Posted October 15, 2023 08:29 PM by Sean Greenwood
For the week of October 16th, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will release a 4K UHD and Blu-ray for Greta Gerwig's Barbie, starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae and Rhea Perlman.
Studio description: To live in Barbie Land is to be a perfect being in a perfect place. Unless you have a full-on existential crisis. Or you're a Ken.
Warner Bros. Blu-ray releases of Barbie contain the film's Dolby Atmos audio, with HDR on the 4K UHD edition. Extras consist of six featurettes.
Also coming on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Warner is Ethan Spaulding's Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match, starring Joel McHale, Jennifer Grey, Gilbert Gottfried, Kelly Hu, Grey Griffin and Phil LaMarr.
Description: Neon lights… Suits with shoulder pads… Jumping from explosions in slow motion… In 1980s Hollywood, action star Johnny Cage (Joel McHale) is looking to become an A-list actor. But when his costar, Jennifer (Jennifer Grey), goes missing from set, Johnny finds himself thrust into a world filled with shadows, danger and deceit. As he embarks on a bloody journey, Johnny quickly discovers the City of Angels has more than a few devils in its midst. He faces off against a sinister secret society plotting a nefarious scheme, but the brutal fight against the bloodthirsty warriors of the Netherrealm is just beginning. Can Johnny, alongside other Mortal Kombat legends, save humanity…and, more importantly, his career?
Warner's 4K UHD release of Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match contains HDR. Extras include filmmaker commentary, the featurette What Would Johnny Cage Do? and a trailer for Ninja Mime. For full release breakdowns, read Randy Miller's 4K UHD review and Blu-ray review.
Finally from Warner this week is a Blu-ray for Titans: The Complete Fourth Season (2022-2023). The three-disc set contains all 12 episodes of the fourth and final season, plus three featurettes. On the same day, Warner will also release Titans: The Complete Series (2018-2023), a ten-disc set with all four seasons.
New on Blu-ray and 4K UHD from GKIDS and Shout Factory is Hideaki Anno, Masayuki, Kazuya Tsurumaki's anime film Evangelion: 3.0+1.11 Thrice Upon a Time (エヴァンゲリオン劇場版), starring Megumi Hayashibara, Megumi Ogata, Yuko Miyamura, Akira Ishida, Kotono Mitsuishi and Yuriko Yamaguchi.
Description: From legendary director Hideaki Anno, EVANGELION:3.0+1.11 THRICE UPON A TIME is the fourth and final installment of the REBUILD OF EVANGELION films, bringing an epic conclusion to the story of Shinji and his fellow Eva pilots, with the stunning visuals and thought-provoking storytelling that has made EVANGELION a global pop culture phenomenon.
Misato and her anti-NERV group Wille arrive at Paris, a city now red from core-ization. Crew from the flagship Wunder land on a containment tower. They only have 720 seconds to restore the city. When a horde of NERV Evas appear, Mari's improved Eva Unit 8 must intercept. Meanwhile, Shinji, Asuka, and Rei (Provisional Name) wander about Japan.
Shout's Blu-ray releases of Evangelion: 3.0+1.11 Thrice Upon a Time contain original Japanese and English audio. Extras include "Rebuild of EVANGELION:3.0+1.11", "[Current EVANGELION]", "Message for Kinro", "Message for ANN", stage greetings, promotional reels, trailers and TV spots. Packaging includes art cards and a book.
Also coming from Shout is a 4K UHD upgrade for Chuck Russell's The Blob (1988), starring Kevin Dillon, Shawnee Smith, Donovan Leitch Jr., Jeffrey DeMunn, Candy Clark and Joe Seneca. Sourced from a new 4K master done by Sony Pictures, Shout presents The Blob with DTS-HD MA 2.0 and 5.1 audio options and Dolby Vision HDR on the 4K UHD disc. Extras replicate Shout's 2019 Blu-ray edition and include three audio commentaries (two on 4K UHD), as well as several cast and crew interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, theatrical trailers, a TV spot and a still gallery. In addition to standard packaging, a Best Buy Exclusive SteelBook will also be available.
