Other notable releases include Strangerland and The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. Strangerland is the female-directed Aussie movie about a family new to the Outback who finds themselves in crisis when their kids go missing. Complex, contradictory, ambitious, and messy, Strangerland is one of the more fascinating failures of the year. Far more crowd-pleasing is The 100-Year-Old Man, a film that seems to take the piss out of Forrest Gump by centering on a mentally-challenged pyromaniac, who is in no way a savant, as he goes through life meeting up in Europe’s biggest events. It’s light and fluffy, but that’s about it.

In cult films, La Grande Bouffe is being released uncensored by Arrow Films this week. An Italian film about rich people who go to a remote cabin to eat and screw themselves to death, La Grande Bouffe has been in multiple versions for years after being butchered by the censors. Pitch black in that foreign 1970s way, La Grande Bouffe is a satire that must be seen to be believed. Despite winning the FIPRESCI award at Cannes, this is a film I never thought would get any sort of respect.

As a final note: Shout Factory’s new release of Hackers is not a new transfer or remaster. Damn.

Blu-Ray and DVD

• 25 Years Louder Than Hell: The W.O.A. Documentary
• The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
• About Elly
• Atlantis: Season 2, Part 2
• Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem
• Black & White & Sex
• The Blacklist: The Complete Second Season
• Cub
• Day for Night
• Diggstown
• Ejecta
• Face to Face
• La Grande Bouffe
• La Sapienza
• Lambert and Stamp
• Little Boy
• Navajo Joe
• The Nightmare
• Once upon a Time: The Complete Fourth Season
• A Reason to Live, A Reason to Die
• The Seventh Dwarf
• Strangerland
• A Town Called Hell
• Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection
• Z Storm

Blu-Ray

• Burn, Witch, Burn!
• The Couch Trip
• Future Diary: Complete Series
• Hackers
• The Hunger
• Nomads
• Psycho Beach Party

DVD

• 5 to 7
• 10 Cent Pistol
• Amy Winehouse: Inside & Out
• Babyfirst: Anytime Adventure
• Babyfirst: Fun With Friends
• The Beginners Bible: Volume 3
• Below the Belt
• Book Club
• Bottoms Up
• Castles in the Sky
• Catching Faith
• Clue Club: The Complete Animated Series
• Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood: Daniel Goes to School
• The Deadline
• Fast N’ Loud: Speed Demons
• The Fight for Water: A Farm Worker Struggle
• Flesh & Bullets
• The Front
• Frontline: Obama At War
• Gentleman’s Fate
• The George Lopez Show: The Complete Fifth Season
• Grey’s Anatomy: Complete Eleventh Season
• Hammer Film Collection Volume 1-5
• Hanky Panky
• Harry and Walter Go To New York
• Hoodies vs Hooligans
• Interface
• It Happened Here
• J. De Bono: Sharks
• The Jeff Foxworthy Show: The Complete Series
• The John Way Story
• Kantemir
• The Kid From Spain
• The Killing: The Complete Fourth Season
• Knifed Up: The Evolution of Cosmetic Surgery
• Lost and Found
• The Love Letter
• Madison
• Merely Players
• Mighty Machines: Super Pack
• Mike & Molly: The Complete Fifth Season
• NCIS:LA – Seasons 1-6
• NCIS:LA – Season 6
• NCIS:NO – Season 1
• NCIS: Seasons 1-12
• NCIS: Season 12
• Nickelodeon Favorites: Celebrate Fall!
• No Ordinary Hero: The SuperDeafy Movie
• Oz: The Complete Second Season
• Palmy Days
• The Phantom of Paris
• Rawhide: Season 2, Volume 2
• Rebel: The Complete Series
• Redemption
• The Riot Club
• Roman Scandals
• Rookie Blue: Season Five, Volume One
• The Royals: The Complete First Season
• The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe
• Seventeen
• Sir Ivan: I Am Peaceman
• Sister Code
• Soaked in Bleach
• Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things
• Strike Me Pink
• Teen Titans Go: Season 2, Part 2: House Pests
• TV Guide Spotlight: Animal Stars
• TV Guide Spotlight: Crime Stoppers
• TV Guide Spotlight: Game Shows
• TV Guide Spotlight: Westerns
• The Untouchables: Season One
• Way for a Sailor
• Welcome Back, Kotter: The Final Season
• The Whereabouts of Jenny
• The Wife Killer
• Wodehouse in Exile
• WWE: Batteground 2015

Given its reviews, few people are going to be chasing after Hot Pursuit, except to watch a trainwreck. Though it stars Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara, Hot Pursuit is supposed to be a shrill, vile piece of retrograde garbage that isn’t even funny. It also involves a lot of yelling.

