New DVD and Blu-ray Releases for the Week of May 13-19
From the Big Screen:
Captain America: Brave New World
(2025) After meeting with newly elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross, Sam Wilson (Captain America) finds himself in the middle of an international incident. He must discover the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red (Red Hulk). Vitals: Director: Julius Onah. Stars: Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Xosha Roquemore, Carl Lumbly, Giancarlo Esposito, Liv Tyler, Tim Blake Nelson, Harrison Ford. CC, MPAA rating: PG-13, 118 min., Action Thriller, Theatrical release date: February 14, 2025, North American box office gross: $199.3 million, worldwide $413.1 million, Streaming date: April 15, Disney. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray + Digital Code, 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo + Digital Code, SteelBook 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo + Digital Code, VOD, Digital. Extras: Deleted scenes; “Assuming the Mantle” featurette; “Old Scores, New Scars”; audio commentary with director Julius Onah and director of photography Kramer Morgenthau; gag reel. 
Read more here.
Mickey 17
(2025) Adapted from the novel “Mickey7” by Edward Ashton, this stars Robert Pattinson as an “expendable” – a disposable crew member on a space mission, selected for dangerous tasks because he can be renewed if his body dies, with his memories largely intact. With one regeneration, though, things go very wrong. Vitals: Director: Bong Joon Ho. Stars: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo. CC, MPAA rating: R, 137 min., Sci Fi, Theatrical release date: March 7, 2025, North American box office gross: $24.5 million, worldwide $49.2 million, Streaming date: April 8, Warner. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray + Digital Code, 4K Ultra HD + Digital Code, VOD, Digital. Read more here.
Black Bag
(2025) A gripping spy drama about legendary intelligence agents George Woodhouse and his beloved wife Kathryn. When she is suspected of betraying the nation, George faces the ultimate test – loyalty to his marriage or his country. Vitals: Director: Steven Soderbergh. Stars: Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, Pierce Brosnan. CC, MPAA rating: R, 93 min., Spy Thriller, Theatrical release date: March 14, 2025, North American box office gross: $16.2 million, worldwide $25.4 million, Streaming date: April 1, Universal. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray + Digital Code, VOD, Digital. Extras: Deleted scenes; “The Company of Talent”; “Designing Black Bag.” Read more here.
Better Man
(2024) Based on the true story of the meteoric rise, dramatic fall, and remarkable resurgence of British pop superstar Robbie Williams. Under the visionary direction of Michael Gracey (“The Greatest Showman”), the film is uniquely told from Robbie’s perspective, capturing his signature wit and indomitable spirit. It follows Robbie’s journey from childhood, to being the youngest member of chart-topping boyband Take That, through to his unparalleled achievements as a record-breaking solo artist – all the while confronting the challenges that stratospheric fame and success can bring. Williams is portrayed as an anthropomorphic CGI chimpanzee, performed by Jonno Davies using motion capture, and voiced by both Williams and Davies. Vitals: Director: Michael Gracey. Stars: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Alison Steadman. CC, MPAA rating: R, 135 min., Musical Bio Fantasy, Theatrical release date: December 25, 2024, North American box office gross: $1.983 million, worldwide $17.153 million, Paramount. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital, VOD, Digital. 
Read more here.
This Week’s Highlights:
Before he created “Westworld” and “Jurassic Park,” Michael Crichton first blurred the line between science fiction and science fact with his breakout success “The Andromeda Strain” (1971) Two years after the novel’s publication, Robert Wise (“The Haunting”) directed the film adaptation, a nail-biting blend of clinically-realized docudrama and astonishing sci-fi visuals that ushered in a new subgenre: the “killer virus” biological thriller. A ![photo for The Andromeda Strain [Limited Edition]](https://www.onvideo.org/photos25/andromeda-box.jpg)
government satellite crashes outside a small town in New Mexico – and within minutes, every inhabitant of the town is dead, except for a crying baby and an elderly derelict. The satellite and the two survivors are sent to Wildfire, a top-secret underground laboratory equipped with a nuclear self-destruct mechanism to prevent the spread of infection in case of an outbreak. Realizing that the satellite brought back a lethal organism from another world, a team of government scientists race against the clock to understand the extraterrestrial virus – codenamed “Andromeda” – before it can wipe out all life on the planet. Aided by innovative visual effects by Douglas Trumbull (“2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Silent Running”) and an unforgettable avant-garde electronic music score by Gil Melle (“The Sentinel”), Wise’s suspense classic still haunts to this day, and is presented here in a stunning, exclusive new restoration from the original negative. In a Limited Edition 4K UHD. Read more here. From Arrow Video/MVD Entertainment … 
The mysteries of everyday life come into astonishing focus in one of Abbas Kiarostami’s greatest cinematic achievements. A slyly self-reflexive commentary on the director’s own artistic practice, “The Wind Will Carry Us” (1999 — Iran) unfolds with unhurried majesty as it follows an undercover documentarian (Behzad Dorani) whose assignment to cover a small village’s funeral rites is continually frustrated by an elderly woman’s refusal to die. Along the way, though, he forges surprising, unsettling, and enlightening connections with those he meets. Suffused with Kiarostami’s love for people, poetry, and the arid beauty of rural Iran, this meditative masterpiece reflects upon the boundaries between intimacy and alienation, tradition and modernity, with the utmost grace. In Blu-ray with 4K restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack. Read more here. From The Criterion Collection.
