Coriolanus<\/a>‘ with a period piece about the woman (Felicity Jones) who had a secret affair with author Charles Dickens (Fiennes). Reviews were mixed. <\/p>\n‘Great Expectations<\/strong>‘ \u2013 Speaking of Dickens and Ralph Fiennes, the actor also appeared as Magwitch in the latest adaptation of ‘Great Expectations’. Helena Bonham Carter plays Miss Havisham. Considering that I’d never heard a single word about the existence of this movie until the Blu-ray release, that’s probably not a promising sign. When I first saw the listing, I assumed that it was Alfonso Cuaron’s flawed but interesting 1998 version with Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow. Instead, this one was helmed by another ‘Harry Potter’ director, Mike Newell.<\/p>\nCatalog Titles<\/h2>\n
Here comes the noir. The two must-own titles of the week are catalog releases of Billy Wilder’s masterful ‘Double Indemnity<\/strong>‘ and Orson Welles’ ‘Touch of Evil<\/strong>‘. The latter includes three versions of the film: the original theatrical cut that was compromised by studio meddling, an unfinished “Preview” cut, and the 1998 reconstruction based on Welles’ detailed complaint memo to the studio. <\/p>\nIf not quite as famous, Douglas Sirk’s 1948 noir ‘Sleep, My Love<\/strong>‘ also hits Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films. <\/p>\nFans of Lars von Trier will often cite ‘Breaking the Waves<\/strong>‘ as the director’s masterpiece. I am not a fan of Lars von Trier and have extremely little patience for his misogyny, which is in perhaps its fullest flourish with this tale of a mentally incompetent woman (a staple of von Trier’s cinematic output) ordered by God to become a slut so that her perverted, paraplegic husband can get off listening to her stories about having sex with other men. Needless to say, the film is divisive. If you want to decide for yourself, the Criterion Collection makes a case for it. I choose to pass.<\/p>\nThe first feature-length film by surrealist Czech animator Jan \u0160vankmajer, his 1988 ‘Alice<\/strong>‘ is a very loose retelling of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ that blends live action with stop-motion animation. At the time of this writing, I’m having trouble finding much information on the domestic Blu-ray release from First Run Features in comparison to the supplement-packed edition that was released in the UK a few years ago by BFI. <\/p>\nPresumably intended to piggyback off ‘Walter Mitty’, Universal offers Ben Stiller’s directorial debut, the Gen-X rom-com\/statement piece ‘Reality Bites<\/strong>‘. Also dredged up from the dank depths of the Universal archive is Kevin Smith’s dopey comedy ‘Mallrats<\/strong>‘, which should be met with great enthusiasm by the movie’s half dozen rabid fans. <\/p>\n—<\/p>\n
I’m sure that I’ve neglected to mention some important title that you’re very excited to see released this week. Tell me what I’ve missed in the Comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Classic film noir makes a strong showing on Blu-ray this week, as a couple masterpieces of the genre finally appear on the format. Some newer movies are available too, of course, if the prospect of black & white scares you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":61797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[2589,765,7013,67,6375,7295,666,7293,4898,7292,836,751,2117,7119,1164,6992,194,7296,7118,7033,7294],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61794"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61794"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62265,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61794\/revisions\/62265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}