This week, I’m going to call your attention to another great horror movie getting a collector’s edition blu: The People Under the Stairs. Wes Craven’s liberal screed against racial oppression by rich white people would be considered shrill if everybody in it weren’t having so much fun. A young boy with a sick mother teams up with Ving Rhames to rob the house of the white slumlords. Once inside, they find themselves trapped by the mechanics of the house and the weird characters trapped inside. It’s not really a horror movie in the traditional sense, but it certainly defies genre. It’s a hoot that I recommend checking out.

Blu-Ray and DVD

• Basilisk: The Complete Series
• Dig: Season One
• The Dovekeepers
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman
• Greg Allman Live: Back to Macon, GA
• Hell on Wheels: The Complete Fourth Season
• Hot Pursuit
• I Am Chris Farley
• Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norell
• The Knick: The Complete First Season
• The Milky Way: Every Mother Has a Story
• Northmen: A Viking Saga
• Person of Interest: The Complete Fourth Season
• Police Story: Lockdown
• Unfriended
• War Gods of the Deep
• WWE: The Very Best of WCW Monday Nitro Vol. 3

Blu-Ray Only

• Dead Silence
• Hellfighters
• The Monster that Challenged the World
• The People Under the Stairs
• Spring
• Still of the Night

DVD Only

• 2 Broke Girls: The Complete Fourth Season
• 72 Hours
• The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box / Day of the Falcon / The Way Back
• Alien Skies: Mass UFO Sightings
• Alto
• Blaze and the Monster Machines: High Speed Adventures
• Bloody Homecoming / Varsity Blood
• The Changing of Ben Moore
• Dance Macabre
• Denver the Last Dinosaur Vol. 1
• Denver the Last Dinosaur Vol. 2
• Deranged Killers: Stories of Psychos, Sex and Slaughter
• Division III: Football’s Finest / Wild Cherry
• Eclipse Series 43: Agnes Varda in California
• Every Breath
• Find a Way
• Foundations of Freedom with David Barton
• Frat Brothers / Note to Self
• Frontline: Secrets, Politics & Torture
• Garfield Holiday Collection
• Goodnight for Justice Collection
• Hey Babu Riba
• Homicycle
• Horror House on Highway Six
• Hunting Elephants
• i-Lived
• The Jeffersons: Season 8
• Kendra on Top: The Explosive Third Season
• Lalaloopsy: Band Together
• Last Days of the Nazis
• Law & Order SVU: Year 16
• Match
• Maude: The Complete Second Season
• Max Steel: Go, Turbo!
• May Allah Bless France
• Miles Away From Tomorrowland: Let’s ROcket
• Mythbusters: Collection 13
• National Geographic: Awesome Animals Collection
• Octonauts: Search and Rescue
• Operation Wild
• Patch Town
• Poltergeist Activity
• Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: The Complete Series
• Power Rangers Super Megaforce: The Legendary Battle
• Psychotronica: Volume 4
• The Rain Killer
• Robot Overlords
• Scandal: The Complete Fourth Season
• Shark Week: Dominating the Deep
• Strawberry Shortcake (a lot of double features)
• Super Why: Cinderella & Other Fairytale Adventures
• Thorns
• The Very Fairy Princess & More Imaginative Tales
• Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Catskills Resort
• Zack & Quack: Quack to School
• Zombie Resurrection

In the cultured world, Far From the Madding Crowd comes out on DVD and Blu. It’s a sped-up adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel that maintains a modern feminist tone, but remembers that Hardy never had much respect for any of his characters and routinely spun fine comedy out of their foibles. Handsome, not that respectable, and quick-witted, this is the type of movie I want more of.

Coming out in the gay world, Patrik-Ian Polk’s Blackbird gets a Blu and a DVD this week. I sing the praises of this spin on the gospel movie where a boy struggles between his homosexuality and his southern baptist upbringing, while his little sister has been kidnapped, his mother has been driven to insanity, his friends are all having rampant sex, and he helps make a movie with the college kids. Polk’s film is a deliberate one-of-our-own movies in the style of the rampantly religious gospel movie, which may prove daunting to anybody who hasn’t spent their time rummaging through the passion genre. I truly fell in love with it, finding it to be a massively witty and thoroughly enjoyable twist of the knife.

