From the Big Screen:
“Sicario”, “Infinitely Polar Bear,” “The Green Inferno,” “The Visit” and “The Walk.” For more information on other releases this week, see the Weekly Guide to Home Video Releases.
This Week’s Highlights:
In “The Complete Lady Snowblood”, a young woman (Meiko Kaji), trained from childhood as an assassin and hell-bent on revenge for her father’s murder and her mother’s rape, hacks and slashes her way to gory satisfaction. Rampant with inventive violence and spectacularly
From TV to DVD:
“Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime” (2016) is a two-disc set with six episodes of the new British TV series. An ordinary married couple gets caught up in international intrigue and discovers that they have a knack for crime solving in this charming detective series. Crime-
Buzzin’ the ‘B’s:
- “Adulterers” (2015): Mehcad Brooks, Danielle Savre, Sean Faris. On a steamy New Orleans afternoon, Sam Deuprey (Faris) decides to surprise his beautiful wife Ashley (Savre) for their anniversary and comes home early. But Ashley is not alone in the bedroom. She and her lover, Damien (Brooks) are about to learn how far a jealous husband will go in this psychological drama about dirty little secrets and uncontrollable passions. From RLJ Entertainment.
- “Battle for Skyark” (2015): Caon Mortenson, Taylor Coliee, Garrett Coffey. After mysterious creatures invade the Earth, humanity is forced to live on Skyark, a city in the sky. When a rebellion against Skyark’s corrupt human leadership fails, the rebels are exiled to Earth. Rags, the rebel leader’s son, steps up to fight the invaders, but soon finds he has a bigger part to play in the fight to save humanity. From Lionsgate.
- “Captive” (2015): David Oyelowo, Kate Mara. Drama about the spiritual collision of two lost souls. Brian Nichols (Oyelowo), on the run from police and desperate to make contact with his newborn son, takes recently widowed mother Ashley Smith (Mara) hostage in her own apartment. Fearing for her life and desperately hoping to see her daughter again, she turns to Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life” for guidance. Ashley and her captor face a crossroads where they discover hope and light in the midst of despair in this depiction of a real-life event. From Paramount.
- “Close Range” (2015): Scott Adkins. After rescuing his kidnapped niece from a powerful drug cartel, Colton MacReady (Adkins) begins a relentless fight to save his family. The cartel, aided by the corrupt local sheriff and his crew of deputies, descend upon MacReady’s secluded ranch with a thirst for revenge, resulting in a non-stop assault and a blow-by-blow survival marathon to protect his loved ones and save his life. On DVD, Blu-ray from XLrator Media.
- “Condemned” (2015): Dylan Penn, Ronen Rubinstein, Lydia Hearst, Jon Abrahams, Honor Titus, Genevieve Hudson-Price. Poor-little-rich-girl Maya (Dylan Penn) moves in with her boyfriend in an old, condemned building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side inhabited by meth heads, junkies and degenerates. A virus born from the combined noxious waste and garbage infects the building’s residents and one by one they succumb to a terrifying pathogen that turns them into bloodthirsty, rampaging killers. On DVD, Blu-ray Disc from RLJ Entertainment.
- “Deathgasm” (2015): Milo Cawthorne, James Blake. Two teenage boys form a heavy metal band and unwittingly summon an ancient evil entity known as The Blind One by delving into black magic when they come across a mysterious piece of sheet music. On DVD, Blu-ray from Dark Sky Films.
- “Experimenter” (2015): Peter Sarsgaard, Jim Gaffigan, Winona Ryder. At Yale University in 1961, Stanley Milgram (Sarsgaard) designs a psychology experiment that remains relevant to this day, in which people think they’re delivering painful electric shocks to an affable stranger (Gaffigan) strapped into a chair in another room. Disregarding his pleas for mercy, the majority of subjects don’t stop the experiment, administering what they think are near-fatal electric shocks, simply because they’ve been told to. With Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial airing in living rooms across America, Milgram’s exploration of authority and conformity strikes a nerve in popular culture and the scientific community.On DVD, Blu-ray Disc from Magnolia Home Entertainment.
- “Flesh and Bone” (2015): Ballet is the ultimate optical illusion, graceful and dignified on the outside but brutal, cruel and ruthless underneath. These eight episode of the Starz series rips away the illusion of the dance world and shows us what’s behind the curtain. “Flesh and Bone” is a coming-of-age drama about a young ballet dancer with a deeply troubled past; through her eyes, we explore the true underbelly of the dance world and all its self-destructive tendencies. The cast includes 22 accomplished ballet dancers including former American Ballet Theatre soloist Sascha Radetsky and Irina Dvorovenko, also a former American Ballet Theatre principal. Also stars Emily Tyra, Damon Herriman, Tina Benko, Ben Daniels. On two-disc DVD, two-disc Blu-ray from Anchor Bay.
- “Kill Game” (2015): Sari Sanchez, Joe Adler, Pierson Fode, Michael Galante, Laura Ashley Samuels. When one of the pranks played by a group of shallow high school teens turns deasdly, an innocent boy is killed and they cover their tracks by masking the incident as a drowning accident. Five years later, a serial killer donning a frightening mask hunts them down one by one in a manner that eerily mirrors the pranks they once pulled in high school. On DVD, Blu-ray from Cinedigm.
- “Little Dead Rotting Hood” (2016): Bianca A. Santos, Eric Balfour, Romeo Miller aka Lil’ Romeo. A sinister take on the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale. For years, the old woman in the woods has secretly kept the wolves of the forest at bay. But when she dies, the creatures suddenly attack the residents of a nearby small town. As more and more people turn up dead, the townsfolk discover something far more sinister than wolves lurking in the backwoods, and only the woman’s granddaughter may have the key to stopping the bloodbath before it’s too late. From Cinedigm.
- “Mercury Plains” (2014): Scott Eastwood, Angela Sarafyan, Nick Chinlund. A troubled young man is recruited to join a paramilitary group of teens to fight the drug cartels but as the Mexican police close in, he realizes that his only way out is to escape back to America. From Lionsgate.
- “Shanghai” (2015): John Cusack, Gong Li, Chow Yun-Fat, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Ken Watanabe. Nothing is what it seems in the ancient Chinese city of Shanghai a week before the attack on Pearl Harbor. U.S. Secret Agent Paul Soames (Cusack) has just arrived to investigate the murder of his best friend (Morgan), only to become quickly immersed in a web of conspiracy and lies that beset the city. Soames’ investigation centers on a charismatic local gangster, Anthony Lan-Ting (Yun-Fat) and his beautiful wife, Anna (Li). Before long, Soames and Anna are involved in an affair and they must race to solve the mystery and make it out of occupied China before the city’s collapse. From Anchor Bay.
- “Sleeping With Other People” (2015): Jason Sudeikis, Alison Brie, Adam Scott, Amanda Peet, Natasha Lyonne, Adam Brody. Twelve years after their one-night stand, Jake (Sudeikis) and Lainey (Brie) cross paths and realize that they’ve both become chronic commitment-phobes. Despite their obvious attraction, the two agree to keep their friendship strictly platonic. But as sexual tensions rise, their deal proves to be more difficult than they thought. From Paramount.
- “Wrecker” (2016): Anna Hutchison, Drea Whitburn. Best friends Emily and Lesley go on a road trip to the desert but when Emily decides to get off the highway and take a “”short cut,” they become the target of a relentless and psychotic trucker who forces them to play a deadly game of cat and mouse. From XLrator Media.
On the Indie Front:
“Susie’s Hope” (2013), starring Emmanuelle Vaugier, Burgess Jenkins and Andrea Powell, is bBased on a moving, true story that led to the successful passing of Susie’s Law in North Carolina — which seeks stricter punishment for animal abusers. The film brings to life the
For the Family:
In “Elmo’s World: Elmo Wonders” (2016), Elmo wonders all about the exciting and adventurous world around him. Sesame Street’s curious red monster takes preschoolers on a
Special Interest:
“A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story” (2015) is a documentary that follows the inspiring journey of 26-year-old, 58-pound Lizzie Velasquez from cyber-bullying victim to anti-bullying activist. Born with a rare syndrome that prevents her from gaining weight, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Velasquez was first bullied as a child in school for looking different and, later online, as a teenager when she discovered a YouTube video labeling her “The World’s Ugliest Woman.” From Cinedigm.