The years biggest box-office hit, Jurassic World, is poised to stomp on the competition again this week as it arrives on Blu-ray, DVD and other home-video conveyance points.
Jurassic World (Universal, 2015, PG-13, deleted scenes, featurettes). Its popularity is indisputable, but where this fourth film falls in the Jurassic franchise qualitatively is certainly debatable.
The main plot, despite its derivative elements, is a good one: Jurassic Park is finally open to the public as a Disneyland-style theme park and, of course, someone does something stupid to unleash life-threatening Jurassic creatures upon the unsuspecting patrons. And, naturally, a couple of kids need to be rescued.
There are plenty of silly moments, and the running gag about Bryce Dallas Howards high heels doesnt really work but there are also many thrilling action sequences and chases that are knockouts.
And the cast is appealing, led by Howard and Chris Pratt although its surprising that he isnt given the kind of witty dialogue that served him so well in Guardians of the Galaxy. (Also available as a 3-D Blu-ray.)
"Back to the Future: 30th Anniversary Trilogy (Universal, 1985-90, four discs, PG/PG-13, three movies, deleted scenes, audio commentaries, new/vintage featurettes, music videos, new short films, two episodes of Back to the Future: The Animated Series; book packaging). The beloved sci-fi/comedy film series starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd gets yet another Blu-ray and DVD repackaging, this time for its 30th anniversary which is appropriate since the future in the second film takes place in 2015! (So where are our flying cars?)
The first and third films are hilarious and eye-popping, of course, and the second has some cool sequences (and pushed special effects as far as they could go at the time), though its really just a transition piece from BTTF 1 to BTTF 3. All previous bonus materials are included in this set, along with some new stuff, including shorts with Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown.
Testament of Youth (Sony Classics, 2015, PG-13, deleted scenes, audio commentary, featurette, trailer). Enjoyable if not particularly remarkable British adaptation of the World War I memoir by Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander) about her experiences as a nurse attending to wounded soldiers and how it affected her, and in a larger sense, how it affected the nation. Well staged and performed. Emily Watson has a supporting role.
Z for Zachariah (Lionsgate, 2015, PG-13, deleted scenes, featurettes, trailers). This post-apocalyptic yarn is a more thoughtful allegory than most, with Margot Robbie as a young woman tending to her familys farm, thinking shes the last person on Earth. But then she finds and nurses a scientist (Chiwetel Ejiofor) with radiation poisoning, and they form a tentative bond. But the arrival of another man (Chris Pine) tests their relationship. Based on a novel by Robert C. OBrien (with echoes of The World, The Flesh and the Devil).
The Wolfpack (Magnolia, 2015, R for language, featurettes). Surprising documentary about six brothers who spent most of their lives locked away from society in a Manhattan apartment, their education coming primarily from movies, which they meticulously re-create, making their own elaborate props and costumes. But things change when one boy leaves the apartment, prompting his brothers to consider escaping as well.
In the Courtyard (Cohen, 2015, R for drugs and language, in French with English subtitles, featurette, trailer; eight-page booklet). A former rock musician (Gustave Kervern) gets a job as caretaker for an apartment building, where he makes new friends and earns some respect. He also develops feelings for a resident (Catherine Deneuve), despite her overactive anxieties. Gentle late-in-life romantic comedy with excellent performances.
The Disenchanted/A Single Girl/Keep it Quiet (Cohen, 1990/1995/1999, not rated, two discs, three movies, in French with English subtitles, audio commentaries, featurettes, trailers). These three films are personal-life snapshots from prolific French filmmaker Benoit Jacquot, who is virtually unknown in this country. A Single Girl is the most familiar, primarily for its central performance by Virginie Ledoyen as a 19-year-old girl working in a luxury hotel and trying to decide how to tell her boyfriend shes pregnant. The Disenchanted is about a 17-year-old girl (Judith Godreche) whose boyfriend and bedridden mother disrespect her in tragic ways. And Keep it Quiet is a satire about a former CEO (Fabrice Luchini) released from prison to his dysfunctional family. Isabelle Huppert plays his wife.
Hungry Hearts (Sundance Selects, 2015, not rated). Strange psychological thriller about a young couple (Adam Driver, Alba Rohrwacher) and how they meet and marry and have a child together, at which point the wife slips into a strange psychosis, becoming so overprotective of their son that it begins to affect his well-being, forcing the husband to make some tough decisions.
Indiepix Mix 10 (Indiepix, 2004-10, not rated, 10 movies, deleted scenes, audio commentaries, featurettes, photo galleries, short films, trailers). Fans of low-budget independent efforts should enjoy this 10-movie collection of film-festival favorites (all previously released on DVD). Included are three edgy comedies: All My Friends are Funeral Singers, a whimsical avant-garde ghost story; Artois the Goat, a farce about a lab technician trying to make the perfect cheese; and Evergreen, an edgy comedy about poverty.
