Welcome to another installment of This Week On Blu-Ray, where I tell you what the big releases are and whether they’re worth getting. We’re in a bit of an uneventful week due to a certain movie that was released last week that may or may not be titled Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. That means it’s perfect timing for Melissa McCarthy’s latest, The Boss. Co-starring Kristen Bell and directed by McCarthy’s husband, Ben Falcone, The Boss didn’t have the best critical response (22% Rotten Tomatoes score, 40 Metacritic score) or audience reception (C+ Cinemascore), but made enough money to be profitable and keep McCarthy’s status as a money-making star. You already know if you’re buying this at this point.
A surprise favorite of mine from this year was John Carney’s Sing Street (our review here). A mix between a musical, coming of age film and political commentary of Ireland in the 1980’s (all things I dislike) turned out to be one of the most fun movies I had seen this year. Carney’s films center around music and its way to bring people together. That doesn’t change here. It’s truly the familiar that twists its way into something special. Then we get the first-person experiment, Hardcore Henry (our review here). Never quite living up to the ambitious concept, we can always rely on the magical Sharlto Copley to liven things up.
We’ve also got the (overrated) horror/thriller, The Invitation. Christopher Cross and I talked about it here on our podcast Film Fallout and I think we came to an agreement. Showered in hype, Karyn Kusama’s latest film takes a simple premise and doesn’t do a hell of a lot to make it any different from that kind of dinner-time suspense thriller. Speaking of hype, Terrence Malick’s The New World comes to The Criterion Collection in a 3 disc set. Essentially the beginning of the end for any coherence that may have existed in Malick’s filmography, the folks at Criterion are completionists so they must have decided to finally get the upgrade over with. I mean, these are the guys who think the two David Fincher films that deserve the Criterion treatment are The Game and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button…
Maybe there’s better luck for those of you who enjoy all things Kevin Costner! His latest film, Criminal, starring almost every well known character actor from the 90’s gets a regular Blu-ray AND 4k release. Who knew Costner had the demand? Kino Lorber made the right call in giving the public another Humphrey Bogart film in Deadline – U.S.A. And I know some of you may have been worried, but fear not, I could never forget Charles Bronson’s Death Wish II. It’s no Death Wish III, but you can’t go wrong with some Charles Bronson. There we have it. It’s been another week of This Week On Blu-Ray and this week is even more dour than last. Maybe next week we’ll get to talk about something a little better. Maybe a little something with Mr. Colin Farrell. Until next time…
[…] show Stranger Things before we get to the big review of the week. There are also blu-ray releases, which Dylan recaps weekly, and we talk about a lot of Comic-Con […]