Welcome to Mandatory and ComingSoon’s weekly Binge & Buy, a digital HD, Blu-ray, and DVD column for the week of Aug. 20! Here, you’ll find detailed write-ups of different titles released this week, including a number of new releases like Brightburn, reissues, combo packs, and TV seasons, none of which you can live without in 2019. Click each highlighted title to purchase through Amazon!
Mandatory Superhero Battles: The Boys vs. The Avengers
Photo: Sony Pictures
New Movies on Blu-ray/DVD
Brightburn
What if a child from another world crash-landed on Earth, but instead of becoming a hero, he proved to be something far more sinister?
The Hustle
Two female scam artists (Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson) compete to swindle a naïve tech prodigy out of his fortune.
A Dog’s Journey
Ethan’s dog Bailey finds a new destiny: Protect Ethan’s granddaughter at any cost. His multiple lives are filled with love and devotion…and a few really good belly rubs.
The Beatles: Made on Merseyside (DVD)
The Beatles defined music and popular culture like no other band ever will, but how did they make the journey from Merseyside teenagers to international pop stars in the 1960s?
Aniara
The human race must leave Earth and begin new on Mars. After takeoff the ship Aniara is damaged beyond repair. Crew member MR (Emelie Jonsson) helps them cope with their new fate. As the ship drifts further the passengers begin to lose their sanity.
The Sun is Also a Star (DVD)
A college-bound romantic and a Jamaica-born pragmatist meet—and fall for each other—over one magical day in New York City in this modern-day story about finding love against all odds.
Photo: The Criterion Collection
Criterion Corner
Magnificent Obsession
Reckless playboy Bob Merrick (Rock Hudson, in his breakthrough role) crashes his speedboat, requiring emergency attention from the town’s only resuscitator at the very moment that a beloved local doctor has a heart attack and dies waiting for the lifesaving device. Thus begins one of Douglas Sirk’s most flamboyant master classes in melodrama, a delirious Technicolor mix of the sudsy and the spiritual in which Bob and the doctor’s widow, Helen (Jane Wyman), find themselves inextricably linked amid a series of increasingly wild twists, turns, trials, and tribulations.
Photo: Kino Lorber
Reissues
Babylon
This film follows a young reggae DJ (Brinsley Forde, frontman of landmark British group Aswad) in Thatcher-era Brixton as he pursues his musical ambitions, battling fiercely against the racism and xenophobia of employers, neighbors, police, and the National Front.
The Harder They Come
Lauded equally by critics and the cannabis-enhanced audiences that made it a midnight-movie hit, reggae legend Jimmy Cliff stars as an aspiring young singer from the countryside who records a song for an unscrupulous music mogul. When the song becomes a hit and he is cut out of his share, the singer turns outlaw and takes on the music industry, the ganja trade, and the government itself.
The Witches
A recently orphaned young boy is taken to England by his grandmother. At their hotel, he stumbles across a witches convention plotting to rid the world of children.
Last Year at Marienbad
Set in a luxury hotel in Europe, one resident becomes infatuated with a young woman and tries to persuade her that they had an affair the year before in Marienbad.
Dinosaurus
On the ocean floor off a Caribbean island, an American engineer building a new harbor sets off a blast that uncovers the frozen bodies of a Brontosaurus, a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Neanderthal man. The dinosaurs are hauled ashore by the construction crew, who are unaware that the giants are actually alive, in a state of suspended animation. Struck by lightning during a fierce tropical storm, the monsters awaken and prowl the island jungles.
4D Man
A brilliant physicist’s experiment turns his brother into a deadly, fourth-dimensional menace with the power to pass through any solid object.
Billy the Kid vs. Dracula
Billy the Kid has given up his lawless life and plans to marry Betty. They are paid a visit by Betty’s uncle, Underhill, who (totally unbeknown to them) is the vampire Dracula.
Cruising
A New York City cop goes undercover to catch a serial killer targeting gay men.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
An earnest attempt to depict the harsh realities of slavery, Harry Pollard’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was—at an advertised cost of $2 million—of the most extravagant epics of its time.
Photo: Sony Pictures
New on Digital HD
Men in Black International
The Men in Black tackle their biggest, most global threat to date: a mole in the Men in Black organization.
Ma
Ma (Octavia Spencer) offers the basement of her home for some kids to party, but her hospitality curdles into obsession, turning a teenage dream into a terrorizing nightmare.
Low Low
On their last day of summer, four high-school girls confront sex, violence and their uncertain future as they struggle to reconcile a rebellious youth with impending adulthood.
Burn
When a gas station is held at gunpoint by a desperate man in need of cash, a lonely and unstable gas station attendant, tired of being overshadowed by her more outgoing co-worker, finds an opportunity to make a connection with the robber.
Photo: Starz
TV on Blu-ray and DVD
American Gods: Season Two
In season two, the battle moves towards a crisis point. While Mr. World plots revenge, Shadow throws in his lot with Wednesday’s attempt to convince the Old Gods of the case for full-out war, with Laura and Mad Sweeney in tow.
The Walking Dead: Season Nine
In Rick Grimes’ final season, the survivors find that ruling is harder than conquering, as they try to build a new world.
The Spanish Princess
The vivid and captivating reclaiming of Catherine of Aragon’s story, which has historically been overshadowed by her infamous marriage to King Henry VIII.
Blue Bloods: The Ninth Season (DVD)
After Jamie (Will Estes) and Eddie (Vanessa Ray) announced their engagement in last season’s finale, season nine finds the Regan family questioning the future of their partnership.
NCIS: New Orleans: The Fifth Season (DVD)
The fifth season returns immediately after the assassination attempt on Pride (Scott Bakula).
S.W.A.T. Season Two (DVD)
Torn between loyalty to where he was raised and allegiance to his brothers in blue, former Marine Daniel ”Hondo” Harrelson has everything it takes to be an excellent leader and bridge the divide between his two worlds.