Joe Dante’s Innerspace gets a release on blu-ray to match the DVD release of Burying the Ex, which, according to ye old Dissolve, might be a case of the less said the better. But, Innerspace is a delight! Criterion’s edition of Jules’ Dassin’s classic noir Night and the City comes out on blu and DVD, which is a must see if you haven’t, if only for a young Gene Tierney. As a final note: according to The B-Movies Podcast, Lake Placid vs Anaconda, the Syfy original movie, that is the fifth in both serieses, is not really worth watching. If you’re going to watch any, it should be Anaconda 1, 2, and 4 and Lake Placid 1, 3, and 4 (unrated editions for all).

Blu-Ray and DVD

• Adult Beginners
• Barely Lethal
• Black & White: The Dawn of Assault
• Blackbird
• Brother’s Keeper
• The Casual Vacancy
• Child 44
• The Dead Lands
• The Divergent Series: Insurgent
• Do you Believe?
• Far From the Madding Crowd
• Flamenco, Flamenco
• He Ran All the Way
• Hitman
• The Last Survivors
• A Little Chaos
• Love Me
• Madame Bovary
• Murdoch Mysteries: Series 8
• Night and the City
• Orphan Black: Season 3
• The Salvation
• Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal
• Storm Fear
• Strike Back: Cinemax Season 3
• Toolbox Murders 2
• The Transporter
• The Transporter 2
• The Transporter Collection
• True Story
• Wyrmwood

Blu-Ray

• Big House, USA
• Blast from the Past
• Free Willy
• I Love Lucy: The Complete Second Season
• Innerspace

DVD

• 10.0 Earthquake
• 3 Headed Shark Attack
• The Affair: Season One
• Alpha & Omega: Family Vacation
• Always Watching: A Marble Hornet’s Story
• America’s Test Kitchen: Season 15
• American Masters: Louisa May Alcott – The Woman Behind Little Women
• Anarctic Edge: 70 Degrees South
• Any Day
• Appetites
• Beetle Bailey: Complete Cartoon Collection
• A Bunch of Munsch: The Complete Series
• Burying the Ex
• The Busy World of Richard Scarry: The Complete Series
• Chespirito Gift Set
• Chocolate City
• Civil Way Stalemate
• The Comeback: The Complete Second Season
• The Country Mouse and the City Mouse Adventures
• The Culpepper Cattle Company
• Death Machine
• Designer Pups
• Dora & Friends: Doggie Day!
• Dora the Explorer: Dora’s Double-Length Adventures
• El Chapulin
• El Chavo
• Elvis: Summer of ’56
• Every Secret Thing
• Faults
• Frontline: The Trouble with Chicken
• Gallows Road
• The Games
• A Good Day to Die
• Gundam Turn: DVD Collection Part 2
• Hood
• How to Get Away With Murder: The Complete First Season
• Humanity from Space
• I Dream of Wires
• Inner Demons
• Into the Grizzly Maze
• Jackie & Ryan
• Jungle Book
• A La Mala
• Lake Placid vs Anaconda
• The Last Heroes of WWII
• Last Tango in Halifax: Season 3
• Leslie Sansone: Walk to the Hits
• Little Loopers
• Little Princess
• Loony Tunes: Rabbits Run
• Madeline: The Complete Collection
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete First Season
• Masada
• Peppa Pig: School Bus Trip
• Phantom Halo
• Please Twins Complete Collection
• Pokemon Series: XY
• Pressure
• Rapture: The Beginning of the End
• Rescue from Gilligan’s Island
• Resident Advisors
• Rick Sebak’s Summer Fun
• Ride
• The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin
• Robinson Crusoe
• Route 66: The Ultimate Road Trip
• Seashore
• Sgt Bilko: The Third Season
• Single in South Beach
• Stand
• TCM Spotlight: Charlie Chan Collection
• Teacher of the Year
• Tormented
• UFC 185/186
• Venom
• Wasp
• When Calls the Heart: Heart of the Family
• When the Checks Stop Coming In
• The White Storm
• Wicked Tuna: Season 4
• The Wild West with Ray Mears

The indie world more than makes up for this week’s lack of high profile studio releases. White God, a not-so-family-friendly sociopolitical parable of a lost doggy trying to find his owner, and the girl who lost him, finds its way to both DVD and Blu-Ray. I fell in love with White God, considering it one of the best films of the year. Using genre set-ups over and over again, Mundruczo puts the lead dog through as much hell as we regularly put humans through, finding new depths to old tropes simply by using an innocent animal.

