This Week in Blu-ray / DVD Releases: What We Do In the Shadows, I Madman

July 20th 2015, 11:03pm

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

This Week: Vampire laughs with What We Do in the Shadows, another round of Robot Chicken, and Showtime’s global warming eyeopener Years of Living Dangerously.

► Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS may be the best of an admittedly small genre – the vampire comedy. It follows a group of vamps living in the suburbs, getting through day to day life like us, only with a few obstacles. When they accept a newly turned bloodsucker into their flat, he improves their lives dramatically, until his actions lead to the death of their elder. This little flick has made a lot of fans since it premiered at Sundance last year.

► The jokes can be too obvious, and the stop-motion violence a bit tiresome, but it’s rare a ROBOT CHICKEN episode doesn’t have a few huge laughs. Season 7 of Seth Green’s durable sketch-comedy series includes ‘Rebel Appliance,’ ‘Batman Forever 21’ and ‘The Hobbit: There and Bennigan’s.’ With the usual load of guest voices. Expect more Smurf-on-Smurf carnage, and the answer the question: What happens when Blade meets The Count from Sesame Street?

► James Cameron, Jerry Weintraub and Arnold Schwarzenegger are executive producers of the nine-part Showtime series YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY, which probes the human impact of global warming by showing personal, painful stories in an accessible way. Won the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary last year. The last episode brings Barack Obama aboard.

► The ‘80s slasher cheese I, MADMAN makes its blu-ray debut this week, prompting the question: Whatever happened to Jenny Wright? This was her first notable flick after ‘Near Dark’ before the work dried up. Her last movie was in 1998. A cult classic like ‘Near Dark,’ and she hasn’t done anything in 17 years? She isn’t even part of the blu-ray commentary? Anyway, in this deservedly forgotten dud, she’s a bookstore clerk who finds the events of the horror book she’s reading starting to take form in real life.

► The chop socky KUNG FU KILLER adheres pretty close to its title. Someone is murdering Hong Kong’s top martial arts fighters. The cops are stumped, of course, and require the help of a convicted killer and kung fu master (Donnie Yen) to find their man. Naturally, he becomes the next target. No matter how dopey the story, Yen will deliver at least one amazing fight scene per movie.

► If you just bought the special editions Criterion puts out every week, you’d have a pretty amazing blu-ray collection after just one year. This week they turn their attention to Stephen Frears’ 1985 Thatcher-era classic MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE, with Gord Warnecke as a young Pakistani man in London who reunites and starts a relationship with an old friend, street punk Johnny (Daniel Day Lewis, in his breakout role). They form a partnership and manage a launderette, but their political and cultural differences threaten everything. Blu-ray includes a new conversation with Frears and essay by journalist Sarfraz Manzoor.

► Robert Duvall makes a rare appearance in the director’s chair for WILD HORSES, which he also wrote and stars in. He plays a wealthy ranch owner who becomes the subject of a 15-year-old murder case after a Texas Ranger re-opens the files. James Franco and Josh Hartnett co-star. Went straight to video-on-demand last month.

► Years after everyone stopped caring about V.C. Andrews, Lifetime went and made new movies based on the late author’s Dollanganger Series – of which ‘Flowers in the Attic’ is still in your mom’s closet somewhere. SEEDS OF YESTERDAY concludes the tale of siblings forced to live in their demented grandma’s attic. Takes place 13 years after the third entry.

Also out this week: