New to View: Dec. 13
By Bob Bloom
The following titles are being released on Tuesday, Dec. 13, unless otherwise noted:
The Woman King (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + digital)
Details: 2022, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Rated: PG-13, strong, graphic violence, disturbing material, thematic content, language, partial nudity
The lowdown: An underlying current of ferocity permeates many of Viola Davis’ performances.
In such films as “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Widows,” “Fences,” her “Suicide Squad” ventures and even “The Help,” Davis plays women who know their own minds and are not bashful about speaking out.
Nowhere has those characteristics been more potent or deadly than in “The Woman King,” in which she displays an aggressiveness and strength that skyrockets to a raging level.
The historical drama, set in the early 19th century in the African Kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin), casts Davis as General Nanisca, leader of the Agojie, an all-female unit of warriors who protect the kingdom, using skills and techniques unlike anything the world had ever seen.
The task of Nanisca and her soldiers is to guard Dahomey against rival tribes as well as slave traders who prey on African people to keep Europe and the Americas stocked with human chattel.
Under the sturdy direction of Gina Prince-Bythewood — and a strong script by Dana Stevens — the setting is not idealized. Women are treated cruelly, and rape is widespread.
“The Woman King” is a rousing feature, an old-fashioned, big-screen epic. And it’s not simply about female empowerment; it deals with loyalty, freedom, love of country and love for family.
Critics loved the movie, awarding it a 94 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
Technical aspects: 4K: 2160p ultra high definition, 2.40:1 widescreen picture; English Dolby Atmos (7.1 Dolby TrueHD compatible), Spanish 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and English 5.1 Dolby digital audio description track; English SDH and Spanish subtitles; Blu-ray: 1080p high definition, 2.40:1 widescreen picture; English and Spanish 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and English 5.1 Dolby digital audio description track; English SDH and Spanish subtitles.
Don’t miss: Bonus options include a behind-the-scenes look at Davis working, featurettes on women warriors, the importance of representation and storytellers; a commentary track and the auditions of costar Thuso Mbedu.
Ticket to Paradise (Blu-ray + DVD + digital)
Details: 2022, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Rated: PG-13, language, suggestive material
The lowdown: Academy Award-winners George Clooney and Julia Roberts reteam for this romantic comedy about former spouses who are forced work together to stop their lovestruck daughter from making the same mistakes they once did.
The movie offers no surprises, especially if you are a fan of rom-coms. With Clooney and Roberts as the bickering exes, you know exactly the path this movie will traipse.
The charisma of its two stars is what holds the movie together, as does the performance of Kaitlyn Dever as their headstrong offspring.
Critics were generally divided about the movie, awarding it a 57 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
Technical aspects: Blu-ray: 1080p high definition, 2.39:1 widescreen picture; English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, 2.0 DVS and French and Spanish 5.1 DTS digital surround; English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles; DVD: 2.39:1 anamorphic widescreen picture; English, French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby digital and English 2.0 DVS; English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles.
Don’t miss: Bonus materials include a featurette on Clooney and Roberts working together again, a featurette on the wedding day details, a making of featurette and a fun look at Dever and costar-friend Billie Lourd working to distract each other and make the other one laugh.
Smile (4K Ultra HD + digital)
Details: 2022, Paramount Home Entertainment
Rated: R, graphic violent content, grisly images, language
The lowdown: Sosie Bacon portrays Dr. Rose Cotter who, after witnessing a bizarre and traumatic incident, starts experiencing frightening events that she cannot explain.
As this overpowering terror begins to take over her life, Cotter must confront her troubled past to survive and regain a semblance of normalcy.
This is a nightmarish horror film about survivor guilt, with a sometimes-overwrought performance by Bacon, that features the now-cliched jump cuts that are quite effective.
A majority of critics appreciated the movie, awarding it a 79 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
Technical aspects: 2160p ultra high definition, 2.00:1 widescreen picture; English Dolby Atmos and French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby digital; English SDH, English, French and Spanish subtitles.
