Reject modernity, embrace physical media.
NEW RELEASE WALL
Small Axe (The Criterion Collection): One film or five? The answer is “yes” from Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave). This anthology of five thematically linked films – Mangrove; Lover’s Rock; Red, White and Blue; Alex Wheatle; and Education — traverses West Indian life in London from the late 1960s through the early 1980s. The Criterion package includes behind-the-scenes featurettes, an essay by critic Ashley Clark, and the three-part documentary Uprising, from McQueen and James Rogan, about the 1981 New Cross house fire and its aftermath in London.
Also available:
Cocaine Bear (Universal): The gory horror-comedy hits Blu-ray in a “Maximum Rampage Edition” with lots of bonus features.
Jesus Revolution (Lionsgate): The true story (minus some truths about sexuality that the filmmakers apparently found uncomfortable) of an early, powerfully influential, hippie-led youth movement in the Evangelical church of the late 60s/early 70s.
The Lighthouse: Collector’s Edition (A24): New 4K with lots of extras and a big book full of art and production details and pretty much everything you’d ever want from this lobster-driven psychodrama.
Living (Sony): Bill Nighy received an Academy Award nomination for this remake of Akira Kurosawa’s legendary film Ikiru.
Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Warner Bros): Channing Tatum builds a new dance show in London with backing from extremely rich benefactor and love interest Salma Hayek.
Marlowe (Universal): Liam Neeson takes a break from action movies to star as legendary detective Philip Marlowe in this mystery, co-starring Jessica Lange and Diane Kruger (and directed by an apparently phoning-it-in Neil Jordan).
My Happy Ending (Lionsgate): Andie MacDowell, an American actress with a terminal diagnosis who travels to England, sets out to fulfill her final wishes with help from some friends.
Righteous Thieves (Lionsgate): A gang of art thieves go on a mission to retrieve art stolen by Nazis now in the hands of a neo-Nazi billionaire.
The Son (Sony): Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern star in this family drama from Florian Zeller (The Father) about an estranged dad and teenage son.
Transfusion (Lionsgate): Sam Worthington stars as an ex-special forces operative who has to battle the drug underground to save his teenage son.
Triangle of Sadness (The Criterion Collection): This Palme d’Or–winning, Academy Award-nominated evisceration of class privilege is both hilarious and scatological.
NEW INDIE
Full Moon Trilogy (Factory 25): Indie filmmaking stalwart Joe Swanberg was especially prolific in 2011 when he brought six different microbudget films into the world, three of them collected here – Silver Bullets, Art History, and The Zone – that chronicle complicated, often mysterious, relationships between filmmakers and actors. Swanberg’s collaborators are an indie who’s-who: Jane Adams, Kentucker Audley, Josephine Decker, Larry Fessenden, Amy Seimetz, Adam Wingard, and Ti West, to name a handful. This limited-edition Blu-ray box set arrives with bonus features and a 28-page booklet.
Also available:
Chrissy Judy(Dark Star Pictures): In this comedy-drama, a 30-something drag artist and his best friend find themselves in the midst of a friendship breakup and the fallout that ensues.
iMordecai(Greenwich): Eighty-something Mordecai (Judd Hirsch) gets an iPhone for the first time, and it turns his world upside down. Also starring Carol Kane and Sean Astin.
Juniper (Greenwich): Charlotte Rampling plays a retired journalist who finds herself in the custody of her orphaned grandson, and neither of them is especially happy about it.
Kids vs. Aliens (RLJE Films): Aliens attack a teen Halloween party, and the kids have to fight back, as per the title. Bonus: commentary from director Jason Eisener.
NEW INTERNATIONAL
One Fine Morning (Sony): Léa Seydoux stars in Mia Hansen-Løve’s latest as a widowed young mother raising her daughter alone while also caring for her sick father (Pascal Greggory). At the same time, an old friend (Melvil Poupaud) re-enters her life, and they begin an affair. It’s another quiet triumph for Hansen-Løve, one that centers small moments of connection and care that all point to a kind of directorial statement about How To Live when life is complicated.