New on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Disney is Justin Simien's Haunted Mansion (2023), starring Lakeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Tiffany Haddish, Danny DeVito and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Description: Inspired by the classic theme park attraction, Haunted Mansion tells the story of Gabbie (Rosario Dawson), a single mom, who discovers that the home she and her son share is haunted by irksome ghosts. Hoping to restore domestic tranquility, Gabbie recruits a motley crew of so-called spiritual experts to help rid the house of the supernatural squatters. A non-stop blend of action, adventure and comedy featuring an all-star cast that includes LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Dan Levy, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jared Leto, Haunted Mansion was written by Katie Dippold and directed by Justin Simien. The film's producers are Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich, with Nick Reynolds and Tom Peitzman serving as executive producers.
Coming from the Criterion Collection are the first titles in its Janus Contemporaries line of new release films on Blu-ray. The first three releases are:
Jerzy Skolimowski's EO, starring Sandra Drzymalska, Lorenzo Zurzolo, Mateusz Kościukiewicz and Isabelle Huppert, as well as Hola, Tako, Marietta, Ettore, Rocco and Mela in the role of EO.
Description: Legendary director Jerzy Skolimowski created one of his freest and most visually inventive films yet with this story of a gray donkey named EO. After being removed from an itinerant circus, EO begins a trek across the countryside, experiencing cruelty and kindness from a cast of characters including an Italian countess (Isabelle Huppert) and a Polish soccer team. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature, and featuring stunning cinematography by Michał Dymek coupled with Paweł Mykietyn's resonant score, EO presents the follies and triumphs of humankind from the perspective of its four-legged protagonist on a quest for freedom.
Criterion's Blu-ray of EO contains a making of featurette, an introduction to the six donkeys that play EO and a trailer.
Louis Garrel's The Innocent (L'Innocent), starring Roschdy Zem, Anouk Grinberg, Noémie Merlant, Louis Garrel, Jean-Claude Pautot and Yanisse Kebbab.
Description: Part crime thriller, part romantic comedy, Louis Garrel's The Innocent shows the dangerous and outlandish lengths two men go to for the women they love. Garrel stars as Abel, an aquarium educator whose mother, Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), marries one of her drama pupils in the local penitentiary, Michel (Roschdy Zem). Once on parole, Michel attempts to start a legitimate life but soon reverts to his old ways, eventually roping Abel into one of his schemes. Complicating matters is Clémence (Noémie Merlant), Abel's brazen coworker, who convinces him to take part in the heist. Directing from a screenplay he cowrote (with Tanguy Viel and Naïla Guiguet), Garrel explores the comedic results of playacting's intrusion into reality, as well as reality's comedic tendency to transform us into what we never thought we could be.
Criterion's Blu-ray of The Innocent contains an interview with director Louis Garrel and a trailer.
Jafar Panahi's No Bears (خرس نیست), starring Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Vahid Mobasheri, Bakhtiar Panjei, Mina Kavani and Narges Delaram.
Description: One of the world's great cinema artists, Jafar Panahi has been carefully crafting self-reflexive works about artistic, personal, and political freedom for the past three decades, despite being banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government since 2010. In No Bears—completed shortly before his imprisonment in 2022—Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, a dissident filmmaker who relocates to a rural border town to direct a film remotely in nearby Turkey and finds himself embroiled in a local scandal. As he struggles to complete his feature, Panahi must confront the opposing pulls of tradition and progress, city and country, belief and evidence, as well as the universal desire to reject oppression.
Criterion's Blu-ray of No Bears contains an interview with with filmmaker Ramin Bahrani about director Jafar Panahi's work, Panahi Speaks from Prison and a trailer.
