Happy New Year! With the holidays now a memory many of you may now be feeling a bit down. But fear not, as there are plenty of new releases to get you through the long winter ahead. From biopics to blockbusters, art house picks to action flicks, you’ll get a kick out of this week’s latest DVD and Blu-ray offerings! Take a look.
Based on a true story, this darkly comic biopic stars Tom Cruise as Barry Seal, a TWA pilot recruited by the CIA to fly spy missions over South America in the late 1970s. The thrill-seeking Seal jumps at the chance to leave his boring airline job, but when he starts running drugs for the Medellin Cartel, he quickly finds himself in way over his head and caught up in a complex and dangerous web of international intrigue. Sarah Wright, Domhnall Gleeson, Jesse Plemons, Caleb Landry Jones, Lola Kirke also star.
In 1973, tennis star Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) was already vexed about the relative lack of compensation and prestige women players received compared to the men’s game…and then came the boasts of aging but ever self-promoting pro Bobby Riggs (Steve Carrell) that he could still beat a woman in her prime. The circumstances surrounding the $100,000 challenge match that fixated the globe are cleverly chronicled in this semi-comic effort. Andrea Riseborough, Sarah Silverman, Bill Pullman, Elisabeth Shue also star.
Based on a true story, this powerful biodrama from first-time director Andy Serkis stars Andrew Garfield as Robin Cavendish, a British man stricken with polio in 1958 at the age of 28. Put on a respirator, quadriplegic Cavendish survives for many years past the three months he was given to live. Along with his wife (Claire Foy), he became an advocate for the disabled all over the world, developing a wheelchair with a built-in respirator with friend and inventor Teddy Hall (Hugh Bonneville). Tom Hollander co-stars.
Brad Sloan (Ben Stiller) has a beautiful wife (Jenna Fischer) and a good job. But somehow, he can’t help but feel like a failure. His existential crisis shows no signs of improving while he accompanies his teenage son (Austin Abrams) on a tour of college campuses and is forced to come to grips with the fact that his old friends have all reached levels of success and fame Brad has only dreamt of. Michael Sheen, Luke Wilson, Jemaine Clement, and Mike White (who wrote and directed) co-star in this insightful seriocomedy.
Still knocking around in his dusty Southwest community, acerbic and atheistic 90-year-old WW II vet Lucky (Harry Dean Stanton) needed nothing but his rigid routine to get him through his days. However, when a medical emergency finally forces him to confront his own mortality, he might have to finally turn to others for the answers he seeks. Captivating character study and elegiac vehicle for its lead co-stars Ron Livingston, Tom Skerritt, David Lynch, Ed Begley, Jr., James Darren; John Carroll Lynch directs.
Although canny master thief Zhang Dan (Andy Lau) thought he’d retired for good, the lure of boosting a priceless necklace proved too much to resist. Unfortunately for him and the squad of specialists he recruited for the job, the implacable French cop (Jean Reno) who’d dogged him for years wasn’t going to let his last opportunity pass by, either. Riveting remake of “Once a Thief” also stars Tony Yo-ning Yang, Shu Qi, Eric Tsang, Jingchu Zhang.