And seven documentaries: The Axe in the Attic, about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; Candyman, on the creator of Jelly Belly jellybeans; The Devilles, an offbeat 25-year romance between a burlesque dancer and her punk-rocker husband; Echotone, Austins music culture; Frontrunner, Afghanistans first democratic election; Jack Taylor of Beverly Hills, a tailor to the stars; and Shooting Stars[s], hip-hop photographer Johnny Nunez.
Giving Up the Ghosts: Closing Time at Docs Music Hall (MVD, 2014, not rated). Robert Mugges musical documentary is about John Peterson, a physician who moonlighted as a musician and owner of a Muncie, Indiana, arts venue from 1992-2012. The setting is the final concert by Docs band, interspersed with interviews about his twin careers.
Gone With the Wind: The Remarkable Rise and Tragic Fall of Lynyrd Skynyrd (MVD, 2015, not rated). Long (2 hours, 40 minutes) documentary about the titular band, using rare footage/photos, new and archival interviews, etc., to explore the bands rise with Ronnie Van Zant and the plane crash that took the lives of three founding members.
Northern Limit Line (Well Go, 2015, not rated, in Korean with English subtitles). True story of the 2002 Second Battle of Yeonpyeong, as the North Korean navy deployed two patrol boats toward the Northern Limit Line to launch a surprise attack on a South Korean battleship.
The Larry Fessenden Collection (IFC, 1991-2007; R for sex, language, violence; four films, deleted scenes, audio commentaries, featurettes, short films, music videos; 24-page booklet). Independent horror filmmaker Fessendens works here are No Telling, about weird limb-transplant experiments; Habit, as a Manhattan bohemian meets a woman who may be a vampire; Wendigo, an American Indian spirit terrorizing a vacationing family; and The Last Winter, strange goings-on in the Arctic. (Exclusively on Blu-ray; individual titles previously released on DVD.)
Hidden (Warner, 2015, R for violence). A family of four hides out in an underground bunker for nearly a year after an apocalyptic virus has infected much of the world, while being hunted by someone or something above them. Twilight Zone-style twist ending livens up an otherwise routine end-of-the-world flick. (DVD only.)
The Vatican Tapes (Lionsgate, 2015, PG-13, deleted/extended scenes, audio commentary, featurette). A young woman begins to act out in disturbing, out-of-character ways, and it is eventually revealed she has been overtaken by a satanic force, which brings a priest (Michael Pena) and two exorcists (Djimon Hounsou, Peter Andersson) to her rescue.
The Sand (Monarch, 2015, not rated). Low-budget horror flick may call to mind Tremors, as a beach turns carnivorous, or perhaps its something under the sand. Hungover, hard-partying teens quickly discover that stepping on the sand means youre going under or getting chewed up. Mitchel Musso, Brooke Butler and Jamie Kennedy star.
Jurassic World (Universal, 2015, PG-13, deleted scenes, featurettes). Its popularity is indisputable, but where this fourth film falls in the Jurassic franchise qualitatively is certainly debatable.
The main plot, despite its derivative elements, is a good one: Jurassic Park is finally open to the public as a Disneyland-style theme park and, of course, someone does something stupid to unleash life-threatening Jurassic creatures upon the unsuspecting patrons. And, naturally, a couple of kids need to be rescued.
There are plenty of silly moments, and the running gag about Bryce Dallas Howards high heels doesnt really work but there are also many thrilling action sequences and chases that are knockouts.
And the cast is appealing, led by Howard and Chris Pratt although its surprising that he isnt given the kind of witty dialogue that served him so well in Guardians of the Galaxy. (Also available as a 3-D Blu-ray.)
"Back to the Future: 30th Anniversary Trilogy (Universal, 1985-90, four discs, PG/PG-13, three movies, deleted scenes, audio commentaries, new/vintage featurettes, music videos, new short films, two episodes of Back to the Future: The Animated Series; book packaging). The beloved sci-fi/comedy film series starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd gets yet another Blu-ray and DVD repackaging, this time for its 30th anniversary which is appropriate since the future in the second film takes place in 2015! (So where are our flying cars?)
The first and third films are hilarious and eye-popping, of course, and the second has some cool sequences (and pushed special effects as far as they could go at the time), though its really just a transition piece from BTTF 1 to BTTF 3. All previous bonus materials are included in this set, along with some new stuff, including shorts with Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown.
Testament of Youth (Sony Classics, 2015, PG-13, deleted scenes, audio commentary, featurette, trailer). Enjoyable if not particularly remarkable British adaptation of the World War I memoir by Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander) about her experiences as a nurse attending to wounded soldiers and how it affected her, and in a larger sense, how it affected the nation. Well staged and performed. Emily Watson has a supporting role.
Z for Zachariah (Lionsgate, 2015, PG-13, deleted scenes, featurettes, trailers). This post-apocalyptic yarn is a more thoughtful allegory than most, with Margot Robbie as a young woman tending to her familys farm, thinking shes the last person on Earth. But then she finds and nurses a scientist (Chiwetel Ejiofor) with radiation poisoning, and they form a tentative bond. But the arrival of another man (Chris Pine) tests their relationship. Based on a novel by Robert C. OBrien (with echoes of The World, The Flesh and the Devil).
