1. Chop Shop (Koch Lorber)
For the state-of-the-art in indie New York film (not to mention a few stunning shots of Shea before they tear it down), catch Ramin Bahrani’s obsessively naturalistic drama about two young kids living in the honking riot of Willet’s Point, Queens.
Make It a Double Feature With: Day Night Day Night.
2. Mad Men: Season One (AMC)
With The Wire and The Sopranos long gone, you have no choice but to catch up on Matthew Weiner’s scotch-swilling boys’ club and the tightly sweatered women who endure them.
Compare/Contrast With: The Office, Season Three.
3. Mishima: A Life in Four Acts (Criterion)
Judge this one by its gold-and-hot-pink cover. One of the most stunning DVD packages Criterion has ever produced (and that’s saying a lot) contains Paul Schrader’s wildly impressionistic tribute to Mishima.
A Second Quartet: André Téchiné 4 Film Collector’s Edition.
4. Inglorious Bastards (Severin)
Yes, this is the nutso exploitation flick that Quentin Tarantino has been yammering about remaking for so many years: a bad-boys story about soldiers who escape military prison, steal a V2 rocket from the Nazis, and split.
More Bad Behavior: Cocaine Cowboys II.
5. Masters of Horror: Season Two (Anchor Bay)
Inside a skull-shaped box, John Carpenter, Joe Dante, Dario Argento, and ten others get gross—and, just as shockingly, topical, with riffs on abortion, animal rights, and our founding fathers.
Make It a Double Feature With: Cannibal Terror.
… and the rest …
6. Wholphin No. 6 Bigfoot hunters, reptiles, stuntmen, and Michael Cera—all on the latest DVD sampler from the McSweeney’s empire. 7. The Bank Job Jason Statham pulls off a fun heist flick. 8. Penelope Ricci puts on a pig nose. 9. Shine a Light Scorsese worships the Stones. 10. The Tracey Fragments Ellen Page stretches more than her belly. 11. Spaced Brit TV with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, before Shaun of the Dead. 12. Heartbeat Detector Mathieu Almaric, rising star–art-house heartthrob. 13. American Slapstick, Vol. 2 More terrific, rarely seen slapstick (mostly silent) from 1915 to 1937. 13. Heathers The twentieth anniversary of high-school evil.