Blu-ray Highlights: Week of September 11th, 2016 – You Look Marvelous

Strap yourselves in, folks. I told you September looked like a good month for Blu-rays. From major new blockbusters to awesome cult movies, this week could be a wallet-buster.

Which Blu-rays Interest You This Week (9/13/16)?

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New Releases

Captain America: Civil War‘ – Superhero movie fans may not have cared for the Batman/Superman brawl this year, but they sure ate up the Cap vs. Iron Man dust-up. Featuring most of the ‘Avengers’ characters aside from Thor and Hulk, the film is the biggest box office smash of the year so far (worldwide) and scored great word-of-mouth from both critics and audiences. The Blu-ray is available in both 2D and 3D, plus a SteelBook (with both versions) exclusive to Best Buy.

The Conjuring 2‘ – After conquering the world with ‘Furious 7’ last year, director James Wan scales back a little with a sequel to his 2013 horror hit. Made for twice the budget of the original, the fact that the follow-up only did about the same amount of business may be seen as a disappointment. However, it was still solidly profitable enough to justify more sequels in the future.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping‘ – Andy Samberg’s spoof of Justin Bieber and similar vapid celebrities looked like good, goofy fun in the trailers. I’m surprised that it bombed so badly. Are people over Samberg, or have too many years of shitty Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell movies burned people out on these wacky ‘SNL’-style comedies? Perhaps everyone just agreed that it’s better to wait for this sort of thing to show up on Netflix.

De Palma‘ – Filmmakers Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow interview their idol, Brian De Palma, for a feature-length profile tracing the ups and downs of the director’s very prolific career. This is said to be a pretty fascinating and insightful look at the film industry and De Palma’s own mercurial personality, but it seems like a missed opportunity to shoot the whole thing as a simple talking-head interview when the movie’s subject is famous for being much more inventive than that.

Catalog Titles

You got the touch! You got the power! YEAH!! Forget that Michael Bay crap, ‘The Transformers: The Movie‘ – the gloriously silly 1986 animated feature – is finally available on Blu-ray in North America. (It was released overseas quite a while ago.) My review pretty thoroughly details why this is such a momentous event. You can really dare to be stupid and get a SteelBook copy.

Conveniently timed to coincide with the ‘De Palma’ documentary, Scream Factory pulls the director’s campy 1992 thriller ‘Raising Cain‘ out of obscurity. This has never been one of De Palma’s better movies (the plot is downright idiotic), but it has some fun and inventive set-pieces that only he could have staged. The Blu-ray gives us both the theatrical cut and a new Director’s Cut that rearranges the order of scenes to how they were originally written in the screenplay.

Fox is using the 30th anniversary of ‘Aliens‘ to repackage James Cameron’s sci-fi action classic in a new edition with some art cards and a comic book. Expect the video and audio quality to be the same as what we’ve had for years, but I believe the disc comes with one new featurette.

Also celebrating its 30th anniversary is Rob Reiner’s adaptation of ‘Stand by Me‘. (Remember when Rob Reiner made good movies like this? What happened to him?) I can’t find any details on how (or if) the new Blu-ray differs at all from the 25th Anniversary Edition, which makes me suspect it’s going to be the same thing with different cover art.

Four years after releasing an Essential Collection of its Classic Monster franchises, Universal finally follows through with complete runs for both the ‘Frankenstein‘ and ‘The Wolf Man‘ lines. Of course, this means that fans who already own the previous box set (or the breakout standalone editions from it) will wind up with duplicate copies of the first film in each series.

Remaining in a horror mood, Universal also has an 8-film ‘Hammer Horror Collection‘ box set that contains the titles ‘Brides of Dracula’, ‘The Curse of the Werewolf’, ‘Phantom of the Opera’ (1962), ‘Paranoiac’, ‘Kiss of the Vampire’, ‘Nightmare’, ‘Night Creatures’, and ‘The Evil of Frankenstein’.

Movies in the ‘Evil Dead’ franchise are notorious for being reissued time and again in countless home video editions. Lionsgate offers yet another new copy of ‘Evil Dead 2‘. Someone who’s a bigger fan of the franchise than I am will have to tell me what this one offers that earlier Blu-rays didn’t.

Synapse first unveiled a limited edition SteelBook of Dario Argento’s ‘Tenebrae‘ back in February. That version appears to be out of print, but a standard keepcase edition is now available.

Olive has more classic horror with scream queen Barbara Steele in 1962’s ‘The Horrible Dr. Hichcock‘. Shifting gears, Olive also tries to sort out ‘Yours, Mine and Ours‘ in the 1968 Lucille Ball comedy.

1980s B-movie icon Tim Thomerson gets a lot of love this week with ‘Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn‘ (restored to the original 3D) from Shout! Factory and ‘Trancers III‘ from Full Moon.

Kino makes a stop at the ‘Road House‘. No, not the Patrick Swayze macho cheesefest – the 1948 film noir with Richard Widmark and Ida Lupino. Also from Kino is Fritz Lang’s 1922 silent crime thriller ‘Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler‘.

New limited editions from Twilight Time include the Jane Fonda/Dolly Parton/Lily Tomlin working-girl comedy ‘9 to 5‘, Al Pacino in the racing drama ‘Bobby Deerfield‘, Donald Sutherland in the spy thriller ‘Eye of the Needle‘, Charles Bronson in both the cop thriller ‘Murphy’s Law‘ and the Western ‘From Noon Till Three‘, and Fred Ward in the corny action flop ‘Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins‘.

