It’s Valentine’s week and, curiously, almost no romantic movies are available on Blu-ray to capitalize on that. In fact, catalog releases are heavily weighted with gory horror flicks. I wonder what kind of message that’s supposed to send?
Loading ...New Releases (Blu-ray)
‘Wonder‘ – Do you remember the 1985 movie ‘Mask’, in which Eric Stoltz wore heavy makeup to play a boy born with serious facial deformities who struggled to find acceptance in the so-called normal world? Yeah, well, here’s that again, but based on a fiction YA novel this time instead of a true story. Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson play the parents, blowing an obvious opportunity to bring back Stoltz. Released over the holiday season and perfectly timed to fill a drought of heartwarming family dramas, the movie was a stealth blockbuster. Although it never hit the top of the box office, it held over extremely well from week to week and slowly amassed over $200 million, based on a small $20 million budget.
‘Roman J. Israel, Esq.‘ – After failing to win that third Oscar he wanted for last year’s ‘Fences’, Denzel Washington tries again with a character study about a small-time lawyer with a big-time afro who allows himself to be wooed into corruption. That’s typically not a good idea, generally speaking. Washington indeed landed another Oscar nomination (his eighth so far), but seems unlikely to win. Aside from his performance, the movie was met with mixed reviews.
‘Blade of the Immortal‘ – Prolific Japanese cult auteur Takashi Miike delivers his 100th feature, a bloody supernatural revenge tale about an immortal (but not invincible) samurai. Best Buy carries an exclusive SteelBook.
‘Hellraiser: Judgment‘ – Long after the movies stopped being worth releasing to theaters, the horror franchise originally spawned by Clive Barker churns out yet another DTV sequel. Original Pinhead star Doug Bradley bowed out a couple entries ago, so this one brings in fright icon Heather Langenkamp (‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’) for some marquee value. She’s credited as “Landlady,” which I assume means she has a prominent role as the lead character. Barker keeps threatening to reboot this franchise with a new theatrical feature, but that project appears to be stalled so we keep getting these cheap cash-ins instead.
UHD
Lionsgate owns the 4k landscape this week with a day-and-date release for ‘Wonder‘ and a catalog upgrade for ‘Hell or High Water‘.
Catalog Titles
Both George Romero’s zombie classic ‘Night of the Living Dead‘ and Jonathan Demme’s Oscar winner ‘The Silence of the Lambs‘ were previously released on Blu-ray in subpar editions. The Criterion Collection now offers new and hopefully definitive copies of both.
I thought I was pretty familiar with most of Federico Fellini’s filmography, but I have somehow missed his 1978 television movie ‘Orchestra Rehearsal‘ over the years. Arrow Academy cues it up for rediscovery.
Mill Creek rescues the canine cutesploitation classic ‘Benji‘ with a new restoration from the original 35mm.
Kino’s new 50th Anniversary Edition of ‘The Thomas Crown Affair‘ (the 1968 version with Steve McQueen, obviously, not the Pierce Brosnan remake) promises a 4k remaster to replace the middling edition that MGM put out back in 2011.
The first volume of Arrow’s ‘Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years‘ project contains five movies made by the eccentric Japanese filmmaker between 1958 and 1965.
The Horror, The Horror…
If you missed out on last year’s Limited Edition copies of Dario Argento’s giallo thriller ‘The Bird with the Crystal Plumage‘ or Stuart Gordon’s splatterfest ‘Re-Animator‘, Arrow Video repackages them into streamlined Special Edition versions.
Scream Factory drags Sam Raimi’s ‘Drag Me to Hell‘ back to Blu-ray with a new Collector’s Edition.
The Warner Archive serves up ‘Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III‘ while Mondo Macabro dishes out one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite movies, ‘The Blood Spattered Bride‘.
Television
The latest TV box sets include the first season of HBO’s ‘The Deuce‘, the second season of TNT’s ‘Animal Kingdom‘, the fifteenth season of the ‘Halo’ parody web series ‘Red vs. Blue‘, and a collection of ‘Doctor Who: The Complete Peter Capaldi Years‘.
