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OnVideo's Weekly Guide to Home Video Releases
Free Guy: A bank teller (Ryan Reynolds) who discovers he is actually a background player in an open-world video game decides to become the hero of his own story – one he rewrites himself. Now, in a world where there are no limits, he is determined to be the guy who saves his world his way - before it’s too late. (DVD, Blu-ray release: October 12)
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain: Chef, writer, adventurer, provocateur: Anthony Bourdain lived his life unabashedly. This documentary is an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at how an anonymous chef became a world-renowned cultural icon. (DVD release: October 12)
Coming Home In the Dark: A family’s idyllic outing at an isolated coastline descends into terror when a high school teacher, his wife and two stepsons come across a pair of murderous drifters who thrust them into a nightmare road trip. (VOD)
Blood Conscious
(2021) Oghenero Gbaje, DeShawn White, Lenny Thomas, Lori Hammel, Nick Damici. A vacationing family turns the tables on a mass shooter who claims to be fighting demonic forces. Kevin, his older sister, Brittney, and her fiance, Tony, arrive at their parents' lakeside cabin expecting a leisurely weekend getaway. But their holiday turns into a trip from hell as they enter the scene of a mass shooting where their parents and neighbors have all been murdered. They pin down the shotgun-wielding murderer and lock him in the cellar, but as darkness falls, Kevin begins to entertain the man's ravings about possessed campers and demons in the woods. Formats: DVD. (Dark Sky Films).
Crazy About You
(2019 -- Australia) Angus McLaren, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, John Cleese. Dumped by his girlfriend and sponsored by media scoundrel Brian King, desolate Jake walks all-but-naked up Western Australia's coast for charity, in the hope his gesture will win back Jasmine, until he meets mesmerizing backpacker Valerie. Formats: DVD. (Well Go USA).
First Date
(2021) Tyson Brown, Shelby Duclos. Mike, a shy teenager, finally summons the courage to ask out his badass neighbor, Kelsey, only to realize he’s missing a key element for a successful date — the car. Panicked and low on cash, Mike is conned into buying a beat up ‘65 Chrysler based on a shady online ad. His plan to win over Kelsey soon turns into a surreal misadventure when they are inexplicably targeted by a pair of cops, a criminal gang and a vengeful cat lady. A night fueled by desire, bullets and burning rubber makes any other first date seem like a walk in the park. Formats: DVD, Digital. (Magnolia Home Entertainment/Magnet Label).
Seven Days ... Seven Nights (Moderato Cantabile)
(1960 -- France) Director: Peter Brook; Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Pascale de Boysson, Jean Deschamps, Didier Haudepin, Colette Regis. Screen legends Jeanne Moreau and Jean-Paul Belmondo star in this mesmerizing drama from the brilliant mind of Marguerite Duras ("Hiroshima Mon Amour," "India Song"). Moreau, who won the award for Best Actress at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, is Anne Desbarèdes, a wealthy, bored housewife who believes she has witnessed a murder in a quayside bistro. Rushing to the scene of the crime, she strikes up a conversation with Chauvin (Belmondo), an employee of her husband who also saw the crime. The troubled woman continues to return to the café, increasingly identifying herself with the murder victim and becoming obsessed with Chauvin. Director Peter Brook ("Lord of the Flies," "Marat/Sade") and cinematographer Armand Thirard ("The Wages of Fear," "Diabolique") create repetitive patterns of sound and image that reflect Anne’s frustration with the “moderato cantabile” nature of her life and the absence of true passion that draws her inexorably to the café and Chauvin. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray. Extras: Audio commentary by filmmaker/historian Daniel Kremer, trailers. (Kino Lorber Studio Classics).
Twist
(2021) Raff Law, Michael Caine, Sophie Simnett, Lena Headey. Inspired by Charles Dickens’s iconic novel "Oliver Twist," this crime-thriller set in contemporary London follows the journey of Twist (Law), a gifted graffiti artist trying to find his way after the loss of his mother. Lured into a street gang headed by the paternal Fagin (Caine), Twist is attracted to the lifestyle — and to Red (Simnett), an alluring member of Fagin’s crew. But when an art theft goes wrong, Twist’s moral code is tested as he’s caught between Fagin, the police, and a loose-cannon enforcer (Headey).
