This Week on Blu-ray: February 22-28

For the week of February 22nd, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment releases the animated sequel The Croods: A New Age, featuring the voices of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, Clark Duke, and Cloris Leachman reprising their roles from the first film, and newcomers Peter Dinklage, Leslie Mann, and Kelly Marie Tran. Released over the Thanksgiving holiday in 2020, The Croods: A New Age is one of the few box office successes during the coronavirus pandemic, making over $49 million domestically, and over $150 million worldwide. The film has already been available on VOD and digital services, but still managed to top the box office again over the Presidents' Day holiday weekend, in its twelfth week of release. This week, Universal will make the film available on Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D and 4K UHD Blu-ray, as well as retailer exclusives for the Blu-ray at Target (gallery book) and Walmart (water bottle and 35-piece puzzle). All editions include Dolby Atmos audio, two all-new exclusive short films and several extras, including an audio commentary with the filmmakers, deleted scenes, the DreamWorks Animation short film To: Gerard and more. Additionally, the 4K UHD disc features a Dolby Vision HDR presentation.

Next, Lionsgate Home Entertainment Mike P. Nelson's Wrong Turn (2021), starring Matthew Modine, Emma Dumont, Charlotte Vega, Daisy Head, Valerie Jane Parker, and Adain Bradley. The film is the seventh entry in the horror franchise that dates back to 2003 and serves as a reboot. Shot in 2019, it was eventually released theatrically for one night only last month. In his review of the disc, Jeffrey Kauffman says "There are some stylistic quirks at play here that can lead to a somewhat heterogeneous appearance at times. A lot of the presentation has the sleek, clear look of digital capture, but there are other moments that I'm assuming were intentionally tweaked with either digital grain or other post bells and whistles which can lead to a pretty gritty, fuzzy and even maybe slightly noisy, look...Some of the gore elements feature some stomach churning detail levels, so forewarned is forearmed". Extras include a 27-minute making of featurette, an audio commentary with Mike P. Nelson, and deleted and extended scenes.

Also this week, from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, comes Dan Friedkin's film The Last Vermeer, starring Guy Pearce, Claes Bang, August Diehl, Vicky Krieps, and Olivia Grant. Synopsis: While Joseph Piller (Claes Bang), a Dutch Jew, was fighting in the Resistance during the Second World War, the witty, debonair art connoisseur Han van Meegeren (Guy Pearce) was hosting hedonistic soirees and selling Dutch art treasures to Hermann Göring and other top Nazis. Following the war, Piller becomes an investigator assigned the task of identifying and redistributing stolen art, resulting in the flamboyant van Meegeren being accused of collaboration—a crime punishable by death. But, despite mounting evidence, Piller, with the aid of his assistant (Vicky Krieps), becomes increasingly convinced of Han's innocence and finds himself in the unlikely position of fighting to save his life.

In catalog titles this week, once again we have multiple Blu-rays from the Warner Archive Collection. Many will go for the Christian Slater film Pump Up the Volume, which of course, has been newly remastered. In his review, Randy Miller says that the film "looks lively and bright on Warner Archive's Blu-ray, which resurrects the film's bold early 90s visual aesthetic...The colors are vivid with deep saturation that shows off the era-specific fashion and suburban landscapes, as well as indoor locales including Harry's makeshift studio and other moments like the neon-infused opening title sequence. Black levels run nice and deep during the film's sporadic night sequence with no overbearing signs of crush or shadow loss...Overall, it's another flat-out fantastic catalog effort". And praising the audio, Randy continues: "as good as the video is, [the] DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is even better. Not surprisingly, the soundtrack gets top priority when it kicks in, whether it's the terrific original score by Cliff Martinez or one of many classic pop songs including "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen, "Fast Lane" by Urban Dance Squad, "Wave Of Mutilation" by The Pixies, Bad Brains & Henry Rollins' cover of MC5's "Kick Out The Jams", "Love Comes In Spurts" by Richard Hell And The Voidoids, "Dad, I'm In Jail" by Was (Not Was), "Weinerschnitzel" by The Descendents, and the ultra-rare Beastie Boys track "The Scenario", which was cut from Licensed to Ill for its explicit lyrics... Elsewhere, conversations are crystal clear...with the rear channels getting some love during crowded outdoor sequences and the climactic nighttime chase. It's a well-balanced and unsurprisingly forceful track". Warner Archive has also included the film's theatrical trailer. Note that Randy's review contains links to several clips of the new remaster that WAC has uploaded to their YouTube channel.

Also from Warner Archive Collection this week, we have remastered classics, including the Doris Day musicals My Dream Is Yours and On Moonlight Bay, as well as the 1951 version of Show Boat. All three films feature brand new masters and for Show Boat and On Moonlight Bay, these are new 4K masters taken from the original Technicolor camera negatives. Several extras are available across the three films, including vintage cartoons and short films as well as theatrical trailers in HD. Additionally, Show Boat includes a radio broadcast, audio-only outtakes featuring Ava Gardner and the option to view the film in lossless original mono or lossless original stereo audio tracks.

This week also sees Paramount Home Media Distribution release the John Hughes: 5 Movie Collection on Blu-ray. The 5-disc set represents the worldwide Blu-ray premieres of the Hughes films Some Kind of Wonderful and She's Having a Baby, which, at the time of this writing are unavailable separately. Extras are included for all films in the set, with Some Kind of Wonderful including a new extra: "Back to Wonderful: A Conversation with director Howard Deutch" as well as archival extras including an audio commentary and a making of featurette. Additionally, She's Having a Baby contains a theatrical trailer and the featurette "From the Archives: Kevin Bacon Interviews John Hughes".

Additionally from Paramount this week is the Blu-ray debut of Sidney J. Furie's Lady Sings the Blues, a biopic of Billie Holiday starring Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor, Paul Hampton, and Virginia Capers. Paramount includes archival extras, including an audio commentary with Furie and others, a 23-minute making of featurette and over 20 minutes of deleted scenes. A review of the disc, courtesy of Martin Liebman, is available here.

Finally this week, we have three Blu-rays from the Criterion Collection. First up is a new special edition Blu-ray of Joyce Chopra's Smooth Talk, starring Treat Williams Laura Dern and Mary Kay Place, and based on the short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates. Featuring a new 4K remaster, supervised by director Joyce Chopra, and lossless original mono audio, reviewer Svet Atanasov says the image "is wonderful. The original cinematography incorporates different varieties of natural light that produce some very beautiful organic contrasts that look gorgeous in 1080p...There are no traces of problematic digital corrections. The color grading job is excellent. In fact, even while the girls are still on the beach and the credits continue to appear on the screen, it is already painfully obvious that the new master was graded with impressive precision". Criterion include a large assortment of extras, including new interviews with Chopra, Williams and Place, as well as a conversation with Chopra, Oates and Dern from the 2020 New York Film Festival, and three short films from Chopra, amongst others, A complete breakdown of the extras is included in Svet's review.

And lastly this week, the Criterion Collection presents two films by Iranian-American filmmaker Ramin Bahrani: Man Push Cart and Chop Shop. Presented in HD masters with lossless audio tracks, both films include an assortment of new and archival extras, including audio commentaries, interviews and conversations with Bahrani and others, and more.