New Blu-rays this week put a peculiar focus on hotels and the number eight. I feel like there’s a secret Masonic code in there that we need Dan Brown to crack.
Loading ...New Releases (Blu-ray)
Hotel Artemis – For her first acting appearance since 2013’s misbegotten Elysium, Jodie Foster plays a nurse running a secretive hotel/emergency room for criminals. Bad stuff goes down there. In other words, she’s basically the Night Nurse character from Daredevil moved to a knockoff John Wick universe. Why Foster had to (or wanted to) wear old-age makeup for this is puzzling to me. Other famous names in the cast include Dave Bautista, Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, and Jeff Goldblum, among others. Word of mouth was mixed-to-negative and the film’s box office was weak.
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation – Adam Sandler and his friends score another easy paycheck for recording a few hours of voice work in one more middling animated comedy. These things keep making money, which I suppose is good news for Samurai Jack creator Genndy Tartakovsky.
Skyscraper – Remember the wave of Die Hard knockoffs that transplanted that movie’s premise to new locations? “Die Hard on a plane!” “Die Hard on a boat!”, etc. Well, now Dwayne Johnson goes Die Harding in… a tall building? Isn’t that literally just the plot of Die Hard again? Oh, wait, this building is, like, really tall. Totally different thing, I guess. Of the star’s two big action spectacles this year, this one didn’t do nearly as well as Rampage, but brought in enough money internationally to turn a profit. In a rarity, Warner Bros. is releasing a 3D edition in the United States. Best Buy has a SteelBook for the 4k version.
Eighth Grade – Comedian Bo Burham makes his directorial debut with a coming-of-age drama about a young girl struggling to endure the most awkward phase of adolescence in the modern social media age. Critics adored it and the movie was a big indie hit.
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot – The latest from Gus Van Sant stars Joaquin Phoenix in a bio-pic about paraplegic cartoonist John Callahan, based on his memoir. The buzz out of Sundance wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as hoped, which means that the movie didn’t get much of a release afterwards.
UHD
Debuting day-and-date with regular Blu-ray are Ultra HD editions of Skyscraper, Hotel Artemis, and Hotel Transylvania 3.
Warner Bros. brings the animated Constantine: City of Demons and Justice League Dark to the format as well.
I imagine that, somewhere off in the Canadian hinterlands, our site’s former reviewer Luke is losing his mind over the prospect of watching Steven Spielberg’s Hook in 4k HDR. RUFIOOOOOO!!
Also getting an upgrade is Sam Raimi’s original 1981 The Evil Dead. Will the movie’s micro-budget 16mm photography hold up to high resolution playback? I guess we’ll see.
Catalog Titles
The Criterion Collection only has one release this week, but it’ll take you the length of four regular movies to watch Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s miniseries melodrama Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day.
Bob Fosse’s Oscar-winning musical Cabaret gets reissued through the Warner Archive. I’m not sure whether the disc will differ at all from the prior Blu-ray released in 2012 or is just a repackage.
The Cohen Media Collection reports on The Official Story, the 1985 Argentinian drama that won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
The Amazon listing for Fox’s Planet of the Apes: 9-Movie Collection is all messed up. The page has no photo and claims that the product is 4k, but Best Buy and Target confirm that the discs are actually standard Blu-ray. Doing the math, the set must include the original run of five movies, the 2001 Tim Burton remake, and the recent reboot trilogy.
Shout! Factory swashes some buckles (or buckles some swashes) with a 20th Anniversary Edition of the 1998 adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask, starring a young Leonardo DiCaprio freshly debarked from Titanic.
Scream Factory preps for Halloween with Collector’s Editions of the 1999 House on Haunted Hill and the 2008 Trick ‘r Treat.
Fox also tries to get in the holiday spirit by repackaging a bunch of old discs into Halloween-themed SteelBooks with truly ghastly Pop Art designs that have little to nothing to do with the movies in question.
It’s been a decade since Sony put the teen comedy Can’t Hardly Wait on Blu-ray, at which point the film was 10-years-old itself. Mill Creek can’t hardly wait to reissue it as a 20 Year Reunion Edition.
MVD adds the 2003 Denzel Washington thriller Out of Time and a so-called Ultimate Edition of John Woo’s war epic Windtalkers to its Marquee Collection. [Update: Windtalkers has been delayed to November 6th.]
Television
The first season of BBC America’s Killing Eve and the fifth season of The CW’s The 100 are now available for your binge-watching pleasure.
The Warner Archive digs further back to 1974 for the creepy made-for-TV thriller Bad Ronald.
My $.02
I don’t plan to buy anything this week, but Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day will go on my wish list and Eighth Grade looks like a good rental. I can also see myself watching Skyscraper or Hotel Artemis when they hit cable or Netflix.
What will you check out this week?
Csm101
Skyscraper 3d should be en route to my home. I’m hoping to pick up the uhd for Evil Dead. I’m wondering what bluray comes with it, because my Anchor Bay special edition one has some serious bronzing on it and won’t play on my main player. I’ve owned the Malevolence dvd since it was released and never watched it. Maybe I’ll pick up the bluray trilogy and not watch it 😁. I’m going to try and find a 3d version for Hotel Transylvania 3. I’ve never seen Hook and always put off buying it, but I’ll finally bite with this uhd version, eventually. I’ll probably rent Hotel Artemis despite the unenthusiastic reviews, I’m still intrigued. I absolutely love Trick r Treat but I don’t feel an immediate need to pick up this version. Maybe at 14.99. Eighth Grade is also a title of interest.
