Blu-ray Highlights for 3/15/11. What Are You Buying?

Put up yer dukes, ‘cuz it’s time for a fight!

This week’s Blu-ray release slate may not seem all that significant in volume, but still manages to offer up a couple of promising titles:

Coming right off its successful Oscar bout, ‘The Fighter‘ is ready to take on all new challengers in the home video arena. The movie was an underdog champ both at the box office and in the Oscar race, where it won two trophies for supporting actors Christian Bale and Melissa Leo. (It seems that Bale didn’t burn all his bridges in the industry after that infamous rant on the set of ‘Terminator Salvation‘ after all.) I didn’t have a chance to see this in theaters, but will catch up with it shortly on Blu-ray. I’m scheduled to review the disc for Home Theater magazine, where I’m contractually obligated to cover all movies set in Boston.

Much less successful last year was Clint Eastwood’s spiritual meditation on mortality, ‘Hereafter‘. The movie was savaged by critics and bombed at the box office. Aaron was a big fan of it anyway (follow the link above for his review), but Drew didn’t care for it so much, as I recall. Again, I didn’t get to this in theaters, but will be watching it soon.

The next biggest day-and-date release to talk about is the alien invasion flick ‘Skyline‘, which debuts as a Best Buy exclusive title for one week before hitting general retail on March 22nd. Unfortunately, there’s been pretty much universal agreement that this is a terrible movie. (Aaron sure thinks so.) Should we really have expected anything different from the directors behind ‘Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem‘? The trailers for this made it look like a mega-budget visual effects extravaganza, but it was really made for peanuts and, as I understand it, every single visual effects shot is contained in the two-minute trailer.

If you want to watch a bad movie, isn’t it better to watch one that at least knows that it’s bad? ‘Sharktopus‘ makes no pretensions about being anything other than what it is – the latest SyFy Channel cheapie monster movie mash-up. This one comes from the Roger Corman exploitation factory. Nate had a lot of fun with it. (His review is linked above.)

On the catalog title front, Paramount has finally released ‘Anchorman‘ from Best Buy exclusivity. Sadly, I don’t believe that the general retail version comes with the very fun copy of Ron Burgundy’s diary or the trading card set found in Best Buy’s “Rich Mahogany Edition.”

Guilty Pleasure Alert: ‘BMX Bandits‘ is now available on Blu-ray. Really.

Let’s close things out on a classier note. The Criterion Collection brings us Blu-ray editions of both the acclaimed Chinese drama ‘Yi Yi‘ and the Louis Malle classic ‘Au revoir les enfants‘. Both of these will make their way into my collection just as soon as Barnes and Noble has another one of those “50% Off” Criterion sales.

6 comments

  1. HuskerGuy

    Blind buying The Fighter and that’s it. I’d love to pick up the BB exclusive set for Anchorman someday, but I really want it to drop to $10.

  2. I had Au revoir les enfants on preorder, but canceled it last Wednesday, as it didn’t look like the price was going to dip below $28. I like the movie, but it is not a Must Have, and I felt $28 was steep for a movie on Amazon. I’ll wait for it to go on sale.

  3. Adam

    I’m saving my Blu-ray budget for next week. Likely going to pick up Stand By Me and most definitely buying The Sandlot!

  4. Anthony

    Got The Fighter and even though I’m an Eastwood completist I’ll wait for Hereafter’s price to drop before I buy it. As for Au Revoir Le Enfants and Yi Yi, I’ll wait for the barnes and noble criterion sale

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