This Week on DVD & Blu-ray (06-05-12)

 

 

Holy Smokes! This week’s batch of releases is bustin’ at the seams! I can’t remember the last time there’s been a list this long dropping all on one day. Granted, not all of them are worthy of your time, but there are some movies you may want to catch up with, like Andrew Stanton’s “John Carter”. That’s right. I remain in the minority as an unabashed supporter of the imaginative pulpy sci-fi feature that Disney didn’t know what to do with. Well, for a “failure” it’s doing better than the current Taylor Kitsch flick. The entertaining by-the-numbers Ryan Reynolds/Denzel Washington thriller “Safe House” is also out now, as is the Navy Seal testosterone-infused action pic, “Act of Valor” and you can also catch The Rock trying to boost yet another franchise in “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island”, a mash-up of Jules Verne and Skittle-rific CGI. I’ll be catching up with Gerard Butler and Michael Shannon in “Machine Gun Preacher” – we’ll see if it’s as good as its title.

There may be an absence of Criterion releases this week (just wait till next week!), but there’s still a handful of Blu-ray titles that are either special anniversary editions or brand new to the format. Universal continues to celebrate their 100 years with Collector’s Series releases with “Smokey and the Bandit, The Sting, and Erin Brockovich. While most of these are nicely-packaged and are cleaned up a bit, they are kind of lacking in the bells and whistles department. As for the 25th Anniversary releases of both “The Color of Money” and “Hooisers” – well, there’s a problems there – both those movies were released in 1986 and my math tells me 25 subtracted from 2012 is 1987. Same goes for “Ransom” which is supposedly celebrating its 15th Anniversary, yet it came out in 1996 (that’s 16 years, folks!). Hmmm…..still, great movies though.