Criterion tells ‘The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum‘ in the classic Japanese drama from director Kenji Mizoguchi.

Criterion’s (Blu-ray only) reissue of the 25-film ‘Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman‘ saga is currently the same price on Amazon as the Blu-ray + DVD edition from 2013. That may mean that you get fewer discs for the same money, but it also means you get a streamlined package without the useless DVD clutter.

Finally, the Warner Archive digs up the Doris Day musical ‘Love Me or Leave Me‘.

Television

TV releases this week include the fourth season of ‘Longmire‘ and the ninth season of ‘The Big Bang Theory‘.

My $.02

No doubt, ‘Captain America: Civil War’ will burn up the sales charts this week. I have the SteelBook edition on preorder.

I’ve already reviewed a screener copy of ‘Transformers: The Movie’, but – as a fool unwise with his money – I’ve also ordered the SteelBook of that.

‘Raising Cain’ is a guilty pleasure of mine and I’m curious to see the Director’s Cut. I’m also interested in the ‘De Palma’ documentary, but may wait for that one on Netflix.

I never got around to buying the prior, very expensive ‘Zatoichi’ box set, so I fully expect the new one to sit on my wish list for a long time.

How many new Blu-rays will you buy this week?

22 comments

  1. Chris B

    Just the Civil War SB for me this week. There are a few others I wouldn’t mind grabbing (Raising Cain, Evil Dead 2), but I ended up buying a new center and tower speakers for my theatre room this weekend and am tapped out at the moment. Money well spent though, major upgrade 🙂

  2. Bolo

    I think I blinked and missed when ‘Popstar’ was in cinemas. The trailer had some really clever gags, so I’ll rent it for sure.

    That single disc ‘Tenebrae’ will be mine also. I ordered it, but was told it wouldn’t ship until September 20th.

  3. Csm101

    Captain America Civil War 3D at Best Buy tomorrow. Josh, If the audio on this one isn’t great, will you be doing a piece on it like with Age of Ultron? Already have Tenebrae steelbook with the cd soundtrack but I do prefer the original theatrical onesheet Art in this release. On the way to my house is The Wolfman Legacy collection which bestbuy website has for 14.99 and my brother got his on Saturday. Godzilla, Metalstorm 3D and Transformers non steelbook are also on their way to my home. I’m also interested in Bettie Page ( I wish I could clone her) Raising Cane, Zatoichi, Frankenstein Legacy collection, the IMAX uhd 3d combo documentaries, Conjuring 2( I picked up the first one on Black Friday for about 10 bucks and hope this one will do the same). Maybe some Charlie Bronson Murphy’s Law and Remo Williams. This month is definitely an expensive one! Too bad I have to pick and choose as my budget only allows for a small percentage of these.

  4. Lord Bowler

    I’ve already got my pre-order of ‘The Transformers: The Movie – 30th Anniversary Edition (SteelBook)’ (Shout! Factory) and my pre-order of ‘Captain America: Civil War – 3D (SteelBook)’ just shipped.

    Additionally, I will definitely order the ‘Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins’ (Twilight Time). I love this cheesy classic and the cast is excellent in this movie. And, it stars “Captain Janeway” (Kate Mulgrew).

    I might pick up these:
    ‘Aliens: 30th Anniversary Edition’ (20th Century Fox)
    ‘Longmire: The Complete Fourth Season’ (Warner Archive)

  5. NJScorpio

    I too am interested in what is new with the ‘Evil Dead 2’ reissue. If nothing, then I’ll keep looking for a prior steelbook release.

    • Csm101

      It looks like it comes with a digital copy and different cover art, but I’m guessing the disc is the same as the one from a couple of years ago. I personally prefer the skull with the eyeballs. I remember that from the video store days and it might possibly be the original onesheet art.

      • David W.

        The cover is a modification of the original one-sheet. Since Anchor Bay’s release, the back of the skull has been significantly cropped off. The original did not have the whole skull visible, but the the the top of the dome was as well as more cheek and jaw bone.

  6. William Henley

    Probably Captain America 3D SB, but that is probably going to be it. Not even any of the anime peaks my interest this week, which is fine – I’ve just about run out of space on my media shelf and there are way too many unopened discs.

    • William Henley

      I missed yesterday while going through the list about Godzilla 1984 (The Return of Godzilla). That will be arriving today

  7. EM

    I’m running far behind here, but I wanted to make some clarifications about the Frankenstein and Wolf Man sets. Not only do they include “duplicate copies of the first film in each series” from the Essential Collection, as Josh says, but the Frankenstein set also revisits the Bride of Frankenstein from that collection as well. Furthermore, both sets also include Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which Universal has also previously released on Blu, albeit not in the Essential Collection. (I might like to have Son of Frankenstein and Werewolf of London on Blu-ray; but given my previous purchases, I’m not planning to take this particular plunge.)

    I would also feel remiss in not pointing out that the “horrible doctor” of another horror film mentioned above is Hichcock. Hitchcock, of course, would be a terrific director who made some classic horror films and many more classic thrillers.

    Somehow I missed or forgot the previous release of Stand by Me. I’ll see about getting the new or previous release soon.

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