New on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital: Snowpiercer, Life After Beth and Mad Men
The excellent South Korean science fiction thriller Snowpiercer made a splash just a few months back, when bizarre distribution snafus resulted in the film hitting theaters at the same time it hit certain on-demand outlets. It's too complicated to get into, but the good news is the movie has now been released on DVD and Blu-ray, for those of us who still like to keep our movie library on actual, physical shelves.
Best approached as a sort of wigged-out allegory, Snowpiercer stars Chris "Captain America" Evans along with an international cast including Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Octavia Spencer and Korean headliners Song Kang-ho and Go Ah-sung.
It's the year 2031, and the world has been plunged into a lethal ice age, thanks to some ill-advised atmospheric processing. The film's first grim joke is that mankind froze itself trying to compensate for global warming.
The world's last survivors, human and animal, live aboard the massive bullet train Snowpiercer, which ceaselessly circles the planet, thanks to a futuristic perpetual motion engine and a dozen other mad-scientist conceits. It's the film's second grim joke that mankind's Ark is a train.
Our hero Curtis Everett (Evans) leads a rebellion from the train's rear cars -- where mankind's dregs are kept prisoner -- to the front cars, where the elite meet. The film is structured as an old-fashioned A-to-B quest, as the rebels fight their way forward to the train's engine and its mysterious engineer.
The structure of the story may be old-school, but everything else is cutting-edge sci-fi weirdness. Director Bong Joon-ho conjures a sequence of startling, hallucinatory images within the train -- including an impossible aquarium, a drug-fueled rave, and a deeply disturbing kitchen car. You may spot visual echoes of films like Blade Runner, Brazil and evenThe Shining, but the film has a nightmare aesthetic all its own.
It's class warfare made literal, and the film's heavy gore factor might be a legitimate concern for the squeamish. (This isn't a family night movie.) But the audacious storytelling is truly something to be savored. We get plenty of big-budget sci-fi adventures each summer, with impressive Hollywood craftsmanship, but few leave a lasting impression.Snowpiercer is like a jolt of adrenalin. We're reminded: "Oh, yeah -- that's what great science fiction movies can achieve."
Extras: A critic commentary track along with about a half-dozen features on various aspects of the production, including a primer on the characters, an animated prologue, and details on adapting the original graphic novel to the big screen.
Also New To DVD, Blu-ray and Digital:
If you like your zombie movies filled with comedy and romance -- who doesn't? -- then consider the smart little indie Life After Beth, starring Aubrey Plaza as a sunny California girl who returns from the wrong side of the grave. One of this year's hidden gems, Beth didn't get much love at the box office, but it's a fun and funny movie with a playful cross-genre approach to our cultural obsession with resurrection stories and the zombie apocalypse. The ensemble cast, clearly having a ball, includes John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon, Cheryl Hines, Paul Reiser and (briefly) Anna Kendrick.
Sequel to last year's surprise action/horror hit, The Purge: Anarchy digs deeper into the series' intriguing premise: In a near-future America, citizens are allowed one night per year in which all crime is legal, including murder. For writer/director James DeMonaco, it's a canvas for exploring themes of class rage, wealth distribution and dystopian public policy. The movie stars from the first film are gone, but the story is arguably better this time around.
For those on a careful binge-watching schedule, Mad Men: Final Season, Part 1 collects -- deep breath, now -- the seven episodes of the first half of the final season of AMC's popular series. Mad Men will take its final final bow sometime next spring.
The black-and-white German import A Coffee in Berlin surprised everyone by taking the country's top film prizes in 2012. A gentle and funny day-in-the-life adventure, the film follows one rather lost young man and the several strange things that happen as he tries to find a decent cup of coffee in the city.
The Farrelly brothers' cult comedy classic Kingpin has finally been issued on Blu-ray.
The 2006 New York City romance Satellite has been reissued on DVD and digital.
The indie doc Mobilize investigates the issue of cell phone radiation,and the potentially detrimental health effects thereof.
Plus:
Annie Oakley: The Complete Collection
Autumn Blood
CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story
Earth to Echo
The Fluffy Movie
Le Chef
The Scribbler
See No Evil 2
Sex Tape
The Vincent Price Collection II
Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort
