Roger Deakins has been nominated for an Oscar twelve times without winning. Perhaps the greatest living cinematographer, he may well receive his thirteenth nomination and possible first win for Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario, a visual masterpiece that ranks right up there with Deakins’ work on Fargo, Skyfall, Unbroken and many others.

The film stars Emily Blunt as an idealistic FBI agent in over her head on a government task force operation to ferret out a drug lord in Mexico. Benicio Del Toro has the film’s title role, that of a hitman with an agenda of his own. Josh Brolin is the duplicitous CIA agent who leads the task force. Although the screenplay seems to go in odd directions at times, it all makes sense in the end. The real star of the film, though, is Deakins’ amazing camerawork, which is often spectacular without being obviously showy.

Sicario is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Cinematography, art direction, editing and visual effects are as much the stars of Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk as is Joseph Gordon-Levitt in peak form as Philippe Petit, the French high-wire artist who famously walked the void between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974, making eight passes and earning worldwide respect for his art in the process.

The film is a valentine to Paris, where Petit developed his craft; New York, where he perfected it; and the twin towers themselves. One of the year’s most intriguing films, it was a costly box office flop, perhaps because it’s still soon for audiences to be reminded of the iconic towers which were brought down by terrorists fifteen years ago this year. Hopefully it will do better on home video where it is available on Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Hailed by critics as a return to form for The Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan, The Visit is anything but. It’s a woebegone mess of a movie in the found-footage vein of so many amateur films with a particularly bad performance by the boy playing a child in peril. As an alternative I recommend the Austrian horror film Goodnight Mommy or the western horror film Bone Tomahawk, both of which provide good scares without also making you ill from the shaky hand-held camera the teenage girl in The Visit is allegedly utilizing.

The blurb on the back of the Goodnight Mommy Blu-ray compares it to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. It actually resembles Robert Mulligan’s The Other and Michael Haneke’s Funny Games more closely.

Like The Other, the film centers on twin boys and their mother, and like Funny Games, the games being played escalate into ever increasing terror. The original German title of film is Ich seh, Ich seh which means I See, I See, a more benign, yet much more terrifying title in retrospect.

Co-directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, the film stars Elias and Lukas Schwarz as the twins, whose characters are also named Elias and Lukas, and Susanne Wuest as their mother. The twins believe that the bandages the mother has on her face, due to her recent plastic surgery, are to disguise the face of the woman they believe is not their real mother.

The horror in writer-director S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk, set in old the west, does not begin benignly. It starts out with a wallop as drifter David Arquette slashes a man’s throat for his clothes and other belongings. Immediately he and his companion, Sid Haig, are attacked by savages. Haig dies, but Arquette survives and ends up in Sheriff Kurt Russell’s town where the savages track him down and kidnap the town doctor (Lili Simmons), another woman, and the sheriff’s young deputy (Evan Jonigkeit). Russell, older deputy Richard Jenkins, the doctor’s husband (Patrick Wilson), and her one-time suitor (Matthew Fox) follow in hot pursuit. The horror escalates with one particularly gruesome scene involving a scalping and a splitting open of the still-alive victim’s body from the bottom up.

The film plays out more like the John Ford classic The Searchers than your typical horror film, but it doesn’t stint on the horror when it comes. The acting is first rate, with Russell, Wilson, Fox, and Jenkins all turning in remarkable performances. This one could well be destined to become a cult classic.

The Visit, Goodnight Mommy, and Bone Tomahawk are all available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Mark Ruffalo earned a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of a manic-depressive man raising two daughters in 1970s Boston while his wife earns a Masters Degree in Business at Columbia in NYC to support the family in Infinitely Polar Bear. Polar bear is the name the girls have for their father’s bi-polar disease.

Ruffalo gives a terrific performance in a difficult role and is well supported by Zoe Saldana as his wife and Imogene Wolodarksy and Ashley Aufderheide as his daughters. Wolodarksy is the daughter of the film’s writer-director Maya Forbes, and is essentially playing her Forbes in a fictionalized version of her early life. Golden Globes categorization aside, this is not a comedy, but a finely tuned family drama.

Infinitely Polar Bear is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

One of Marvel’s lesser celebrated action heroes, Ant-Man, has come to the screen directed by Peyton Reid. Despite its lesser reputation, it has nevertheless earned a not too paltry $180 million at the box office to date. A sequel is already planned for 2018.

The film, which doesn’t take itself too seriously, features a typically easy-going performance by Paul Rudd as the thief-turned-superhero who can shrink to the size of an ant. Michael Douglas plays Rudd’s benefactor and Evangeline Lillly plays Douglas’ no-nonsense daughter. Judy Greer is Rudd’s ex-wife and Bobby Cannavale her fiancé, a cop who disapproves of Rudd. Corey Stoll is the requisite bad guy. It all makes for harmless fun.

Ant-Man is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

This week’s new releases include The Martian and TV’s Sherlock: The Abominable Bride.