It’s a week of danger and duplicity in home entertainment releases.
Quentin Tarantino’s epic length The Hateful Eight plays out like a Western twist on a whodunit (or who’s gonna do it), while remake Point Break (above) sees a cop go undercover and skydiving to catch a criminal. Finally, documentary Cartel Land explores the Mexican drug cartels’ diabolical doings and those who seek to stop them from both sides of the border.
Now for trailers and details — and your comments!
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($39.99 Blu-ray, $29.98 DVD; TWC)
Quentin Tarantino’s latest is something of a chamber piece — a whodunit Western in which a wanted woman, Daisy Domergue (Oscar nominee Jennifer Jason Leigh), is soon to be turned into authorities by bounty hunter John Ruth. However, a snowstorm traps them in a bar where one or more of the characters peopling the place, including a fellow bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren, a couple of racist Confederates, and a hangman, may actually be members of Domergue’s gang and on a mission to free her. This is a dialogue-rich movie, and does strike some cringe-worthy violent chords, but it’s also darkly comic and with some twists and at least one cameo most reviews haven’t given away… Extras include a pair of brief featurettes.
https://youtu.be/gkYBbBK0qoM
($29.99 DVD; Paramount)
A perfect double-feature companion piece with the excellent and intense Sicario, director Michael Heineman’s Oscar-nominated documentary charts the efforts of two groups – one on the USA side of the border, the other in Mexico — dedicated to fighting Mexican drug cartels. In Mexico, Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles leads citizens’ vigilante group Autodefensas, which seeks to liberate towns terrorized or overtaken by the drug cartels but must also grapple with their own corrupt government and police force. Meanwhile, across the border, U.S. military vet Tim Foley and his Arizona Border Recon patrol attempt to staunch the flow of drug running and, in some cases, immigrants desperate to get the hell outta dodge. Heineman truly manages to get deep inside the tense and sometimes genuinely dangerous situations here. Impressive, gripping, and at times heartbreaking stuff. Extras include deleted/extended scenes, a commentary, and featurettes.
($44.95 3D Blu-ray, $28.98 DVD; Warner Bros)
This remake of Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 cult classic about a Robin Hood-esque thief, Bodhi, and his band of thrill seekers and the undercover cop, Johnny Utah, tasked with bringing them in puts the focus on the adrenaline junkie exploits/heists like snowboarding, wingsuit flights, and more. Sure, it lacks the memorable aspects, charm, and actors of the first one (Reeves and Swayze!), but hey, it’s 3D! Extras include deleted scenes and short featurettes about the action scenes.
ALSO OUT:
Concussion
Daredevil Season 2 (on Netflix)
Archer: Season 6
Antony Nguyen
Is he seeing anybody
MarionPaige
I read somewhere there is a three hour version of The Hateful Eight. The Horror!
The Hateful Eight “lifts” the most interesting details from the movie The Great Silence and slaps them onto a story that is boring and makes no sense. For example,
In The Great Silence,
As in The Hateful Eight,
A stagecoach rolls up to a man claiming to be the new sheriff of a town who is in the snow covered woods without a horse.
Ummmm Yeah
Hateful Eight was awful. Don’t waste your time or money.
AtticusBennett
I’ve seen The Hateful Eight four times already, and I will be buying it on blu-ray immediately. I know many didn’t like it, i thought it was decadent. A stellar cast giving utterly ACE performances, terrific dialogue, and utterly impeccable filmmaking. Scored and designed and shot gorgeously.
and Samuel L Jackson has the single greatest monologue of any actor in any film in 2015.
too long? i’ll take MORE. for me, as a matter of personal taste, i could listen to Tarantino conversations for hours and hours and hours and not get bored.