Also available:
Chess Story (Film Movement): Imprisoned by the Nazis, an Austrian doctor (Oliver Masucci) resists and maintains his sanity with chess.
Full Time (Music Box): A single mother (Laure Calamy, Call My Agent) becomes desperate to get to work during a French transit strike and resorts to inventive solutions in this working-class thriller.
El Houb (Dark Star Pictures): A Moroccan-Dutch man comes out but has to deal with his family’s silence around cultural taboos.
Kompromat(Magnet): A French diplomat (Gilles Lellouche) at a Russian post finds himself framed, imprisoned, and determined to escape.
The Man in the Basement (Greenwich): Riveting French thriller about a family realizing that the man living illegally in their storage facility is a neo-Nazi.
New Gods: Yang Jian (GKIDS): The second installment in the “New Gods” series of fantasy anime devoted to Chinese mythological figures (the first was New Gods: Nezha Reborn).
Virtual Reality (Artsploitation Films): In this Argentine horror film, the cast and crew of a film literally have to survive its screening.
NEW DOCUMENTARY
Arab Israeli Dialogue / Imagine Peace & Woodcutters of the Deep South / Working Together (Milestone Film & Video): Socially conscious filmmaker Lionel Rogosin delivered two important films in the 1970s with Woodcutters of the Deep South and Arab Israeli Dialogue. Restored and paired with thematic extensions of those films, his son Michael A. Rogosin’s Imagine Peace and Working Together explore the legacy of the original subject matter and how the situations presented in both become even more complex. Both discs are wonderful examples of the importance of film preservation.
Also available:
Living With Chucky (Cinedigm): The history and legacy of the Child’s Play series of films, rounding up creator Don Mancini and lots of cast and crew, including Jennifer Tilly and Brad Dourif.
The Mission (Film Movement): Four Utah teenagers go to Finland, one of the most secular countries in Europe, to work through their missions for the Mormon Church.
Scrap (First Run Features): Unusually fascinating stories of the people who collect, restore, and repurpose the seemingly infinite amount of scrap metal in the world.
Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb(Sony): A you-are-there look at 86-year-old Caro finishing his multivolume biography of Lyndon Johnson and 91-year-old Gottlieb’s determination to edit the manuscript.
Whaam! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation (Virgil Films): The endless debate about appropriated imagery in contemporary art is given a full airing in this Pop Art doc.
NEW GRINDHOUSE
House of 1000 Corpses: 20th Anniversary Edition (Lionsgate): Rob Zombie helped usher in a neo-70s horror fixation with this grimy gorefest. The first of the Firefly family trilogy of movies, this high-def edition comes with commentaries, a making-of featurette, casting and rehearsal footage, interviews, trailers, and an entire second disc of bonus behind-the-scenes material, all wrapped up in a sturdy SteelBook package.
Also available:
County Line: No Fear (Mill Creek Entertainment): Dukes of Hazzard’s Tom Wopat battles Casper Van Dien over a small-town crime frenzy.
Lovers Lane (Arrow): Anna Faris made her screen debut in this late-90s post-Scream slasher.
The New Godfathers (Raro): Italian mobsters in Naples battle over competing drug interests in this 1979 Alfonso Brescia crime drama starring Gianni Garko and Antonio Sabato, Sr.
Terminal Invasion (KL Studio Classics): Murderers and ETs! In an airport! With Bruce Campbell! Which one is he? And it’s from the director of the original Friday the 13th!
NEW CLASSIC
Time of Roses (Deaf Crocodile): Finnish director Risto Jarva’s stunning 1969 sci-fi Pop Art thriller gets its first-ever US release, and it’s a time capsule that feels like it was made today. The elaborate Blu-ray package is packed with worthwhile extras: Jarva’s 1960s-era shorts, deleted scenes, critical commentaries and essays, selections of Jarva’s writings, and the 1984 documentary Risto Jarva, Työtoverini (Risto Jarva, My Colleague), featuring rare archival footage. A valuable addition to your film studies collection.
