This Week on Blu-ray: December 13-19

For the week of December 13th, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release Andy Serkis' Venom: Let There Be Carnage, starring Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Naomie Harris, Reid Scott, and Stephen Graham. A sequel featuring the beloved Matrvel Comics character was guaranteed after his debut feature Venom became a breakout hit in 2018. Filmed in 2019, Venom: Let There Be Carnage was intended for an October 2020 release, but post-production on the film was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. Eventually, the film was released in October 2021, a year later than planned, but nevertheless, the film topped the box office in its opening weekend, pulling in over $90 million, on its way to a current total of $212 million domestically, and over $493 million globally. Thus far, the film is one of the top-grossing Hollywood films of 2021 and the second-highest grossing film in the US and Canada, behind only Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. This week, Sony's releases the film on 4K UHD and Blu-ray, with Dolby Atmos audio and Dolby Vision HDR on the 4K UHD disc. Extras on the Blu-ray include 6 deleted scenes, outtakes and featurettes. Additionally, a Best Buy Exclusive 4K UHD SteelBook edition and a Target Exclusive Fan Art Blu-ray will also be available.

Also new from Sony this week is a Blu-ray for Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe's The Mitchells vs. the Machines, featuring the voices of Abbi Jacobson, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Michael Rianda, and Eric André. Originally titled Connected, Sony had planned to release the film theatrically in January 2020, before it was delayed to September 2020, then further delayed thanks to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Retaining home media rights, Sony later sold the film to Netflix for $110 million, where it debuted in April. Sony's Blu-ray release is touted as a Special Edition and contains many extras, including Blu-ray exclusives like audio commentary with the filmmakers, the all-new mini-movie Dog Cop 7: The Final Chapter and Katie's Extended Cinematic Bonanza Cut!, an extended version of the film with over 40 minutes of deleted footage. If that isn't enough, another Blu-ray exclusive extra is an additional 20 minutes of deleted and extended scenes, in addition to several featurettes as standard extras.

New this week from Walt Disney Home Entertainment and 20th Century Studios is a 4K UHD and Blu-ray for Ridley Scott's The Last Duel, starring Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Ben Affleck, Jodie Comer, and Marton Csokas. Studio description: Jodie Comer is spellbinding in this tale of betrayal and vengeance set in 14th century France from visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott. Based on actual events, the film stars Matt Damon and Adam Driver as friends Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris, two knights who must fight to the death after de Carrouges's wife (Comer) accuses Le Gris of assault.

Disney's 4K UHD for The Last Duel contains Dolby Atmos audio, while the Blu-ray contains DTS-HD MA 7.1 audio. Extras include the documentary The Making of The Last Duel.

New from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment this week is a Blu-ray for Paul Schrader's The Card Counter, starring Oscar Isaac, Tye Sheridan, Willem Dafoe, and Tiffany Haddish. Studio description: Redemption is the long game in Paul Schrader's The Card Counter. Executive produced by Martin Scorsese and told with Schrader's trademark cinematic intensity, the revenge thriller tells the story of an ex-military interrogator turned gambler haunted by the ghosts of his past decisions. Cinematography by Alexander Dynan (Dog Eat Dog, First Reformed).

Extras for Universal's Blu-ray of The Card Counter include the featurette A High-Stakes World and an original trailer.

In catalog news, Paramount Home Media Distribution have a 4K UHD upgrade for Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey, and Kyle Chandler. Scorsese's epic film, which is based on true events, features DiCaprio as real-life stockbroker Jordan Belfort, whose firm, Stratton Oakmont, engaged in rampant fraud and corruption on Wall Street, while Belfort and his colleagues also lived an extravagant lifestyle, throwing lavish parties with drugs and sex. Few Hollywood productions in recent memory have been so explicit, with Scorsese having to cut the film to avoid an NC-17 rating in the United States. Still, on release in 2013, the film was hailed as one of the best of the year and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Actor for DiCaprio, Best Director and Best Picture, amongst a slew of other awards. Arguably, the film's reputation has only grown in the years since, thus it will come as little surprise that Paramount are upgrading the title to 4K UHD. The new disc, which does not include a standard Blu-ray contains the three featurettes found on Paramount's Blu-ray, and a brand new transfer of the film, supervised by Martin Scorsese.

Also this week, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment adds another title to its Warner Archive Collection. Richard Thorpe's Ivanhoe (1952), starring Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders and Emlyn Williams. Newly remastered from a 4K scan of the original Technicolor negative, reviewer Randy Miller is highly impressed, saying: "this beautifully-saturated picture carries with it an exceptional amount of fine detail, texture, and clarity that greatly supports the film's terrific production and costume design. It's a very clean image thanks to the studio's usual amount of careful manual cleanup, which allows Ivanhoe to retain its original film-like texture without the heavy hand of excessive noise reduction. Density and stability are excellent as well, highlighting the picturesque landscapes and mostly warm interiors that are probably much cleaner than real 12th century locales..." Randy's full review contains 25 screenshots of the newly remastered disc, and can be found here.

Finally this week, The Criterion Collection continues their budding 4K UHD lineup with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger,'s The Red Shoes Mastered from the previously completed 2009 4K remaster, which was taken from the original Technicolor negative, Criterion's 4K UHD disc also adds Dolby Vision HDR, while the included Blu-ray contains all of Criterion's previously released extras. Reviewer Svet Atanasov is delighted with the new 4K UHD disc, saying in part: "When the 4K restoration was introduced on Blu-ray, I thought that the film looked marvelous...In native 4K, the entire film tends to look slightly darker yet lusher. It has superior ranges of nuances as well, especially darker ones...if you pay close attention to smaller details, you should quickly realize that the lusher colors also appear 'tighter' because you are essentially witnessing color registration as it was meant to be seen...I honestly can't see how you can ever get a better technical presentation of [The Red Shoes] at home". Read Svet's full review, which contains screenshots from the 4K UHD disc (downscaled to 1080p) here.

In addition to the theatrical trailer for The Red Shoes, below you will find Criterion's own Three Reasons: The Red Shoes, a short piece the label produced for their 2010 Blu-ray release.