This Week on Blu-ray: November 15-21

For the week of November 15th, the Criterion Collection finally enters the 4K UHD market with their release of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, starring Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Ann Miller, Dan Hedaya, Mark Pellegrino. Originally released by Criterion on Blu-ray in 2015, the film will be the first of four 4K UHD releases from Criterion this month, ending years of speculation about when and how one of the most prestigious home video labels would adopt the now almost six-year-old format. Housed in a slipboxed digipak, the 4K UHD disc contains Dolby Vision HDR, while the extras are included on the Blu-ray. Reviewer Svet Atanasov was incredibly impressed by the new 4K disc and awarded the release a perfect 5/5 stars in every category. Read Svet's full review, which also contains screenshots sourced from the 4K disc and downscaled to 1080p, here.

For new releases this week, Walt Disney Home Entertainment will release Jaume Collet-Serra's Jungle Cruise, starring Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Édgar Ramírez, Jack Whitehall, and Andy Nyman. Filmed largely in 2018, the film, which is based on the theme park attraction of the same name, was originally set for a 2019 release, before it was delayed to July 2020. However, the coronavirus pandemic changed those plans, and Disney opted to delay the film by a year, to July 2021. In May 2021, the film became the most recent to receive a simultaneous release on Disney's streaming service, while theatrically, it topped the box office on its way to over $116 million domestically. Reviews for the film were mixed and internationally, the box office was a bit less stellar, with over $96 million so far. This gives the film a total gross of over $213 million against a $200 million budget. This week, Disney's 4K release includes HDR and a Dolby Atmos audio track, while extras on the Blu-ray include "Jungle Cruise Expedition Mode", featurettes, outtakes and deleted scenes.Additionally, a Best Buy Exclusive SteelBook edition and a Target Exclusive Art edition will also be available.

Also from Disney and Searchlisght Pictures is Michael Showalter's The Eyes of Tammy Faye, starring Jessica Chastain, Andrew Garfield, Vincent D'Onofrio, Cherry Jones, and Sam Jaeger. Synopsis: The Eyes of Tammy Faye is an intimate look at the extraordinary rise, fall and redemption of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker (Jessica Chastain). In the 1970s and '80s, Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield) built a burgeoning religious broadcasting network and theme park – until rivals, financial wrongdoing and scandal toppled their empire.

Extras for The Eyes of Tammy Faye include the featurette A Look Inside The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

New this week from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment is Nia DaCosta's Candyman (2021), starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Colman Domingo, and Vanessa Williams. Filmed in 2019, this remake of the 1992 film of the same name was originally set for a June 2020 release, but the pandemic and Universal's release of Halloween Kills shifted it over a year to August 2021. On its opening weekend, the film topped the box office with over $22 million, on its way to over $61 million domestically and over $77 million worldwide. Universal's disc releases contain Dolby Atmos audio, while the 4K disc contains HDR. Extra features include an alternate ending, deleted and extended scenes and featurettes.

New this week from RLJ Entertainment is a 4K UHD and Blu-ray release for Sion Sono's Prisoners of the Ghostland, starring Nicolas Cage, Tak Sakaguchi, Sofia Boutella, Nick Cassavetes, and Bill Moseley. Reviewer Randy Miller says of the 4K disc in part: "It serves up a tighter overall image that runs at 2-3 times the Blu-ray's bit rate and shows it with fewer compression artifacts, no obvious banding...and improved textures during close-ups and wide shots alike...Of course, color is another standout here and the 4K's HDR enhancement works overtime during several stretches; neon-infused Samurai Town is an obvious standout, as are the colorful costume designs and the giant gumball machine shattered during that fateful bank robbery". Read Randy's full review here.