One of the worst movies of the year also makes it to Blu and DVD, Russell Crowe’s vanity project The Water Diviner follows Russell Crowe as the father of two kids who go to war in the Battle of Gallipoli and die. After an afternoon golden hour outdoor shower, and spurned by his wife committing suicide by pulling an Ophelia, Crowe finally gets off his ass and goes to Turkey to find the sons. Suddenly, almost everybody loves Crowe (and if they don’t, they’re EEEEVVVIIILLLL) and wants to help him find his sons (never mind that they may also have lost somebody). Oh, did I forget to mention that there was an Armenian genocide happening at the time? So does Crowe. It’s a gross and ugly piece of vanity that’s almost hilarious in its ineptitude. Lest you think this is just me blowing hard, Tobias gave it 1.5 stars and called it “tacky.”

And, an extremely intriguing near miss comes out this week. 52 Tuesdays was an experimental film made over the course of 52 weeks, filmed only on a Tuesday, following a mother who decides to become a man and gives up custody of his daughter while he deals with the complicated emotions of changing. I say near miss because the conceit of 52 Tuesdays would lend itself to following a person actually going through a transition on screen filmed over a year. But, the actor who plays the transitioning parent had already transitioned prior to the filming and the visual change becomes much less powerful than what it should have been. Still, there’s a lot of amazing content as Sophie Hyde isn’t just concerned with the parent but also the daughter’s not-always-pretty emotional reaction. This feels like an honest movie even if it didn’t completely gel.

Blu-Ray and DVD

• 009 Re: Cyborg
• Chicago Blackhawks: NHL 2015 Stanley Cup Champions
• The Erotic Rits of Frankenstein
• Golden State Warriors: NBA 2015 Champions
• Helix: Season 2
• Home
• Inari Kon Kon: The Complete Series
• Justice League: Gods and Monsters
• Life on the Reef
• Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau
• Miracle Mile
• Three Hearts
• The Water Diviner
• White God
• WWE: The KLIQ Rules

Blu Ray Only

• Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life
• Cherry 2000
• Ghost Town
• Hollow Triumph
• Monte Walsh
• Prime Cut
• Zone Troopers

DVD Only

• 52 Tuesdays
• Ancient Roads: From Christ to Constantine
• Barnacle Bill
• Beat the Devil
• Big Jack
• The Bugle Sounds
• Churchmen: Season 1
• Comet
• Dawn of the Crescent Moon
• Descendents
• Frontline: Outbreak
• Glass Chin
• The Homefront
• Invisible Centerfolds
• Israel & New Breed: Covered Alive in Asia
• Jackass Mail
• Kaboul Kitchen: Season 1
• Kid Blue
• Mama’s Family: Mama’s Favorites: Season 6
• Mr. Right
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 XXXIII
• Naruto Shippuden Box Set 23
• Our Daily Poison
• Revenge of the Mekons
• Runoff
• She Loves Me Not
• Strangler of the Tower / Monster of London
• Tango of Perversion
• When the Legends Die

Two essential indie movies come out this week on both Blu and DVD. Ex Machina, my third favorite film of the year so far, is a movie superficially about the Turing Test, but subtextually about science fiction’s inability to deal with women in any humanistic way. Marked with gorgeous visuals and one of the more compellingly simple-but-complicated plots, Ex Machina demands to be seen in the highest resolution on the biggest screen possible. The indie horror phenomenon, It Follows, also makes its feature debut. Filmed in metro Detroit, It Follows truly captures what it feels like to grow up in a sleepy suburb just outside one of the most dangerous cities in America, with a wealth gap truly dividing a city. Oh, it’s also a freaky horror movie that turns people watching into a survival tactic with a phenomenal John Carpenter-inspired soundtrack. The critically-acclaimed Clouds of Sils Maria also makes its way to DVD only (boo!!!). Scott Tobias gave this an essential viewing tag and a 4.5 star rating, calling it “a great midlife crisis movie” and “also a meta-commentary on contemporary filmmaking.”