Also coming from Criterion is a Blu-ray box set: Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers (1925-1932), a two-disc set that contains Browning's films The Mystic (1925), The Unknown (1927) and Freaks (1932). All three films are presented from new 2K masters, with new scores for the two silent films and LPCM Mono audio for Freaks. Extras include an introduction for The Mystic as well as audio commentaries for The Unknown and Freaks by film scholar David J. Skal, and several more extras for Freaks, including a 2019 program on disability representation in the film, a prologue added to the film in 1947, an archival documentary, a program on the alternate endings to the film and more. The set also includes an essay by film critic Farran Smith Nehme.
New on Blu-ray from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment is André Øvredal's The Last Voyage of the Demeter, starring Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian, Chris Walley and Jon Jon Briones.
Description: A terrifying new addition to the Dracula legend, based on a single chilling chapter from Bram Stoker's classic novel, THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER chronicles the doomed journey of a merchant ship ferrying 50 mysterious wooden crates from Carpathia to London. As they set sail, the crew soon discovers they are not alone on board: at night they are stalked by a hidden passenger whose monstrous thirst for blood turns the trip into a harrowing nightmare of tension, terror and unfathomable evil.
Universal's Blu-ray of The Last Voyage of the Demeter contains the film's Dolby Atmos audio. Extras include filmmaker commentary, an alternate opening and deleted scenes (both also with optional filmmaker commentary) and three featurettes.
Also new on Blu-ray from Universal is Richard Kaufman and Stuart Samuels' documentary The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, starring May Pang, John Lennon, Julian Lennon, David Bowie and Harry Nilsson.
Description: A true tale that took 50 years to tell, The Lost Weekend: A Love Story follows John Lennon and Yoko Ono's personal assistant, May Pang as she recounts her 18-month relationship with John—a relationship orchestrated by Yoko herself. During this extraordinary period, May helped John reunite with his son Julian and participated firsthand in his most productive period post-Beatles in which he released albums like "Mind Games", "Walls and Bridges", and collaborated with powerhouses like David Bowie and Elton John. Featuring moments with Julian Lennon, Mick Jagger, Alice Cooper, and Paul McCartney, May chronicles it all from her unique perspective as a 22-year-old experiencing her first unforgettable love.
Finally from Universal is a Blu-ray upgrade for Karem Lam's Bring It On: Cheer or Die (2022), starring Kerri Medders, Tiera Skovbye, Missi Pyle, Megan Best, Alten Wilmot and Alexandra Beaton. This is the world premiere for the film on Blu-ray.
New on Blu-ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is The Crown: The Complete Fifth Season (2022). The three-disc set contains all ten episodes and three featurettes as extras.
Also new from Sony is a Blu-ray for Randall Park's Shortcomings, starring Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola, Ally Maki, Tavi Gevinson, Timothy Simons and Jacob Batalon.
Description: Ben, a struggling filmmaker, lives in Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend, Miko, who works for a local Asian American film festival. When he's not managing an arthouse movie theater as his day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blonde women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs, and eating in diners with his best friend Alice, a queer grad student with a serial dating habit. When Miko moves to New York for an internship, Ben is left to his own devices, and begins to explore what he thinks he might want.
Also coming from Sony is a 4K UHD upgrade for Sydney Pollack's The Way We Were (1973), starring Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford, Bradford Dillman, Lois Chiles, Patrick O'Neal and Viveca Lindfors. Remastered in 4K from the original camera negative, Sony, in collaboration with Barbra Streisand, present both the 118-minute theatrical version and an all-new 123-minute extended cut of The Way We Were, with Dolby Vision HDR and a choice of DTS-HD MA 5.1 or DTS-HD MA mono audio (on the theatrical version). Legacy extras include audio commentary with Sydney Pollack (on the theatrical version), a making of documentary and a trailer. A Blu-ray copy is also included.
New on Blu-ray from Paramount Home Media Distribution is Rabbit Hole: Season One (2023), starring Kiefer Sutherland, Meta Golding, Enid Graham, Rob Yang, Walt Klink and Charles Dance.
