Song to Song

Blu-ray Highlights: Week of July 2nd, 2017 – Tuned Out

Not only is this a holiday week, but that holiday awkwardly falls on Tuesday, the traditional day when movies are released on home video. As a result, most studios have decided to give this week a pass. Only a few new Blu-rays make their way to stores, none of them major titles.

Which Blu-rays Interest You This Week (7/4/17)?

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New Releases

Song to Song‘ – The more movies Terrence Malick makes, the more his former fans wish he would go back to only directing once per decade. His latest novel-gazing opus continues the downward trajectory of ‘To the Wonder’ and ‘Knight of Cups’, and was his worst-reviewed and least-seen yet. (Seriously, if he’s not even making movies for critics anymore, who is he making them for?) Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling and Natalie Portman star in the extremely mopey and super-pretentious drama about the music industry. This is the only title of the week to score an Ultra HD 4k release, which should make all those endless shots of clouds drifting through the sky extra gorgeous.

The Zookeeper’s Wife‘ – Based on a true story, Jessica Chastain and Johan Heldenbergh play Polish zoo owners who sheltered 300 Jews from the Nazis during the height of World War II. It’s a fascinating bit of history that sounds tailor-made for the movies, but critical consensus on the film was lukewarm.

Catalog Titles

Shout! Factory delivers ‘A Shock to the System‘, the darkly comic 1990 thriller starring Michael Caine as harried business executive who undertakes some unconventional methods of improving both his work and home lives.

Universal reaches back to the 1990s to dig up the animated kids’ movies ‘An American Tail: Fievel Goes West‘ and ‘Balto‘. Both were directed (or co-directed) by Simon Wells, the great-grandson of author H.G. Wells. The ‘American Tail’ sequel is remembered affectionately, but ‘Balto’ is hardly remembered at all. Wells would later go on to bankrupt Robert Zemeckis’ ImageMovers studio with the mega-flop ‘Mars Needs Moms’.

Arrow Video unleashes ‘Doberman Cop‘, a 1977 yakuza thriller that reunited Japanese cult director Kinji Fukasaku with star Sonny Chiba following their collaboration on the extremely weird ‘Wolf Guy‘.

Kino hopes that modern audiences still have some fondness for Bob Hope, by releasing no less than four of the star’s comedies: ‘Road to Rio‘ and ‘Road to Bali‘ (both with Bing Crosby), ‘The Lemon Drop Kid‘, and ‘My Favorite Brunette‘.

My $.02

I’m content to save my money this week. I assume that most of our readers will as well. Am I wrong about that? Will something here makes its way into your movie collection?

Note: The blog will have Tuesday off for the holiday. We’ll see you back here on Wednesday. Have a happy and safe Fourth of July!

9 comments

  1. Csm101

    Doberman Cop seems cool, but I’m probably not buying any new releases this week. Aren’t we do for a Criterion sale? There’s a couple of titles I want to pick up.

  2. ‘Jessica Chastain and Jonah Heidenbergh …’

    That should be ‘Johan’ (not Jonah) and ‘Heldenbergh’ (not Heidenbergh). Belgian actor. One of our finest 🙂

  3. Malickfan

    I’m going to be the pretentious Terrence Malick fan and say “Song to Song”
    Malick 1st release on 4k blu ray is a day one purchase form me.

  4. Song To Song was better than Knight Of Cups, but both pretty terrible. Best thing about Song To Song was Holly Hunter, who was actually pretty great.

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