Every week we dive into the cream of the crop when it comes to home releases, including Blu-ray and DVDs, as well as recommended deals of the week. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best (or most interesting) films one can take home. Note that if you’re looking to support the site, every purchase you make through the links below helps us and is greatly appreciated.
Chimes at Midnight and The Immortal Story (Orson Welles)
The crowning achievement of Orson Welles’s extraordinary cinematic career, Chimes at Midnight was the culmination of the filmmaker’s lifelong obsession with Shakespeare’s ultimate rapscallion, Sir John Falstaff. Usually a comic supporting figure, Falstaff—the loyal, often soused friend of King Henry IV’s wayward son Prince Hal—here becomes the focus: a robustly funny and ultimately tragic screen antihero played by Welles with looming, lumbering grace. Integrating elements from both Henry IV plays as well as Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, Welles created a gritty and unorthodox Shakespeare film as a lament, he said, “for the death of Merrie England.” Poetic, philosophical, and visceral—with a kinetic centerpiece battle sequence that rivals anything in the director’s body of work—Chimes at Midnight is as monumental as the figure at its heart. – Criterion.com
Destiny (Fritz Lang)
It can be said with little hesitation, and without even looking at the slate of what’s to come, that the restoration of a Fritz Lang film will be among any year’s finest cinematic offerings. The Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation deserves real credit, then, for bringing us a new version of his 1921 epic Destiny, here presented in a recolored edition that reflects Lang’s original intentions and with a new score by Cornelius Schwehr. After a theatrical release, it’s now available on Blu-ray. – Nick N.
The Jungle Book (Jon Favreau)
Advances in digital technology have now given filmmakers the chance to do things that would have been impossible just a decade ago. With this bold new power comes a slew of possible pitfalls, which we see in movies both large and small. Computer animation can be distractingly bad, pulling us out of the movie with its sheer artifice, or it can be too large, striking a realistic posture while doing things that are, in our mind, impossible to scale with reality. It may be the curse of The Jungle Book that its legacy will be defined by the way it charts a new pitfall for computer animation – that it can be so good and so real that it becomes almost impossible to focus on the story, for better and worse. – Brian R. (full review)
Also Arriving This Week
Recommended Deals of the Week
Top Deal: A huge selection of Blu-rays are currently 3 for $19.99 at Amazon.
All the President’s Men (Blu-ray) – $8.49
The American (Blu-ray) – $7.00
Amelie (Blu-ray) – $6.28
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Blu-ray) – $7.56
Beginners (Blu-ray) – $6.56
Bone Tomahawk (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Brothers Bloom (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Cabin in the Woods (Blu-ray) – $8.53
Casino (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Cloud Atlas (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Dear White People (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Django Unchained (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Eastern Promises (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Far From the Madding Crowd (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Godzilla (Blu-ray) – $8.00
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Blu-ray) – $9.96
Greenberg (Blu-ray) – $5.10
The Guest (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Heat (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Holy Motors (Blu-ray) – $10.19
The Informant! (Blu-ray) – $7.95
Inglorious Basterds (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Interstellar (Blu-ray) – $7.99
The Iron Giant (Blu-ray pre-order) – $9.99
Jaws (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (Blu-ray) – $9.53
The Lady From Shanghai (Blu-ray) – $8.99
Looper (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Lost In Translation (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Magnolia (Blu-ray) – $8.79
The Man Who Wasn’t There (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Blu-ray) – $5.26
Midnight Special (Blu-ray) – $12.96
Michael Clayton (Blu-ray) – $9.69
Moneyball (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Nebraska (Blu-ray) – $8.90
Never Let Me Go (Blu-ray) – $7.50
No Country For Old Men (Blu-ray) – $5.99
ParaNorman (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Persepolis (Blu-ray) – $9.90
The Piano (Blu-ray) – $7.34
A Prophet (Blu-ray) – $6.99
Pulp Fiction (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Road to Perdition (Blu-ray) – $8.99
The Searchers / Wild Bunch / How the West Was Won (Blu-ray) – $10.59
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Blu-ray) – $6.32
Short Term 12 (Blu-ray) – $9.52
Shutter Island (Blu-ray) – $6.79
A Serious Man (Blu-ray) – $5.20
A Single Man (Blu-ray) – $5.80
Somewhere (Blu-ray) – $5.20
There Will Be Blood (Blu-ray) – $5.99
Volver (Blu-ray) – $5.95
Waltz With Bashir (Blu-ray) – $6.50
Where the Wild Things Are (Blu-ray) – $7.70
The White Ribbon (Blu-ray) – $9.80
The Wrestler (Blu-ray) – $7.99
What are you picking up this week?