Don’t miss: Bonus options include director Parker Finn’s original short film that inspired the movie, a commentary track with Finn, a making of featurette, a featurette on the score and deleted scenes with optional commentary by Finn.
Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile (Blu-ray + DVD + digital)
Details: 2022, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Rated: PG, mild danger and thematic elements
The lowdown: This family-oriented feature is based on the popular children’s book series by Bernard Waber and tells of the unlikely friendship between Josh Primm, a young boy whose family has recently moved to New York, and Lyle, a singing crocodile who loves baths, caviar and great music.
Lyle lives in the attic of the Primm’s new home. The two become fast friends. But Lyle’s existence is threatened by evil neighbor Mr. Grumps.
Josh and his family join with Lyle’s owner, Hector P. Valenti, to show the world the true meaning of family.
A charismatic Javier Bardem stars as Valenti and seeing him sing and dance with a crocodile will definitely make you smile.
The movie received a 73 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
Technical aspects: Blu-ray: 1080p high definition, 2.40:1 widescreen picture; English, French and Spanish 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, 5.1 Dolby digital audio description track; English SDH, English, French and Spanish subtitles; DVD: 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen picture; English, English audio description track, French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby digital; English SDH, English, French and Spanish subtitles.
Don’t miss: Supplemental materials include four sing-alongs, a storytime featuring Bardem, Shawn Mendes, who voices Lyle, the cast and filmmakers reading excerpts from the book; bloopers; a deleted scene; interviews with cast members and filmmakers about working with Lyle; a look at the cast; and two music videos.
Medusa (Blu-ray)
Details: 2021, Music Box Films
Rated: Not rated, disturbing images
The lowdown: This Brazilian import is part-feminist tract, part-horror-fantasy outing dealing with Mariana, a young woman who, with her friends, demonstrate their spiritual devotion through tuneful evangelical pop songs about purity and submission to God.
Beneath all their piety, a simmering and deep rage boils. During the day, they pretend to have righteous lives. At night, they don masks as a vigilante gang that prowls the streets hunting for sinning women who have deviated from virtue.
Mariana is scarred and traumatized by an attack that goes very wrong, causing her views about her community and friends to shift.
She is plagued by haunting visions and unclean desires. New temptations arise within as the urge to release her inner demons grows.
The movie, a treatise on feminine fury, received an 83 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
Technical aspects: 1080p high definition, 2.39:1 widescreen picture; Portuguese 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio; English subtitles.
Don’t miss: Supplemental materials include deleted scenes, a video essay, interviews and a question-and-answer session with director Anita Rocha da Silveira at the film’s New York premiere.
Cooley High: Special Edition (Blu-ray)
Details: 1975, The Criterion Collection
Rated: PG
The lowdown: Set in 1964 Chicago, “Cooley High” follows two friends, Preach (Glynn Turman) and Cochise (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), at the end of high school.
The young men are busy with extracurricular activities including dance parties, late-night joyrides and romance.
But being a young and Black in Chicago also comes with challenges, especially from authority figures, such as police officers.
Director Michael Schultz and screenwriter Eric Monte drew on their own experiences of growing up in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project as inspiration for this coming-of-age comedy-drama.
The movie, featuring a soundtrack of Motown classics, is tender, funny and, most importantly, authentic.
The film earned an 85 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
Technical aspects: 1080p high definition, 1.85:1 widescreen picture; English LPCM monaural; English SDH subtitles.
Don’t miss: Supplemental materials include a conversation between Schultz and film scholar Racquel J. Gates, a program on the making of the movie, a panel discussion from the 2019 tribute to the movie at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, featuring Schultz, filmmaker Robert Townsend, casting director Gloria Schultz and Hilton-Jacobs and Garrett Morris and an essay about the movie.
Silent Running (4K Ultra HD)
Details: 1972, Arrow Video
Rated: G
The lowdown: Bruce Dern stars in this science-fiction feature about an ecologist maintaining a greenhouse on a space station who, after the extinction of all botanical life on Earth, is ordered to preserve various plants for future generations.
Dern’s Freeman Lowell, aided by a trio of robots and a small human crew, is later ordered to destroy his remaining specimens. Lowell rebels, fleeing with the robots toward Saturn in a bid to preserve what he considers his own slice of Earth.
The movie, marked the directorial debut of special effects master Douglas Trumbull, who contributed to the effects on Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
“Silent Running” is intimate and serious with some offbeat charm.
The movie garnered a 71 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
Technical aspects: 2160p ultra high definition, 1.85:1 widescreen picture; English DTS-HD Master Audio monaural; English SDH subtitles.
Don’t miss: Extras include a booklet with essays about the movie, an archival interview with Dern, two archival interviews with Trumbull, a visual essay exploring the evolution of the screenplay, a featurette on the movie’s score, a commentary track with film historian-author Kim Newman and Barty Forshaw, an original commentary with Trumbull and Dern and an isolated music and effects track.
The Hallelujah Trail (Blu-ray)
Details: 1965, Kino Lorber Studio Classics
Rated: Not rated
The lowdown: An all-star cast featuring Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Jim Hutton, Pamela Tiffin, Donald Pleasance, Brian Keith and Martin Landau sink like quicksand in this overlong and uneven comedy Western directed by John Sturges (“The Magnificent Seven,” “The Great Escape.”).
The actors do get into the spirit of the movie by offering broad performances.
The story centers on a time when Denver was nearly devastated by a whiskey drought and had to have 40 wagonloads imported through very harsh and thirsty territory.
Also involved is a group of Temperance League women, a U.S. cavalry detachment, a tribe of local Indians and some very thirsty miners.
At 156 minutes, the movie begins to run dry.
Technical aspects: 1080p high definition, 2.35:1 widescreen picture; English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio monaural; English SDH subtitles.
Don’t miss: Among the bonus materials are the roadshow overture, intermission, Entr’acte and exit music and a commentary track with filmmaker-historian Michael Schlesinger and author-screenwriter C. Courtney Joyner.
The Ambush (Blu-ray)
Details: 2021, Well Go USA Entertainment
Rated: R, violence
The lowdown: This Arab-language war film deals with three soldiers whose armored vehicle is attacked by heavily-armed militants, trapping the trio in a remote area.
Upon receiving word of the attack, the soldiers’ commanding officer undertakes a daring and dangerous operation to free his men.
The movie, which also includes an English-dubbed track, is akin to “Black Hawk Down” in which soldiers are trapped and fellow troops come to their rescue.
Technical aspects: 1080p high definition, 2.39:1 widescreen picture; Arabic and English (dubbed) DTS-HD Master Audio; English subtitles.
Hinterland (DVD)
Details: 2021, Film Movement
Rated: Not rated
The lowdown: This movie takes place in the aftermath of World War I. A former soldier and prisoner of war returns home to a nightmarish Vienna he does not recognize.
A killer is on the loose with the veteran discovering that he is connected to the victims.
Since he was once a police detective, he is returned to his former duties and, with the aid of a forensic doctor, begins an investigation that leads them to the darkest corners of the city as the two try to stop this serial killer from continuing his murderous spree.
Technical aspects: 2.39:1 widescreen picture; German 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby digital; English subtitles.
Don’t miss: A commentary by the movie’s director, featurettes on the visual effects and a short film comprise the extras.
Creature From Black Lake (Blu-ray)
Details: 1976, Synapse Films
Rated: PG
The lowdown: A hairy humanlike Bigfoot creature is lurking in the Louisiana swamps. Only trapper Joe Canton (Jack Elam) has seen it and lived.
Meanwhile, the other residents of Oil City do not talk about it.
That, though, is not going to stop a couple of college students who are determined to track down the creature. Ignoring the local sheriff, the two travel deep into the wilds of Black Lake and learn the hard way, especially after a series of frightening encounters.
The movie follows in the footsteps of such other creature features such as “The Legend of Boggy Creek.”
The supporting cast includes veteran Dub Taylor, and the cinematographer was Dean Cundey (“Halloween,” “Jurassic Park”).