New this week from Magnolia Home Entertainment is a 4K UHD and Blu-ray release for Vicente Amorim's Yakuza Princess, starring Masumi, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Mariko Takai, and Kenny Leu. Label description: Set in the expansive Japanese community of Sao Paulo in Brazil — the largest Japanese diaspora in the world — YAKUZA PRINCESS follows Akemi (MASUMI), an orphan who discovers she is the heiress to half of the Yakuza crime syndicate. Forging an uneasy alliance with an amnesiac stranger (Rhys Meyers) who believes an ancient sword binds their two fates, Akemi must unleash war against the other half of the syndicate who wants her dead.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has three new releases this week. First is Andreas Koefoed's documentary The Lost Leonardo. Studio description: The Lost Leonardo is the inside story behind the Salvator Mundi, the most expensive painting ever sold at $450 million. From the moment the painting is bought for $1175 at a shady New Orleans auction house, and the restorer discovers masterful Renaissance brushstrokes under the heavy varnish of its cheap restoration, the Salvator Mundi's fate is determined by an insatiable quest for fame, money and power. As its price soars, so do questions about its authenticity: is this painting really by Leonardo da Vinci?

Then from Sony is Kellie Madison's Never Back Down: Revolt, starring Olivia Popica, Michael Bisping, Nitu Chandra Srivasttava, Brooke Johnston, Diana Hoyos, and James Faulkner. Synopsis: An amateur fighter (Olivia Popica) is lured by a trafficking syndicate specializing in elite underground fighting where her brutal captor (Michael Bisping) forces her to fight or face certain death.

Also from Sony is Michael Caton-Jones' Our Ladies, starring Rona Morison, Tallulah Greive, Eve Austin, Abigail Lawrie, and Marli Siu. Studio description: Our Ladies follows a group of Scottish schoolgirls on a day trip to Edinburgh to perform in a choir competition. For these teens from a small town in the Scottish Highlands, it becomes a chance to escape their daily lives and run riot in the big city. With few expectations for their futures, Orla (Tallulah Greive), Finnoula (Abigail Lawrie), Manda (Sally Messham), Kay (Eve Austin), Chell (Rona Morison) and Kylah (Marli Siu) are determined to live for every moment in this raucous tale of love, life and true friendship.

Catalog titles from Sony this week include a 4K UHD upgrade for Hironobu Sakaguchi and Motonori Sakakibara's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, starring Ming-Na Wen, Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin and Donald Sutherland. Now presented in HDR and with a new Dolby Atmos remix option, in addition to the original 5.1 track, Sony's 4K UHD disc mightily impressed reviewer Martin Liebman, who says of the picture: " the UHD brings out the best of its offerings. It reveals excellent detailing to skin textures, well beyond the Blu-ray's ability. Some of the advanced graphic look worlds and away better, almost like as if it were some remastered video game where old, less optimized images are here rendered with far more care and precision...In terms of the HDR grading, one of the most obvious improvements is seen from the outset: the white title only seconds into the film has been transformed to a silky-smooth, high luminance, pure-as-snow white in what is a beautiful transformation to a more solidly expressive and true shade. On the flip side, blacks are deeper, more pure, and more absorbing...This is a surprisingly rich and well worthwhile UHD that breathes brand new life into an aging film". Read Martin's full review here.

Finally from Sony this week is a Blu-ray for Joe Roth's Christmas with the Kranks, starring Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dan Aykroyd, M. Emmet Walsh, and Elizabeth Franz. Synopsis: Finally alone for the holidays, Luther (Tim Allen) and Nora Krank (Jamie Lee Curtis) plan to eschew the Christmas traditions and take a cruise in the Caribbean instead. This doesn't sit well with their Christmas-obsessed neighbors Vic Frohmeyer (Dan Aykroyd) and Walt Scheel (M. Emmet Walsh), who are determined to win the annual "best decorated street" competition, and the Kranks soon find themselves social outcasts because of their lack of Christmas spirit.

Lastly this week, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has several catalog title offerings. Most notably are 4K UHD upgrades for George Miller's Mad Max: The Road Warrior and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Both films will include HDR and new Dolby ATmos audio tracks. Additionally,there will be Best Buy Exclusive SteelBook editions of both films ( here and here) and the studio will also release studio the Mad Max Anthology, a four-disc, 4K-only box set which collects all four Mad Max films.

Finally, Warner adds three more Blu-rays to its Warner Archive Collection this week: Clarence Brown's National Velvet (1944), starring Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor, Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running (1958), starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine and the HBO documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (2020).