This Week in Blu-ray / DVD Releases: Still Alice, Mortdecai, The Cobbler

May 11th 2015, 10:56pm

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

This Week: See how Julianne Moore got her Oscar in Still Alice, see Johnny Depp bottom out in Mortdecai, and see some lesbian vampires…just because.

► Ya, you’ll need to clear your schedule after STILL ALICE – it’ll take a few hours to compose yourself. In a (finally) Oscar-winning performance, Julianne Moore is just profoundly brilliant as a university professor diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. We watch as she deals with every stage, including leaving notes for herself and breaking the devastating news to her daughters that the disease is familial. The moment Moore sealed her Oscar win is when she delivers a speech at an Alzheimers convention, highlighting the parts she has already read so she won’t repeat herself. Watch alone if you don’t want to be a weeping mess in front of others. If, like me, you’ve lost someone in your family to Alzheimers, this is a tough one to get through. But Moore is so incredible here it’s worth the pain.

► Welcome to rock bottom, Johnny Depp. You’ve been heading here for awhile, and the ghastly MORTDECAI is the end of the line. Miserable farce has Depp as an art dealer hired by the British government to find a stolen painting before it’s sold to fund terrorists. It’s mostly Depp trying to be Peter Sellers for nearly two hours, limping from one unfunny, overly elaborate gag to the next. Gwyneth Paltrow and Ewan McGregor join the funeral. Director David Koepp has written the screenplays to many blockbusters (#5 all-time, when adding the box office), but he may already have 2015’s worst movie locked up.

► It seems with every new movie (not called ‘Grown Ups’), we’re calling it the biggest flop of Adam Sandler’s career. With THE COBBLER, we might have a new champ. Blasted from the get-go, it has Sandler as a shoe repair man who discovers a family heirloom which enables him to live the life of whomever’s shoes he’s wearing. How can this be directed by Thomas McCarthy, who did the marvelous ‘The Station Agent.’ And it co-stars…Dustin Hoffman? Seriously?

► Michael Mann releases his first film in six years…and it opens the same weekend as ‘American Sniper.’ You can guess the rest. With a budget of $70 million, BLACKHAT wasn’t just a bomb, it had one of the worst opening weekends ever for a movie in wide release ($1.7 million). Some blame goes to the marketing, which promised an action flick with the star of ‘Thor’ – like Mann has ever catered to that crowd. Chris Hemsworth stars as a computer hacker released from jail to track another hacker who is targeting a Chinese nuclear power plant.

► Of all the camp trash Spanish director Jesus Franco made, none is more beloved than 1971’s VAMPYROS LESBOS. With a swanky soundtrack and Franco’s standard wooden performances (his ladies were never hired for their acting), it stars Ewa Stroemberg as a woman who has dreams of being seduced by a vampire woman. When she travels to a remote island to settle an inheritance, she meets a Countess who lures people into her saucy nightclub act. And boy, did Franco like his strip clubs. Blu-ray includes an interview with the late director and a look at his other EuroHorror classics – ‘She Killed in Ecstacy’ is also out this week.

► With a Netflix series coming this year, WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER gets a deluxe new version on blu-ray, with highlights from its 10th anniversary, a live sketchfest from San Francisco, and – you know you want this – a soundtrack with extra farts. A movie basically ignored when it came out in 2001. Pretty much all of the cast (yes, even Bradley Cooper) will be returning for the eight-episode series.

► The original ‘Battlestar Galactica’ has been collected a few times, in various editions, for DVD and Blu-ray. Why another? Because BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: THE DEFINITIVE COLLECTION collects everything together for the first time – the original series, the theatrical movie, and the short-lived ‘Galactica 1980’ series. You also get the series in both widescreen and its original TV format along with four hours of bonus features. ‘Remembering Battlestar Galactica’ is a 45-minute look at the show’s impact. Like spawning an infinitely better version of itself 25 years later.

► Season 4 of BOB’S BURGERS sees Bob sub as a home ec teacher at his kids’ school, the family taking a stab at a Super Bowl commercial, and Tina attending a convention for her favorite show The Equestranauts, which is full of middle-aged men who call themselves…Equesticles. With ratings and awards catching up to the show’s early praise, this looks to be Fox’s latest animated show to run forever. But you still won’t find this DVD in stores – it’s manufactured on demand via Amazon.

Also out this week: