X-Men: Dark Phoenix

Blu-ray Highlights: Week of September 15th, 2019 – Out of the Ashes and Right Back Again

If you spent all your money last week replacing half of your Disney movie collection, the good news is that that week’s new Blu-ray and Ultra HD titles will probably not seem nearly as appealing. As always, however, you might find something interesting if you dig into them.

Which Blu-rays Interest You This Week (9/17/19)?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

New Releases (Blu-ray)

X-Men: Dark Phoenix – In what was supposed to be the big last hurrah before all the characters revert to Marvel and get rebooted for the MCU, Fox’s X-Men franchise flamed out with its final installment, which sees Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner playing out the same storyline that had already been covered (poorly) in X-Men: The Last Stand. Reviews were scathing and the movie was a box office bomb. Originally released to theaters as just Dark Phoenix, the film has officially been retitled to add the X-Men branding in the hopes that may help it to move more copies.

Bodied – With a title that could easily be confused for a horror flick, Eminem serves as producer on a satirical comedy-drama about a white college kid who stumbles into success as a battle rapper and has to face up to accusations of cultural appropriation. The film was very well received at festivals and won the Midnight Madness award at last year’s TIFF, coming in ahead of The Disaster Artist and Brawl in Cell Block 99.

UHD

X-Men: Dark Phoenix lands on Ultra HD with a SteelBook at Best Buy or a Target exclusive that has unique cover art and a poster.

All four of the Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher Batman movies from 1989-1997 were already released in 4k individually back in June. You’d think that a box set bundling them together into one package would have been a natural idea to release at the same time, but Warner chose instead to withhold that until now for reasons unknown. I imagine that most fans were probably happy to get the Burton movies separately and will have little interest in this, except for SteelBook collectors, who are forced to buy them all.

Catalog Titles

The Criterion Collection has a curious mixture of high culture and low this week with competing releases of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1946 comedy of manners Cluny Brown and John Waters’ 1981 cult trashterpiece Polyester. Those should make an interesting double feature. The cover art on the latter is kind of amazing.

Remarkably, Peter O’Toole never won an Oscar in competition, despite being nominated for Best Actor eight times. His seventh of those came for playing a washed-up former matinee idol in the Errol Flynn mold in Richard Benjamin’s 1982 comedy My Favorite Year, now available from the Warner Archive.

Apparently, killing two people in Northern Ireland didn’t have many negative repercussions for Matthew Broderick’s career as a comedic movie star. Just seven months later, he starred in Mike Nichols’ 1988 adaptation of Neil Simon’s lighthearted Biloxi Blues, which was a box office hit. The Blu-ray comes from the Shout Select line.

Paramount is reissuing the hilarious 1999 sci-fi spoof Galaxy Quest in a new SteelBook, but it appears to be the same old Blu-ray disc from 2009. The movie could benefit from a remaster.

Twilight Time has another small slate of limited editions this month. The label’s two new titles are Otto Preminger’s 1949 noir thriller Whirlpool and the 1955 Clark Gable Western The Tall Men.

Twilight Time previously released a double feature of the James Garner Western comedies Support Your Local Sheriff and Support Your Local Gunfighter back in 2015. The titles now shift to Kino, which means that those who balked at Twilight Time’s pricing will have to pay even more to buy the movies separately.

One controversial filmmaker takes on another in 2014’s Pasolini. Willem Dafoe stars in a bio-pic about Pier Paolo Pasolini, the man who made the notorious Salò, directed by Abel Ferrara, the man who made Bad Lieutenant.

Mill Creek rolls out a couple more classics from sleaze auteur Andy Sidaris: 1990’s Guns and 1991’s Do or Die. In contrast to some of his earlier works, these actually attracted some big-name talent, namely Erik Estrada and Pat Morita.

On nearly the same level of prestige is the 2002 movie reboot of I-Spy starring Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson.

MVD has taken over distribution for the Edward Norton magician drama The Illusionist and Sidney Lumet’s courtroom dramedy Find Me Guilty starring Vin Diesel (both from 2006).

Arrow Video asks Who Saw Her Die? with its latest giallo acquisition. The 1972 thriller stars one-time James Bond actor George Lazenby.

Television

The third season of Lethal Weapon was the first with new star Seann William Scott replacing Clayne Crawford. It’s also the show’s last, as Fox has canceled it.

On the other hand, Supergirl is still going strong after four seasons.