Julian
HOOK HOOK! GIVE US THE HOOK! Essential 4K purchase! This movie is in my personal top-10.
‘The Amazon listing for Fox’s Planet of the Apes: 9-Movie Collection is all messed up. (…) Doing the math, the set must include both the original run of six movies plus the recent reboot trilogy.’ => well, the Original run of five movies, the Burton remake, and the recent reboot trilogy.
Julian
Another Masonic coincidence: both ‘Hook’ and ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’ star Charlie Korsmo, with the latter being his final film performance.
Josh Zyber
AuthorRight, that. You’ll forgive me for trying to purge the Burton movie from memory.
Julian
You’re very much forgiven 🙂
Dave M.
Killing Eve is fantastic for those who haven’t seen it.
Deaditelord
Evil Dead is a definite purchase. The Fly and From Hell steelbooks interest me too, but I’ll probably skip them in favor of waiting for a UHD release. (I’m assuming the From Hell blu-ray has not been remastered?) Trick’r Treat I’ll wait for a sale. Hook I’ll need to rent first. I know I liked the movie when I saw it, but I haven’t watched it since the original theatrical release so I’m not sure if I want to buy it.
DaMac80
Skyscraper joins the rental list along with Sicario 2 from last week. Wife insisted we upgrade Hook to 4k, which is fine since I collect fantasy anyway. Honestly never dug the movie much though.
Amazon isn’t shipping my Evil Dead 4k for some reason so I’ll swing by Best Buy when I get the chance I guess.
Chris
I pre-ordered Trick R Treat back in August. Hopefully Amazon doesn’t screw me over and make me wait like every other time I’ve ordered a SF product from them. They’re notorious for missing dates when it comes to the Collector’s Editions.
Eight Grade sounds like something to watch with the wife. Will rent in the near future.
Luke Hickman
I don’t know how these Canadians work yet.
Apparently, Amazon.ca doesn’t carry too many movies and when they do, they’re extremely expensive. Hook 4K finally showed up in their catalog today, but with a whopping sales price of $59.99 CDN (it’s not labeled as an import and it’s not even a Prime product, so there’s another $7.99 for shipping). Best Buy (which is a completely separate entity from its US counterpart) is a total joke. They still don’t have a listing for it.
As giddy as I am for Hook, I’ll exercise patience and pick up a copy when I’m in Pennsylvania next month.
Al
Does US Amazon not ship to Canada? Can’t you just order it from US Amazon, and avoid the risk of it not being available, when you’re in Pennsylvania, next month?
Luke Hickman
It’s available to import for Amazon, but the additional cost to import is steeper than the value of time and gas to drive across the border and pick it up from a Best Buy in Buffalo. (I live exactly halfway between Toronto and Niagara Falls.)
Julian
Just £19.99 on Amazon.co.uk, Luke! Have you checked shipping prices? Shall I buy and send it to you?
William Henley
I would assume shipping prices to Canada would be cheaper than the US since Canada is friendly to the crown, and shipping prices to the US usually only run me $2-3USD per disc. I buy a good deal of stuff from the UK as for some odd reason it is usually cheaper than in the US.
Julian
Cool! When I buy on Amazon.com (so, shipping from the USA to Belgium), I pay both shipping and import taxes. So, a $25 Blu may end up costing close to $42.
DaMac80
Every Canadian on my movie forum has been talking about this lately. Discs in Canada seem to be vanishing. I don’t think it’s a physical media death thing, since catalog UHD is so robust in the U.S. I’m guessing they just expect you to import, or Canada has uniquely low sales numbers for some reason.
Csm101
I was in Toronto in June and the Best Buy I went to had the poorest selection of movies I’d ever seen in any of my trips. I left empty handed☹️
Luke Hickman
The closest Best Buy to me is a joke. The entire movie selection is limited to a rinky-dink rack right next to the front door.
While venturing out to the nearest IMAX screen (which is wonderfully digital IMAX, not Lie-MAX) two towns over, I found another Best Buy that’s more like what you’d find in the states. While the store itself and its movie selection is worlds better than my local Best Buy, it still runs off BestBuy.ca and doesn’t come close to listing what’s actually in-stock or available for pre–order.
My jaw nearly hit the floor when I found the 4K steelbook for Mission: Impossible – Fallout available for pre-order on BestBuy.ca!
Chris B
It’s a trade-off Luke. Sure the BBs aren’t the greatest, but in return you get:
-free health care
-low crime
-less pollution
-gorgeous surroundings
-the friendliest people in the world
-as much poutine as you can handle! (if you’re into that sort of thing).
See? It’s not all bad!
Luke Hickman
You have six amazing points listed there. We’ve been here nearly 5 months now and we’re loving it.
Lordbowler
I’ll be buying:
Constantine: City of Demons
Windtalkers: Ultimate Edition (Amazon now shows release date as November 6th).
I’m looking forward to revisiting Windtalkers in the Director’s Cut.
I may pick up this, but I’m not sure yet:
The Man in the Iron Mask (1998): 20th Anniversary Edition
I’ll be renting:
Hotel Artemis
Skyscraper
Josh Zyber
AuthorI’ll adjust the date on Windtalkers. Thanks.