The Wolfpack (Magnolia, 2015, R for language, featurettes). Surprising documentary about six brothers who spent most of their lives locked away from society in a Manhattan apartment, their education coming primarily from movies, which they meticulously re-create, making their own elaborate props and costumes. But things change when one boy leaves the apartment, prompting his brothers to consider escaping as well.
In the Courtyard (Cohen, 2015, R for drugs and language, in French with English subtitles, featurette, trailer; eight-page booklet). A former rock musician (Gustave Kervern) gets a job as caretaker for an apartment building, where he makes new friends and earns some respect. He also develops feelings for a resident (Catherine Deneuve), despite her overactive anxieties. Gentle late-in-life romantic comedy with excellent performances.
The Disenchanted/A Single Girl/Keep it Quiet (Cohen, 1990/1995/1999, not rated, two discs, three movies, in French with English subtitles, audio commentaries, featurettes, trailers). These three films are personal-life snapshots from prolific French filmmaker Benoit Jacquot, who is virtually unknown in this country. A Single Girl is the most familiar, primarily for its central performance by Virginie Ledoyen as a 19-year-old girl working in a luxury hotel and trying to decide how to tell her boyfriend shes pregnant. The Disenchanted is about a 17-year-old girl (Judith Godreche) whose boyfriend and bedridden mother disrespect her in tragic ways. And Keep it Quiet is a satire about a former CEO (Fabrice Luchini) released from prison to his dysfunctional family. Isabelle Huppert plays his wife.
Hungry Hearts (Sundance Selects, 2015, not rated). Strange psychological thriller about a young couple (Adam Driver, Alba Rohrwacher) and how they meet and marry and have a child together, at which point the wife slips into a strange psychosis, becoming so overprotective of their son that it begins to affect his well-being, forcing the husband to make some tough decisions.
Indiepix Mix 10 (Indiepix, 2004-10, not rated, 10 movies, deleted scenes, audio commentaries, featurettes, photo galleries, short films, trailers). Fans of low-budget independent efforts should enjoy this 10-movie collection of film-festival favorites (all previously released on DVD). Included are three edgy comedies: All My Friends are Funeral Singers, a whimsical avant-garde ghost story; Artois the Goat, a farce about a lab technician trying to make the perfect cheese; and Evergreen, an edgy comedy about poverty.
And seven documentaries: The Axe in the Attic, about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; Candyman, on the creator of Jelly Belly jellybeans; The Devilles, an offbeat 25-year romance between a burlesque dancer and her punk-rocker husband; Echotone, Austins music culture; Frontrunner, Afghanistans first democratic election; Jack Taylor of Beverly Hills, a tailor to the stars; and Shooting Stars[s], hip-hop photographer Johnny Nunez.
Giving Up the Ghosts: Closing Time at Docs Music Hall (MVD, 2014, not rated). Robert Mugges musical documentary is about John Peterson, a physician who moonlighted as a musician and owner of a Muncie, Indiana, arts venue from 1992-2012. The setting is the final concert by Docs band, interspersed with interviews about his twin careers.
Gone With the Wind: The Remarkable Rise and Tragic Fall of Lynyrd Skynyrd (MVD, 2015, not rated). Long (2 hours, 40 minutes) documentary about the titular band, using rare footage/photos, new and archival interviews, etc., to explore the bands rise with Ronnie Van Zant and the plane crash that took the lives of three founding members.
Northern Limit Line (Well Go, 2015, not rated, in Korean with English subtitles). True story of the 2002 Second Battle of Yeonpyeong, as the North Korean navy deployed two patrol boats toward the Northern Limit Line to launch a surprise attack on a South Korean battleship.
The Larry Fessenden Collection (IFC, 1991-2007; R for sex, language, violence; four films, deleted scenes, audio commentaries, featurettes, short films, music videos; 24-page booklet). Independent horror filmmaker Fessendens works here are No Telling, about weird limb-transplant experiments; Habit, as a Manhattan bohemian meets a woman who may be a vampire; Wendigo, an American Indian spirit terrorizing a vacationing family; and The Last Winter, strange goings-on in the Arctic. (Exclusively on Blu-ray; individual titles previously released on DVD.)
Hidden (Warner, 2015, R for violence). A family of four hides out in an underground bunker for nearly a year after an apocalyptic virus has infected much of the world, while being hunted by someone or something above them. Twilight Zone-style twist ending livens up an otherwise routine end-of-the-world flick. (DVD only.)
The Vatican Tapes (Lionsgate, 2015, PG-13, deleted/extended scenes, audio commentary, featurette). A young woman begins to act out in disturbing, out-of-character ways, and it is eventually revealed she has been overtaken by a satanic force, which brings a priest (Michael Pena) and two exorcists (Djimon Hounsou, Peter Andersson) to her rescue.
The Sand (Monarch, 2015, not rated). Low-budget horror flick may call to mind Tremors, as a beach turns carnivorous, or perhaps its something under the sand. Hungover, hard-partying teens quickly discover that stepping on the sand means youre going under or getting chewed up. Mitchel Musso, Brooke Butler and Jamie Kennedy star.