The Warner Archive brings out a third volume of classic Popeye the Sailor cartoons from the 1940s.

Paramount drops a lot more South Park in two box sets, comprising Seasons 11-15 and 16-20.

In case you’re a fan and don’t already own them, BBC offers a bundle for all the David Tennant seasons of Doctor Who.

My $.02

I’m not a huge John Waters aficionado, but Polyester will go on my wish list, as will Cluny Brown and My Favorite Year.

Does anything get you hot and bothered this week?

16 comments

  1. Csm101

    I have Who Saw Her Die? on order along with the two Andy Sidaris flicks. I’ll wait for a price drop for Dark Phoenix or a rental first.

  2. Brian

    It’s still a pricey week for me as I have waited for the Batman Collection to release on 4k and here it is. I also have Ken Burns Country Music on the way because I will pick up just about anything he does. If he did a doc on the virtues of watching paint dry, I think I would be a first on pre-order. Next week is my first chance at not having to sell a kidney.

  3. Judas Cradle

    “Apparently, killing two people in Northern Ireland didn’t have many negative repercussions for Matthew Broderick’s career as a comedic movie star…”
    Is your column ABOUT MOVIES, or can we expect more of this nonsense?

      • Chris B

        It’s just kind of a weird segway into talking about Biloxi Blues is what I think he means. Do you harbor a strong dislike for Broderick or something?

        • Josh Zyber
          Author

          No, but the details of his story regarding that event are pretty suspicious, and I find it very strange that he jumped right into making another comedy afterwards and nobody even seemed to notice.

          I have a feeling that our friend Judas Cradle would have a very different attitude if I’d made a similar comment about Ted Kennedy, for example.

          • Josh Zyber
            Author

            It’s less about why he would continue to work than how he’d be allowed to, and how the story mostly got buried. Can you imagine that happening today? He killed two people and there was almost no scandal about it at all.

          • Josh Zyber
            Author

            And went right into filming Family Business afterwards. Biloxi Blues was released after the event and was a box office hit. His career had zero repercussions. Most people today don’t even know it ever happened.

          • Al

            Josh, give me the details of his story, and tell me about the suspicion. I searched online, and everything was just really generic. I couldn’t find any legitimate information.

          • Josh Zyber
            Author

            In 1987, Broderick and Jennifer Grey were in a car accident in Northern Ireland that caused the deaths of two people. Broderick was driving and swerved into the wrong lane, causing a head-on collision. Broderick conveniently claimed that he had no memory of what happened. Despite initially being charged with the local equivalent of Vehicular Manslaughter, he was only convicted of careless driving and the whole incident was swept under the rug. He paid only a $175 fine and served no jail time. He later backed out of an agreement to meet with and apologize to the family.

            In 2003, Broderick became a Honda spokesperson and starred in a Super Bowl commercial for the company.

          • Josh Zyber
            Author

            The 1999 comedy Election has a scene (obviously shot with rear projection) of Broderick driving recklessly down a European road, not looking where he’s going.

            Whether it ever occurred to anyone that this might not be in the best of taste is an open question.

            Matthew Broderick driving

            Matthew Broderick driving

          • Al

            Wow! I figured there was way more to it than him merely carelessly driving and accidentally crashing into the other vehicle.

          • Bolo

            People tend to be far more forgiving of what they perceive as carelessness than what they consider malice. I think most people read this as a case of carelessness with grave consequences. People also have pretty short memories. So, I can’t say it surprises me that Broderick’s career didn’t suffer public backlash.

            Yes, it was cowardly of him to back out of his promised apology to the victims’ family. But as for depicting him as remorseless because he starred in another comedy movie (‘Family Business’) that was filmed a year after the accident…it really feels like you’re reaching on that one.

  4. Shannon Nutt

    I think we live in such an “age of celebrity” that whenever one is part of an accident such as this one, and they don’t wind up with jail time, we automatically assume they’ve been given special treatment. But there’s no evidence prior to or after this accident that Broderick is/was irresponsible and/or had addiction issues. There’s never been a whiff of evidence that Matthew was drunk, high, or impaired (the police on the scene said the speed of the car was only around 40 mph at impact, it had been raining and the roads were still slick). Also keep in mind we have a 20-something American driving in Ireland (where, as you know, everyone drives on the opposite side…so it’s possible he just zoned out for a while). Just seems like a horrible accident.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *