Blu-ray Highlights for 1/10/12 – Play Ball!

As fully expected, this is another slow January week for new Blu-ray releases. Although the list may look reasonably long at first glance, most of the titles are reissues or just plain junk. Fortunately, mixed in with these are at least one good movie and one TV show worth our attention.

Here’s the release slate for the week:

The baseball drama ‘Moneyball‘ stars Brad Pitt in the true story of Oakland A’s team manager Billy Beane, who revolutionized the way that teams are recruited and assembled. Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay. If the film didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, that’s probably because the trailers (which made it look really, really boring) failed to sell it properly. The movie received a lot of positive reviews. Luke called it one of the best films of the year and Nate agrees.

On the TV front, we have the complete first season of the Martin Scorsese-produced ‘Boardwalk Empire‘. I’m not really sure what HBO’s reasoning is here to withhold the show from video until the second season finished airing. You’d think it would be a better idea to release the first season before the second season broadcast to drum up interest. I might have tried to catch up with it that way, if I’d had the opportunity. Somehow, despite being right in my wheelhouse, I’ve never found the time to watch this series. I need to rectify that.

Drew Barrymore fans (Mrs. Z among them) may be excited to rewatch two of the stars better rom-coms: ‘Fever Pitch‘ and ‘Never Been Kissed‘. That is, if they haven’t already watched both movies to the point of exhaustion.

The rest of this list is pretty bleak, in my opinion. Sure, I used to enjoy ‘That ’70s Show‘ back in the day, but I don’t need to own it, personally.

At 80-years-old, iconoclastic French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard continues to make movies, even though the world stopped watching them years ago. He gave up any pretense of coherency or storytelling decades back, and is now content to merely string random images together into enigmatic “themes” that only he comprehends. Godard’s latest, ‘Film socialisme‘, stirred a little buzz among his loyalists at the Cannes festival a couple years back, and is now available on Blu-ray to confound those brave souls willing to give it a look.

Robert De Niro, Clive Owen and Jason Statham all appear to be slumming in the action flop ‘Killer Elite‘. And poor Anna Faris still can’t find a decent starring vehicle. Her latest comedy, ‘What’s Your Number?‘, was savaged by critics and also bombed with audiences.

Did I miss anything here worth highlighting? Which of the week’s releases do you plan to buy?

4 comments

  1. Moneyball was my favorite movie from 2012, and I highly recommend it. It’s a sports movie in the vein of The Social Network…so if you liked that movie, you’ll like this one.