Buzzin’ the ‘B’s:
In “The End” (2025), starring Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Moses Ingram and Michael Shannon, it’s 25 years after an environmental collapse left the Earth uninhabitable, and Mother, Father and Son are confined to their palatial bunker, where they struggle to maintain hope and a sense of normalcy by clinging to the rituals of daily life … until the arrival of a stranger, Girl, upends their happy routine. Son, a naive twenty-something who has never seen the outside world, is fascinated by the newcomer, and suddenly the delicate bonds of blind optimism that have held this wealthy clan together begin to fray. As tensions rise, their seemingly idyllic existence starts to crumble, with long-repressed feelings of remorse and resentment threatening to destroy the family s delicate balance. But their reckoning with difficult truths also points to a different way forward, one based on acceptance, love, and a capacity for change. On DVD, Blu-ray, VOD, Digital from Decal — Neon. Read more here … “My Dead Friend Zoe” (2025), starring Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales, Gloria Reuben, Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris, is a dark comedy drama that follows the journey of Merit, a U.S. Army Afghanistan veteran who is at odds with her family thanks to the presence of Zoe, her dead best friend from the Army. Despite the persistence of her VA group counselor, the tough love of her mother, and the levity of an unexpected love interest, Merit’s cozy-dysfunctional friendship with Zoe keeps the duo insulated from the world. That is until Merit’s estranged grandfather holed up at the family’s ancestral lake house begins to lose his way and is in need of the one thing he refuses help. At its core, this is about a complicated friendship, a divided family, and the complex ways in which we process grief. On DVD, Blu-ray, VOD, Digital, from Universal.
Special Interest:
At the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders asked such filmmaking luminaries as Michelangelo Antonioni, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jean-Luc Godard, Yilmaz Güney, Werner Herzog, Steven Spielberg, 
and Susan Seidelman to ponder the question “Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?” Forty years later — adopting the same minimalist, fixed-camera format as Wenders — Lubna Playoust poses the same question to a group of contemporary auteurs, including David Cronenberg, Claire Denis, Asghar Farhadi, James Gray, Lynne Ramsay, and Wenders himself. Together, Wenders’ “Room 666” (Chambre 666) (1982) and Playoust’s “Room 999” (Chambre 999) (2023) — released as “Room 666 / Room 999 — capture the unfiltered perspectives of pathbreaking filmmakers on the state of the industry as well as the upheavals brought on by various new technologies and methods of distribution — in the process touching on large-scale issues of politics, culture, and the meaning (and continued relevance) of cinema in two distinct eras, nearly half a century apart. On Blu-ray, DVD from Janus Contemporaries.
From TV to Disc:
Follow Ben Tennyson’s epic journey from an everyday, average kid to a legendary teenage hero across four action-packed series in “Ben 10: The Complete Series”
(2005-21), a 37-disc set with all 227 episodes of the beloved series starring the alien changing Ben Tennyson on his intergalactic alien-fighting adventures, plus two full-length movies. Includes all the episodes created over the years from “Ben 10,” “Ben 10 Alien Force,” “Ben 10 Ultimate Alien” and “Ben 10 Omniverse,” and two movies, “Ben 10: Secret of the Omnitrix” and “Ben 10: Destroy all Aliens.” With the Omnitrix – a powerful device that lets him transform into incredible alien heroes – at his side and the help of his cousin Gwen, he battles powerful villains, uncovers hidden alien worlds, and saves the galaxy time and time again! Whether Ben’s facing classic foes, unlocking ultimate transformations or stepping into a new era, every adventure proves that it’s always Hero Time. On DVD from Warner.
All DVDs and Blu-rays are screened on a reference system consisting of an Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray Disc Player w/SACD & DVD-Audio, a Rotel RSX-972 Surround Sound Receiver, and Phase Technology 1.1 (front), 33.1 (center), and 50 (rear) speakers, and Power 10 subwoofer.
