What’s New on Blu Ray and DVD

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This bloated week of home video releases features a glut of new movies, new cuts, and new editions. In the world of limited or special editions, Criterion has three movies this week: Here is Your Life, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, and The Black Stallion. On top of that, Twilight Time has five new movies begging for attention: The Best of Everything, The Fabulous Baker Boys, A Month in the Country, Places in the Heart, and The World of Henry Orient. Also, 20th Century Fox puts Rogue back in X-Men: Days of Future Past, which, yay more women…but, they get a boatload of demerits for not keeping her in the theatrical cut.

Two essential indie movies come out this week on both Blu and DVD. Ex Machina, my third favorite film of the year so far, is a movie superficially about the Turing Test, but subtextually about science fiction’s inability to deal with women in any humanistic way. Marked with gorgeous visuals and one of the more compellingly simple-but-complicated plots, Ex Machina demands to be seen in the highest resolution on the biggest screen possible. The indie horror phenomenon, It Follows, also makes its feature debut. Filmed in metro Detroit, It Follows truly captures what it feels like to grow up in a sleepy suburb just outside one of the most dangerous cities in America, with a wealth gap truly dividing a city. Oh, it’s also a freaky horror movie that turns people watching into a survival tactic with a phenomenal John Carpenter-inspired soundtrack. The critically-acclaimed Clouds of Sils Maria also makes its way to DVD only (boo!!!). Scott Tobias gave this an essential viewing tag and a 4.5 star rating, calling it “a great midlife crisis movie” and “also a meta-commentary on contemporary filmmaking.”

The best movie to pop up is the Blu-Ray premiere of Mel Brooks’ most criminally underrated and under-loved feature: Life Stinks. Going through the late 1980s, we had seen a lot of rich people elevated to bastions of society. Life Stinks brings us back to the world of Trading Places, but twists the knife for a much more cynical era. Goddard Bolt (Mel Brooks) makes a bet with his competitor (Jeffrey Tambor) that he can’t survive a month while penniless in the slums of Los Angeles. Life Stinks makes no bones that being broke is difficult and almost soul-destroying in ways that seem foreign to the CEOs who control the wealth. Given last week’s comments of a certain dynastical presidential nominee, this concept just keeps finding new depth.

Cult Highlight: Troma’s War. The least known of Troma’s first Golden Age, Troma’s War is an essential assault of bad taste on American sensibilities. The infamous Lloyd Kaufman set out to satirize the 1980s glamorization of hawkish military tactics, as seen in Rambo and Red Dawn, making Troma’s War a lewd, crude, piece of ultra-violent nastiness that is downright hilarious when it isn’t being grueling. Until the James Gunn-renaissance, this was the last of Kaufman’s films that he had a true control of the Troma tone over. Highly recommended.

Blu-Ray and DVD

  • Adventure Time: The Complete Fifth Season
  • Adventures of Captain Fabian
  • All Quiet on the Western Front (1979): The Uncut Edition
  • Baby, It’s You
  • The Black Stallion
  • Blown Away
  • The Crimson Field
  • The Eternal Sea
  • Ex Machina
  • Hell’s Five Hours
  • Here Is Your Life
  • Hiroshima, Mon Amour
  • It Follows
  • King of the Gypsies
  • Little House on the Prairie: Season Six
  • The Longest Ride
  • Man of Conquest
  • Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
  • Paces in the Heart
  • Powers: Season 1
  • Real Men
  • Sailor Moon R: Season 2, Part 1
  • The Salt of the Earth
  • The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
  • Shark: The Ocean’s Greatest Predators
  • The Unwanted
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut

New on Blu-Ray

  • 24 Days
  • The Andromeda Strain
  • Beat the Devil
  • Best Day Ever
  • The Best of Everything
  • Cellar Dwellar / Catacombs
  • Extreme Jukebox
  • The Fabulous Baker Boys
  • The Game
  • Gangs of Wasseypur
  • Giuseppe Makes a Movie
  • Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf
  • The Legend of the Lone Ranger
  • Life Stinks
  • A Month in the Country
  • The Outing / The Godsend
  • Places in the Heart
  • Real Men
  • Rush
  • Sneakers
  • Some Call it Loving
  • The Strain: The Complete First Season
  • Troma’s War
  • The World of Henry Orient

New on DVD

  • 112 Weddings
  • Above All Else
  • Almost Mercy
  • American Masters: American Ballet Theatre, A History
  • Ancient Mysteries of the Lose World
  • Appearance
  • Batman: The Second Season, Part 2
  • Beowulf
  • Black Beauty
  • Borderline
  • Cedar Cove: Season Two
  • Clouds of Sils Maria
  • Dawn Patrol
  • The Day the ’60s Dies
  • Dino Dan: Cowboys vs Dinosaurs
  • Doctor Who
  • The Draft
  • Find Your Way: Buskers Documentary
  • Freedom
  • Frontline: America Terrorist
  • Galilei Donna: The Complete Subtitled Edition
  • Goodbye to All That
  • Hdden Away
  • I Want My Hat Back & More Happy Stories
  • Kruel
  • Living Bible
  • Living Christ Series
  • The Magic School Bus: Season 3
  • Mia & Me: Friends to the Rescue
  • Mom
  • Monster Farm: The Complete English Subtitled Collection
  • Nana
  • National Geographic: National Mall – America’s Front Yard
  • Nova: Nazi Attack on America
  • One Piece Season 7: Voyage One
  • One Piece: Collection 13
  • Poltergeists: Real-Life Hauntings
  • Pound Puppies: Pick of the Litter
  • Recently My Sister is Unusual
  • Reckless
  • Red Know
  • Sanctuary: Quite a Conundrum
  • Sebastian Maniscalco: Aren’t You Embarrassed
  • Shadow World: The Haunting of Mysti Delane
  • She’s Not Our Sister / She’s Still Not Our Sister
  • Tales from the Royal Wardrobe
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Return to NYC
  • Werewolf in Slovania
  • WKRP in Cincinnati: Season Three
  • WWE: Money in the Bank 2015
  • Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell: Season 1