Formats: DVD, Blu-ray + Digital. Extras: "The Artful Dodger: Twist’s Underworld" featurette. (Lionsgate).
The Forever Purge
(2021) The old rules of the Purge are broken as members of an underground movement, no longer satisfied with the annual night of anarchy and murder, decide to overtake America through an unending campaign of mayhem and massacre. No one is safe. On the morning after the Purge, a masked gang of killers attacks a wealthy Texas ranching family and their workers. Exposed by daylight, the two groups are forced to band together and fight back as the country spirals into chaos and the United States begins to disintegrate around them.
Vitals: Director: Everardo Valerio Gout. Stars: Ana de la Reguera, Tenoch Huerta, Cassidy Freeman, Leven Rambin, Josh Lucas, Will Patton.
2021, CC, MPAA rating: R, 103 min., Horror Action, US box office gross: $44.357 million, worldwide $73.866 million, Universal.
Formats: DVD, Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Code, 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo + Digital Code, VOD, Digital.
Extras: Alternate storyboard opening, deleted scene, "Collapsing the System: Behind the Forever Purge," "Creeptastic Wardrobe," theatrical trailer.
Read more here.
September 28
October 1
Blithe Spirit
(2020) Dan Stevens, Isla Fisher, Judi Dench, Leslie Mann. Best-selling crime novelist Charles (Stevens) suffers from terrible writer’s block and is struggling to finish his first screenplay. His picture-perfect new wife Ruth (Fisher) is doing her best to keep him focused so they can fulfill her dream of leaving London for Hollywood. Charles’ quest for inspiration leads him to invite the eccentric mystic Madame Acarti (Dench) to perform a seance in his home. He gets more than he bargained for when Madame Acarti inadvertently summons the spirit of his first wife: the brilliant and fiery Elvira (Mann). Based on the play by Noel Coward.
Formats: DVD, Blu-ray. (IFC/Shout! Factory).
The Damned
(1969 -- Italy) The most savagely subversive film by the iconoclastic auteur Luchino Visconti employs the mechanics of deliriously stylized melodrama to portray Nazism’s total corruption of the soul. In the wake of Hitler’s ascent to power, the wealthy industrialist von Essenbeck family and their associates -- including the scheming social climber Friedrich (Dirk Bogarde), the incestuous matriarch Sophie (Ingrid Thulin), and the perversely cruel heir Martin (Helmut Berger, memorably donning Dietrich-like drag in his breakthrough role) -- descend into a self-destructive spiral of decadence, greed, perversion, and all-consuming hatred as they vie for power, over the family business and over one another. The heightened performances and Visconti’s luridly expressionistic use of Technicolor conjure a garish world of decaying opulence in which one family’s downfall comes to stand for the moral rot of a nation.
Formats: DVD, Blu-ray, with new 2K digital restoration by the Cineteca di Bologna and Institut Lumière, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray. Extras: Alternate Italian-language soundtrack; interview from 1970 with director Luchino Visconti about the film; archival interviews with actors Helmut Berger, Ingrid Thulin, and Charlotte Rampling; "Visconti: Man of Two Worlds," a 1969 behind-the-scenes documentary; new interview with scholar Stefano Albertini about the sexual politics of the film; an essay by scholar D. A. Miller. (The Criterion Collection).
The Forever Purge
(2021) Ana de la Reguera, Tenoch Huerta, Cassidy Freeman, Leven Rambin, Josh Lucas, Will Patton. All the rules are broken as a sect of lawless marauders decides that the annual Purge does not stop at daybreak and instead should never end. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Code, 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo + Digital Code, VOD, Digital. Extras: Alternate storyboard opening, deleted scene, "Collapsing the System: Behind the Forever Purge," "Creeptastic Wardrobe," theatrical trailer. (Universal).
Read more here.
Melvin Van Peebles: Four Films
Director, writer, composer, actor, and one-man creative revolutionary Melvin Van Peebles jolted American independent cinema to new life with his explosive stylistic energy and unfiltered expression of Black consciousness. Though he undeniably altered the course of film history with the anarchic "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song" (1971), that pop-culture bombshell is just one piece of a remarkably varied career that has also encompassed forays into European art cinema ("The Story of a Three Day Pass," 1967), mainstream Hollywood comedy ("Watermelon Man," 1970), and Broadway musicals ("Don’t Play Us Cheap," 1972). Each facet of Van Peebles’s renegade genius is on display in this collection of four films, a tribute to a transformative artist whose caustic social observation, radical formal innovation, and uncompromising vision established a new cinematic model for Black creative independence. Also included in the set is "Baadasssss!," a chronicle of the production of Sweet Sweetback made by Van Peebles’s son Mario Van Peebles -— and starring the younger Van Peebles as Melvin.
Formats: Blu-ray, with new 4K digital restorations of all four films, approved by filmmaker Mario Van Peebles, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks for "The Story of a Three Day Pass," "Watermelon Man," and "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song" and 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack for "Don’t Play Us Cheap." Extras: "Baadasssss!," a 2003 fictional feature film based on director Melvin Van Peebles’s diaries from the making of "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song," directed by and starring his son Mario Van Peebles, with commentary by father and son; new conversations between Mario Van Peebles and film critic Elvis Mitchell, producer Warrington Hudlin and critic and filmmaker Nelson George, and scholars Gerald R. Butters Jr., Novotny Lawrence, and Amy Abugo Ongiri; audio commentary by Melvin Van Peebles from 1997 on "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song"; three early short films directed by Melvin Van Peebles; "How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)," a 2005 documentary on Van Peebles’s life and career; "The Story Behind “Baadasssss!: The Birth of Black Cinema," a 2004 featurette; "Melvin Van Peebles: The Real Deal," a 2002 interview with the director on the making of "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song"; episodes of Black Journal from 1968, 1971, and 1972, on "The Story of a Three Day Pass," "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song," and "Don’t Play Us Cheap"; interview from 1971 with Van Peebles on Detroit Tubeworks; French television interview from 1968 with Van Peebles and actors Harry Baird and Nicole Berger on the set of "The Story of a Three Day Pass"; excerpts from a 2004 interview with Van Peebles for the Directors Guild of America Visual History Program; introductions to all four films by Van Peebles; trailers; a 64-page book featuring writing on the films, including an introduction by film scholar Racquel J. Gates. (The Criterion Collection).
The Ultimate Richard Pryor Collection: Uncensored
Thirteen-disc set, packed with more than 26 hours of raw, uncensored Pryor. Raw, sometimes shocking and always thrilling, Pryor -- a once-in-a-generation innovator -- pushed the envelope and was almost single-hand responsible for the comedy evolution that continues to this day. He won an Emmy, five Grammys, was the recipient of the very first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (1998) and in 2017, Rolling Stone ranked him #1 on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time. This set includes: All four of Pryor’s full-length concert films – "Live & Smokin," "Live in Concert," "Live on the Sunset Strip," and "Here and Now"; Pryor’s 1977 NBC TV Special and all four controversial episodes of "The Richard Pryor Show," featuring Robin Williams, Sandra Bernhard, Tim Reid, Marsha Warfield, and more; Pryor’s most memorable TV appearances on "The Merv Griffin Show," "The Dick Cavett Show," and" The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson"; the feature film, "Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling," written, produced, and directed by Pryor; never-before-released footage from Pryor's infamous first film, "Uncle Tom's Fairy Tales," lost since 1968; exclusive footage of Pryor's final performances and a tribute event at The Comedy Store; two acclaimed documentary films – "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic" and "I Am Richard Pryor"; a no-holds-barred interview with Pryor’s widow, Jennifer Lee Pryor; collector's booklet with personal photos, diary entries, tour notes and more. Formats: DVD. (Time Life). Read more here.
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September 26, 2021
(ISSN 1094-3676).
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