My $.02
This is actually a pretty good week, in my estimation. I’m down for ‘The Silence of the Lambs’, ‘Night of the Living Dead’, ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’, and ‘Orchsestra Rehearsal’. I never bought the Limited Edition of ‘The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’, so the Special Edition will replace that on my wish list.
Does anything excite you this week?
Csm101
Horror movies are waaay more fun for Valentines dates than romance. On the way, I should have Silence of the Lambs, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Night of the Living Dead, Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw III. All double and triple dips in one form or another. I already own a Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend bluray, so I don’t see the need for this version, unless it’s significantly better. I remember those Benji movies were very popular when I was a kid. My daughter would eat these up. I missed it in the voting, but I’m very interested in Roman J. Israe, Esq. (cue electric air guitar) I missed the Black Eagle memo, but I definitely will be picking it up in the future if the transfer is good. Wonder will make a good family movie rental.
theHDphantom
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend sounds like it’ll have the same PQ as Mill Creek’s release (which isn’t really a bad thing), but this new release will include brand new interviews with the director and also William Katt. I ended up pre-ordering it because the price was very cheap. Looking forward to getting it this week.
William Henley
Nothing this week.
HOWEVER, I am excited to see Benji getting released, even though I won’t be picking it up. The reason I am excited is that there are many movies from this time period that I have only ever seen on VHS, or a really bad DVD transfer from an old tape source. Benji wasn’t as bad of a transfer on previous home video releases as some other movies, but it was in pretty bad shape. My hope is that with Benji being done, and if it sells well, it may open the door to some releases in at least HD of other low-budget movies from this era.
William Henley
Oh, random thought – how much trouble would it be to start captioning your photos that you are using in the headline? Or at least Alt Text when you do a mouseover. A good deal of the time, I am not sure what the picture is of. Today’s, though, is driving me crazy – I am not positive if I have seen this movie, but I feel like I should recognize the actors, and it is driving me nuts that I cannot place it.
Josh Zyber
AuthorI add metadata tags to all images I upload, but WordPress does not display captions on banner images. This one is a very famous movie that I mention in the post and quote in the headline. Right-click to open image in a new tab and look at the file name if it’s really not ringing any bells.
William Henley
Ah, okay. I haven’t seen the movie all the way through, caught bits and pieces of it here and there. I looked at the cast and didn’t recognize anyone, but I finally figured out why I thought it looked familar – I thought it was Peter Sellers
Bolo
It’s ‘Night of the Living Dead’.
EM
You can think of it as American Ghoul.
Bolo
I don’t watch much television, but might give ‘The Douche’ a shot.
Josh Zyber
AuthorWarning: The subject matter has been sanitized. :-O
Bolo
Do you mean that they present a simplistic view of the subject matter or that everything isn’t all explicitly on screen but still conveyed?
Josh Zyber
AuthorRe-read your last comment, then mine. It will make sense. 🙂
Charles Contreras
Night of The Living Dead for Sure! It’s about time they did it some real justice on blu ray.
theHDphantom
Well, in North America at least, yes. The Japanese blu-ray from Happinet is fantastic.
EM
I preordered Night of the Living Dead as a birthday gift for myself. My birthday’s this week; but since I’m cheap, I picked the slow-shipping option (hey, zombies are slow-moving too, ya know), and so I’m to get my present next week. In the meantime, maybe I’ll just get myself a card…and sign it in blood.
Lord Bowler
The only thing I’ll be picking up is ‘Black Eagle: Special Collector’s Edition’ (MVD). I’m a fan of Van Damme, and I’ll buy this for the special features and the extended cut that I’ve never seen. I’ve only seen this once and it wasn’t my favorite, but I’ll give it another chance.
Scott H
Criterion is having a special Valentine’s Flash Sale. Just have to enter the promo code GOLD at checkout to save %50 On your order. Unfortunately it only last till noon ET.