The best movie to pop up is the Blu-Ray premiere of Mel Brooks’ most criminally underrated and under-loved feature: Life Stinks. Going through the late 1980s, we had seen a lot of rich people elevated to bastions of society. Life Stinks brings us back to the world of Trading Places, but twists the knife for a much more cynical era. Goddard Bolt (Mel Brooks) makes a bet with his competitor (Jeffrey Tambor) that he can’t survive a month while penniless in the slums of Los Angeles. Life Stinks makes no bones that being broke is difficult and almost soul-destroying in ways that seem foreign to the CEOs who control the wealth. Given last week’s comments of a certain dynastical presidential nominee, this concept just keeps finding new depth.

Cult Highlight: Troma’s War. The least known of Troma’s first Golden Age, Troma’s War is an essential assault of bad taste on American sensibilities. The infamous Lloyd Kaufman set out to satirize the 1980s glamorization of hawkish military tactics, as seen in Rambo and Red Dawn, making Troma’s War a lewd, crude, piece of ultra-violent nastiness that is downright hilarious when it isn’t being grueling. Until the James Gunn-renaissance, this was the last of Kaufman’s films that he had a true control of the Troma tone over. Highly recommended.

Blu-Ray and DVD

• Adventure Time: The Complete Fifth Season
• Adventures of Captain Fabian
• All Quiet on the Western Front (1979): The Uncut Edition
• Baby, It’s You
• The Black Stallion
• Blown Away
• The Crimson Field
• The Eternal Sea
• Ex Machina
• Hell’s Five Hours
• Here Is Your Life
• Hiroshima, Mon Amour
• It Follows
• King of the Gypsies
• Little House on the Prairie: Season Six
• The Longest Ride
• Man of Conquest
• Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
• Paces in the Heart
• Powers: Season 1
• Real Men
• Sailor Moon R: Season 2, Part 1
• The Salt of the Earth
• The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
• Shark: The Ocean’s Greatest Predators
• The Unwanted
• X-Men: Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut

New on Blu-Ray

• 24 Days
• The Andromeda Strain
• Beat the Devil
• Best Day Ever
• The Best of Everything
• Cellar Dwellar / Catacombs
• Extreme Jukebox
• The Fabulous Baker Boys
• The Game
• Gangs of Wasseypur
• Giuseppe Makes a Movie
• Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf
• The Legend of the Lone Ranger
• Life Stinks
• A Month in the Country
• The Outing / The Godsend
• Places in the Heart
• Real Men
• Rush
• Sneakers
• Some Call it Loving
• The Strain: The Complete First Season
• Troma’s War
• The World of Henry Orient

New on DVD

• 112 Weddings
• Above All Else
• Almost Mercy
• American Masters: American Ballet Theatre, A History
• Ancient Mysteries of the Lose World
• Appearance
• Batman: The Second Season, Part 2
• Beowulf
• Black Beauty
• Borderline
• Cedar Cove: Season Two
• Clouds of Sils Maria
• Dawn Patrol
• The Day the ’60s Dies
• Dino Dan: Cowboys vs Dinosaurs
• Doctor Who
• The Draft
• Find Your Way: Buskers Documentary
• Freedom
• Frontline: America Terrorist
• Galilei Donna: The Complete Subtitled Edition
• Goodbye to All That
• Hdden Away
• I Want My Hat Back & More Happy Stories
• Kruel
• Living Bible
• Living Christ Series
• The Magic School Bus: Season 3
• Mia & Me: Friends to the Rescue
• Mom
• Monster Farm: The Complete English Subtitled Collection
• Nana
• National Geographic: National Mall – America’s Front Yard
• Nova: Nazi Attack on America
• One Piece Season 7: Voyage One
• One Piece: Collection 13
• Poltergeists: Real-Life Hauntings
• Pound Puppies: Pick of the Litter
• Recently My Sister is Unusual
• Reckless
• Red Know
• Sanctuary: Quite a Conundrum
• Sebastian Maniscalco: Aren’t You Embarrassed
• Shadow World: The Haunting of Mysti Delane
• She’s Not Our Sister / She’s Still Not Our Sister
• Tales from the Royal Wardrobe
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Return to NYC
• Werewolf in Slovania
• WKRP in Cincinnati: Season Three
• WWE: Money in the Bank 2015
• Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell: Season 1