The movie is a fun and motley feature that is no worse than other films in the genre.
Technical aspects: 1080p high definition, 2.35:1 widescreen picture; English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio monaural; English SDH subtitles.
Don’t miss: Extras include a commentary track and a featurette with Cundey.
Blood and Diamonds (Blu-ray)
Details: 1977, 88 Films
Rated: Not rated
The lowdown: A Mafia member is set up by the gang he is part of and is sent prison.
After serving his term, he seeks revenge on those he blames for his arrest.
This Italian crime thriller offers some top-notch action sequences and muscular performances.
The film artfully builds tension as the wronged gangster hunts down those he holds responsible.
Technical aspects: 1080p high definition, 1.85:1 widescreen picture; Italian and English (dubbed) LPCM monaural; English subtitles.
Don’t miss: Extras include a commentary track with Troy Howarth, Italian opening, intermission and closing titles, a documentary on the film’s director, Fernando Di Leo and a profile of actor Luc Merenda.
Other titles being released on Tuesday, unless otherwise indicated:
A Walk to Remember: Collector’s Edition (Blu-ray) (Shout! Factory)
American Murderer (Blu-ray + digital & digital) (Lionsgate Home Entertainment)
Apostles (DVD & VOD) (Breaking Glass Pictures)
Big Trip 2 (DVD & digital & VOD) (Lionsgate Home Entertainment)
Can’t Be Stopped (Blu-ray) (Can’t Be Stopped-MVD Visual Entertainment)
The Minute You Wake Up Dead (Blu-ray & DVD) (Lionsgate Home Entertainment)
My Best Friend’s Wedding: 25th Anniversary Edition (4K Ultra HD + digital) (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)
Riotsville U.S.A. (DVD & VOD) (Magnolia Home Entertainment)
Silent Night, Deadly Night Collection (Blu-ray + digital) (Lionsgate Home Entertainment)
Slash/Back (Blu-ray & DVD) (RLJE Films)
Strong Fathers Strong Daughters (DVD & digital) (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)
DIGITAL DOWNLOAD, STREAMING or VOD
All In: Miracle at St. Bernard’s (Gravitas Ventures)
The Banshees of Inisherin (Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution)
Boy Scout’s Honor (B. Nagel Films)
Dragon Eats Eagle (Endeavor Media & Entertainment)
Free Puppies (First Run Features)
Girl on a Motorcycle (Kino Lorber)
Goodbye, Don Glees! (GKids-Shout! Factory)
Kindred (Hulu)
Last Chance U: Basketball: Season 2 (Netflix)
Losing Ground (Kino Lorber)
Memories of My Father (Cohen Media Group)
Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle (Dark Star Pictures)
Prey for the Devil (Lionsgate Home Entertainment)
Welcome to Chippendales: Episode 5 (Hulu)
Who Is Christmas Eve (Lionsgate Home Entertainment)
DEC. 14
Echo 3: Episode 6 (Apple TV+)
DEC. 15
Sonic Prime (www.netflix.com/sonicprime) (Netflix)
DEC. 16
Acapulco: Episode 10 (Apple TV+)
The Christmas Tapes (Terror Films)
High Heat (Saban Films-Paramount Pictures)
Jurassic Punk (Gravitas Ventures)
The Mosquito Coast: Season 2, Episode 7 (Apple TV+)
Mythic Quest: Episode 7 (Apple TV+)
Nanny (Amazon)
The Recruit (www.netflix.com/TheRecruit) (Netflix)
Shantaram: Episode 12 (Apple TV+)
Slow Horses: Season 2, Episode 4 (Apple TV+)
Coming next week: House of the Dragon: The Complete First Season
I am a founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. I review movies, 4K UHD, Blu-rays and DVDs for ReelBob (ReelBob.com), The Film Yap and other print and online publications. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com. You also can follow me on Twitter @ReelBobBloom and on Facebook at ReelBob or the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My movie reviews also can be found at Rotten Tomatoes: www.rottentomatoes.com.