Description: In RABBIT HOLE, nothing is what it seems when John Weir, a master of deception in the world of corporate espionage, is framed for murder by powerful forces with the ability to influence and control populations. The series stars Emmy® Award winner Kiefer Sutherland as private espionage operative John Weir, who finds himself in the midst of a battle over the preservation of democracy in a world at odds with misinformation, behavioral manipulation, the surveillance state, and the interests that control these extraordinary powers.
Paramount's Blu-ray of Rabbit Hole: Season One contains approximately 30 minutes of behind-the-scenes featurettes.
Finally for new releases this week, Well Go USA has a Blu-ray for Louis Mandylor's 3 Days in Malay, starring Louis Mandylor, Donald Cerrone, Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson, Peter Dobson, Ryan Francis and Randall J. Bacon.
Description: A small group must defend an airfield for three days against the Japanese assault during the fight for Malay in World War 2.
Turning to catalog titles, The Film Preserve has a BD-R (burned disc) for Irving Cummings' The Johnstown Flood (1926), starring George O'Brien, Florence Gilbert, Janet Gaynor, Anders Randolf, Paul Nicholson and Paul Panzer.
Description: Academy Award Winner Janet Gaynor appears in her first major role as Anna Burger, a love-struck teenage girl smitten with the dashing, but unavailable Tom O'Day, played by George O'Brien. Tom is an engineer for the Hamilton Lumber Company and engaged to the owner's daughter Gloria, played by Florence Gilbert. He warns the owners of the imminent failure of the dam, only to be ignored, leaving it up to Anna to try to save her community from impending disaster. The Johnstown Flood captures one of the great American tragedies, when over 2000 lives were lost in 1889 because of the inaction of a wealthy group ignoring the dangers of the dam they'd failed to maintain. Almost a century old, The Johnstown Flood has been newly restored from unique surviving film elements. It's a thrilling drama and a prime example of the cutting edge special effects techniques that emerged at the end of the silent era. The all star cast also features George Reed, Walter Perry and Max Davidson, with cameos by Clark Gable, Carole Lombard and Florence Lawrence. The Johnstown Flood is a classic silent film and essential to every film enthusiast's collection.
The Film Preserve's BD-R of The Johnstown Flood contains a 30-minute effects featurette with VFX artist Craig Barron and sound designer Ben Burtt, two audio interviews with star George O'Brien, a clip of Janet Gaynor presenting the Best Actress Oscar at the 50th Annual Academy Awards and a 2D and 3D photo gallery. Limited to the first 1100 copies is a pair of 3D glasses and a booklet. For a full release breakdown, read Randy Miller's Blu-ray review.
Coming to Blu-ray from Arrow Video is William Wyler's The Desperate Hours (1955), starring Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March, Arthur Kennedy, Martha Scott, Gig Young and Mary Murphy. Sourced from a 6K scan of the original VistaVision camera negative, Arrow presents The Desperate Hours with LPCM Mono audio. Extras include new audio commentary with film historian Daniel Kremer, a new appreciation of the film by José Arroyo (Associate Professor in Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick), a new visual essay by Eloise Ross (co-curator of the Melbourne Cinémathèque), a new audio interview with Catherine Wyler (daughter of William Wyler) and a lobby cards gallery. A reversible sleeve with original artwork and an illustrated collector's booklet are also included.
Finally this week, Lionsgate Home Entertainment have a 4K UHD upgrade for Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man (1973), starring Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento, Britt Ekland, Ingrid Pitt and Lindsay Kemp. Lionsgate presents the newly remastered "Final Cut" of The Wicker Man with LPCM 2.0 audio and Dolby Vision HDR. Extras include a new locations featurette, a new featurette on a lost ending, new interviews with Justin Hardy (son of Robin Hardy) and Britt Ekland, and legacy extras, such as The Wicker Man Enigma and Burnt Offering: The Cult of The Wicker Man, amongst others. Note that the film is presently only available on 4K UHD as a Best Buy Exclusive SteelBook. For a full release breakdown, read Jeffrey Kauffman's Best Buy Exclusive 4K UHD review.