Also available:
12 Angry Men (KL Studio Classics): A 4K restoration of Sidney Lumet’s long-revered 1957 directorial debut starring Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, E.G. Marshall, Jack Warden, and Jack Klugman.
Action Movie Night 4-Film Collection (Mill Creek Entertainment): Time for a 2000s marathon with Vertical Limit, The Contractor, The Hard Corps, and Conspiracy.
Arséne Lupin Collection (Kino Classics): Three charming French classics of the late 1950s about the famed “gentleman-thief,” Arsene Lupin, starring Robert Lamoureux, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Jean-Pierre Cassel.
Backtrack (KL Studio Classics): Dennis Hopper directed this 1990 noir with Jodie Foster as an artist who falls for Hopper’s hitman while they’re on the run from his bosses.
The Big Bus (KL Studio Classics): The Big Bus rolled so that Airplane! could fly — this 1976 all-star parody of disaster movies – set on a ludicrously large, nuclear-powered bus — is as much silly fun as it sounds.
The Big Easy (KL Studio Classics): Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin steam up New Orleans in this 80s neo-noir.
Cool Hand Luke (Warner Bros): The Paul Newman prison classic, featuring George Kennedy in his Oscar-winning role, now in 4K UHD.
Dragonslayer (Paramount): This 1982 fantasy epic (Oscar-nominated for visual effects) hits 4K UHD, with a commentary track from superfan Guillermo del Toro.
Heart of Dragon (Arrow): Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung star in this action comedy, considered to be one of their greatest collaborations, now restored with two different edits.
Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XII (KL Studio Classics): Three bleak, brooding classics: 1950’s Outside the Wall, 1955’s Hold Back Tomorrow, and William Castle’s 1949 Undertow.
The Fisher King (The Criterion Collection): Terry Gilliam’s 80s adventure in Manhattan stars Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, and an Academy Award-winning Mercedes Ruehl.
Flashdance (Paramount): It’s 40 years old now, in 4K UHD, with lots of special features. What a feeling.
The Haunting of Julia (Shout Factory): Originally titled Full Circle, this Mia Farrow/Keir Dullea cult film from 1977 arrives in 4K UHD with two discs full of bonus material.
Heat (KL Studio Classics): Not the Michael Mann one. This one came first, starring Burt Reynolds as a bodyguard battling the mob in 1986, opposite Diana Scarwid.
Hell Is for Heroes (KL Studio Classics): Steve McQueen, Bobby Darin, James Coburn, and Fess Parker star in this World War II drama from Dirty Harry director Don Siegel.
High, Wide and Handsome (KL Studio Classics): Irene Dunne and Randolph Scott team up for this 1937 Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern musical about an oil pipeline.
The Jackie Chan Collection, Volume 2 (1983-1993): (Shout Factory): An eight-disc set with some of Chan’s greatest action films, including Winners and Sinners, Wheels on Meals, The Protector, Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars, Armour of God, Armour of God II: Operation Condor, Crime Story, and City Hunter.
Lady in a Jam (KL Studio Classics): Irene Dunne, Patric Knowles, and Ralph Bellamy star in this 1942 screwball love-triangle comedy.
The Maltese Falcon (Warner Bros): Now in 4K UHD, this 1941 Humphrey Bogart all-timer was legendary filmmaker John Huston’s directorial debut.
Man on the Train (KL Studio Classics): Patrice Leconte’s sly 2002 crime drama stars Jean Rochefort and the legendary French rock star Johnny Hallyday.
The Man Who Fell to Earth (Lionsgate): Nicolas Roeg’s amazing 70s cult sci-fi artifact starring David Bowie gets the 4K it deserves, lots of bonus material, and a SteelBook package.
