Unfortunately, there isn’t much to talk about on home video this week, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Considering box office numbers were the lowest they’ve been for a Memorial Day weekend in over a decade, it’d probably just be better for everyone if you went and saw Mad Max or Pitch Perfect in the theaters instead. That said, here’s what you can expect on DVD and Blu-ray this week:
Upon first glance, Seventh Son bears a passing resemblance to last year’s The Giver. They’re both fantastical adventures starring Jeff Bridges, a female counterpart with an Oscar of her own, and a lesser known young actor in the lead. Unfortunately, at least according to the critics, the latter is somewhere in the ballpark of about 20 percent more watchable than the former (which, granted, isn’t saying much). Bridges plays Master Gregory, a knight who once imprisoned a powerful witch named Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore, the aforementioned female counterpart). When the witch escapes, unsurprisingly angry, Master Gregory has only until the next full moon to train his apprentice (Ben Barnes) to fight her. Critics were initially intrigued by Seventh Son‘s supernatural weirdness, and its cast was promising, but when everything devolved into a most humdrum “adventure,” folks started scribbling in their notebooks. The result was a 13 percent Tomatometer score; do what you will with that information.
Ballet 422 (2015) (86 percent), a well-received documentary following the choreographer of the New York City Ballet as he crafts the company’s latest performance.
Season two of Ray Donovan (2014) (80 percent), Showtime’s crime drama starring Liev Schreiber, is available on DVD and Blu-ray.
The Merchant of Four Seasons (2014) (92 percent), Rainer Werner Fassbender’s 1971 social satire about a fruit vendor driven to despair, is the first of three films available this week in a new Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection. The other two are political thrillers from Costa-Gavras, a master of the genre: 1970’s The Confession and 1972’s State of Siege, both starring Yves Montand.
The Loft (12 percent), starring James Marsden and Karl Urban in a thriller about four men find a dead body in the loft they share for their frequent trysts.
