgotten.