It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and not just because of the holidays! Right now is a great time when all sorts of fantastic films are making their DVD and Blu-ray debut. This week offers up viewing options ranging from the latest Tom Cruise blockbuster to recent horror faves, documentaries, cult classics, and acclaimed dramas. Here’s a rundown of the most noteworthy new releases!
Following a botched assignment, Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) must retrieve three dangerous plutonium cores that have fallen into the hands of a terrorist group. Hunt is shadowed by CIA agent August Walker (Henry Cavill) as he’s tasked with preventing nemesis Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) from launching a nuclear strike that will contaminate the water supply of a third of the world’s population. Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson co-star in the long-running series’s sixth outing.
Raunchy comedic whodunit takes place in a world where puppets are looked down upon by their flesh and blood counterparts. When the former cast members of the 1980s children’s show “The Happytime Gang” start getting murdered, puppet private eye and one-time cop Phil Philips (performed by Bill Barretta) teams with human ex-partner Det. Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) to catch the killer. Elizabeth Banks, Maya Rudolph, Joel McHale co-star; directed by Brian Henson.
In 1952, the quiet of a Romanian monastery was shattered by the suicide of a nun…and the Vatican put the investigation in the hands of exorcist Father Burke (Demián Bichir) and novitiate Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga). They learn to their horror that a demonic entity stalks the abbey…and that their own lives and souls may soon be forfeit. Origin story/spin-off for the sinister soror of “The Conjuring 2” co-stars Jonas Bloquet, Ingrid Bisu, Charlotte Hope, and Bonnie Aarons as the Nun.
Spine-tingling suspenser stars Michael Caine as Major John Tarrant, a British secret agent whose son is abducted and held for a ransom of £500,000 in uncut diamonds. He embarks on a dangerous mission to rescue the boy, even as his superior (Donald Pleasence) has him placed under surveillance, believing that Tarrant may have staged the kidnapping himself. Delphine Seyrig, Clive Revill, John Vernon, Joss Ackland, Catherine Schell also star; directed by Don Siegel.
Spellbinding sci-fi suspenser, based on a novel by Robert A. Heinlein, is set in a small Iowa town where the residents are being taken over by slug-like, mind-controlling alien parasites. Can father-and-son government agents Andrew (Donald Sutherland) and Sam Nivens (Eric Thal) and NASA scientist Mary Sefton (Julie Warner) halt the invasion before it spreads any further? With Will Patton, Keith David, Yaphet Kotto, and Richard Belzer.
While in the forests of New Zealand, a hard-drinking old hunter (Donald Pleasence) finds the wreck of a WWII-era U.S. Navy cargo plane…and summons his young crony (Ken Wahl) and beautiful daughter (Lesley Ann Warren) to help haul away all they can carry. They don’t know that the ship also bears millions in gold bullion…and that the murderous salvagers who’ve been tipped to the discovery have no intention of sharing. Actioner from Down Under co-stars George Peppard, Bruno Lawrence; David Hemmings directs. AKA: “Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr.”
In 1960, Mossad operative Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac) fulfilled his years-long quest and apprehended fugitive Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann (Ben Kingsley) in Buenos Aires. The riveting odyssey of the capture–from the circumstances that tipped Israeli intelligence to Eichmann’s location, to Malkin’s gambit to obtain his prey’s written assent to extradition–receives a definitive recounting in Chris Weitz’s opus; Mélanie Laurent, Nick Kroll, Joe Alwyn, Haley Lu Richardson, and Greta Scacchi also star.
The life and work of late British fashion designer Alexander McQueen is the subject of this stunning documentary that combines home video footage and interviews with friends and family. Hailing from a working class London neighborhood, McQueen would go on to become a maverick and a genius who courted controversy with his bold and outrageous designs, as well as a troubled soul who would tragically take his own life in 2010.
An ironic and darkly funny documentary look at the “Cold War” mentality of the ’40s and ’50s. U.S. government films, newsreels, contemporary songs and Hollywood clips show America’s naive attitudes towards nuclear power, the A-bomb, and World War III. See children “duck and cover” to avoid fallout, tour custom-built bomb shelters, and get some sound advice from Hugh Beaumont.
Which of these will you be checking out?