Welcome to This Week On Blu-Ray, where I tell you what the big releases are and whether they’re worth getting. Thankfully, you don’t get to read my negative thoughts in a bunch of movies (just a couple). But let’s start with the good, you can own the best OJ story told this year with ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary, O.J. Made In America. One heartbreaking moment after another, Made In America is incredibly disturbing and thought provoking. Challenging almost any season of HBO’s The Wire, this 8 hour miniseries is a sprawling look at not just one man, but an entire country at a time of racial unrest and loss.
Before starting Jonathan Nolan’s HBO epic, Westworld, in October, you can now binge watch all 5 seasons of the hit and miss CBS series, Person of Interest. Half murder-of-the-week storytelling, half prescient look into surveillance and artificial intelligence, Nolan crafted one hell of a concept that misses the mark on personal storytelling for a large portion of the series, but really picks itself up near the end of the second season. You can pick up the fifth and final season on its own or in a complete box set. There’s also the option of getting the fourth season of Orphan Black, but I’ll assume you know better.
Now let’s get the bad news out of the way. There’s too many options if you want to buy the atrocity that is Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice (our review here). You can have your choice of the regular ultimate edition or the 3D ultimate edition. Maybe you’ll enjoy getting a steelbook for the overbloated mess that is now even longer. I don’t want to forget about the 4K. Either way, you can make your mind up on whether this is a film to revisit.
We’ve got a big week for my favorite home video label, The Criterion Collection. Any fan of Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, will want to give a look into his follow-up to that film, Muriel, or the Time of Return. Following a widow, her past comes to haunt her in the form of an old lover, Resnais is a master at the mysteries of life and what may come next. We continue the Resnais love with his acclaimed 1955 short documentary, Night and Fog. Known as one of the first documentaries on the Holocaust, Night and Fog captures the horror of the concentration camps in 32 minutes better than most films can in 2 hours. On the lighter side of things, King Hu’s 3 hour wuxia masterpiece, A Touch of Zen is getting the Criterion treatment. I personally have not seen the film, but I’m looking forward to anything with this much love put into it.
From there, you get the rest of the batch with Jean-Marc Vallee’s latest Demolition, the Michael Shannon/Kevin Spacey anomaly, Elvis and Nixon, Tony Jaa’s latest, SPL 2: A Time of Consequences, but you can find it on Blu-Ray as Kill Zone 2. Don Cheadle is down to play for miles with the music biopic, Miles Ahead, and last but certainly not least is Scream Factory’s release of the cult classic, The Return of the Living Dead. So there you have it, not too bad of a week. Until next time…