Martin Roumagnac (Icarus): This underrated post-war romantic melodrama from Georges Lacombe stars erstwhile real-life lovers Jean Gabin and Marlene Dietrich.
The Mississippi Gambler (KL Studio Classics): Tyrone Power and Piper Laurie star in this colorful romantic western from 1953.
Moment to Moment(KL Studio Classics): A lush romantic thriller from 1966 that serves up the French Riviera, infidelity, Jean Seberg, and Goldfinger star Honor Blackman.
Oh, Doctor! / Poker Faces (Kino Classics): A double feature of restorations from Universal, these two wild silent farces star Reginald Denny and Edward Everett Horton.
Rebel Without a Cause (Warner Bros): James Dean’s most famous film of the few in which he starred, now in 4K UHD with lots of extras.
Rio (KL Studio Classics): Crime, prison, escapes, infidelity, and revenge compete for the most sensational role in this 1939 drama starring Basil Rathbone and Victor McLaglen.
Serpico (KL Studio Classics): 4K upgrade of Sidney Lumet’s hit 1973 crime drama stars Al Pacino as a young idealistic hippie-cop who wants to perform his job with honesty and integrity. Spoiler: no one else wants him to do that.
The Seventh Seal (Criterion Collection): Ingmar Bergman’s most famous film – shown in every film history class from now until the end of time – gets a 4K restoration. (Must viewing, particularly if you want to get all the references in The Last Action Hero and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.)
Silent Avant-Garde (Kino): 21 thrilling silent experimental films from the years 1922 to 2022, created by everyone from Sergei Eisenstein to Marcel Duchamp, collected here with new musical accompaniment
Star Trek: The Next Generation 4-Movie Collection (Paramount): Star Trek Generations, Star Trek First Contact, Star Trek Insurrection, Star Trek Nemesis, and hours of special features over eight discs.
They Came to Cordura (KL Studio Classics): Gary Cooper, Rita Hayworth, Van Heflin, and Tab Hunter gather for this 1959 Texas war drama.
The Thing (2011) (Mill Creek Entertainment): This remake of John Carpenter’s sci-fi horror classic stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Features a SteelBook package and lots of extras.
The Trap (Kino Classics): A 4K restoration for this 1922 melodrama, it was the first starring role for the “Man of a Thousand Faces” Lon Chaney.
The Truth About Spring (KL Studio Classics): Real-life father and daughter John and Hayley Mills star in this Caribbean treasure hunt adventure.
Up, Down, Fragile (Cohen Film Collection): The legendary Jacques Rivette delivered a sort-of musical in 1995 that will upend all your expectations, and it features Godard muse Anna Karina.
You and Me (KL Studio Classics): Fritz Lang’s 1938 romantic comedy is also a social commentary drama starring Sylvia Sidney and George Raft.
NEW TV
Cowboy Bebop – The Complete Series 25th Anniversary Limited Edition Box Set (Crunchyroll):
The late-90s anime sensation, a neo-noir sci-fi anime about a team of bounty hunters in space that took the world by storm, gets a lavish box set for its 25th anniversary. All the episodes, of course, plus a new anniversary video, art cards, audio commentaries, voice cast interviews, and more, all in a customizable metallic box.
Also available:
Becoming Evil: Serial Killers Among Us (Mill Creek Entertainment): A five-part docuseries exploring the history of unsolved serial killer cases.
The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek (Mill Creek Entertainment): An 11-episode documentary series about the cultiest cult show of all time. Comes with more than three hours of extra material.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These – Season 3 (Crunchyroll): Episodes 25 – 36 of this ongoing sci-fi space adventure.
One Piece – Collection 31 (Crunchyroll): That’s right, collection 31(!) of the long-lasting fantasy series. For the record, that means episodes 747 through 770.
Star Trek: Lower Decks – Season 3 (Paramount): The animated comedy Trek returns, and this package includes lots of special features and commentaries.