This Week in Blu-ray / DVD Releases: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Strain

By John Law

December 2nd 2014, 12:44am

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

This week: The Apes rise again, The Strain spreads some vampire cooties, and the end is near for Justified.

► The top-to-bottom fantastic DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is the new high-water mark for the entire franchise – an intense, emotional, and expertly made morality tale in which some CGI simians are some of the most fleshed out, memorable characters in any movie this year. It’s also an ‘Aliens’ caliber sequel to an already classic first film, picking up from that cliffhanger of an ending to show Caesar leading a new generation of apes in the woods after the collapse of the human race. Or so they thought. When a group of survivors led by Jason Clarke encounter the clan, tensions rise, war is planned, and the motto ‘Ape Shall Not Kill Ape’ is put to the test. More prestigious stuff will get all the praise, but make no mistake – this is one of the best movies of 2014.

► As expected, THE STRAIN was one of the biggest new shows of the year. Not as expected, it dropped way too many balls to be the killer adaptation of the Guillermo Del Toro/Chuck Hogan horror trilogy many of us anticipated. When it’s good, it dishes up the vampire goods with skill and more than a few scares. Corey Stoll makes a decent Eph Goodweather, the CDC doc who slowly realizes a virus which wiped out all passengers on a plane is actually the arrival of a vampire plague, and David Bradley is great as the Holocaust survivor who has dealt with the vampire ‘master’ before. But some of the writing and supporting cast is awful, and the reveal of the main vampire might have you in hysterics. Still, just like Book 2 topped Book 1, the second season should be better and much darker.

► The next-to-last fifth season of JUSTIFIED pits Raylan against Florida’s Crowe family, who have designs on expanding their shady business to Harlan. Meanwhile, Boyd deals with scumbags worse than him while trying to get his fiancée Ava out of prison. Michael Rapaport joins the gang as backwoods bad-ass Daryl Crowe, while the whip smart writing continues its mix of sudden violence with laugh-out-loud great lines. ‘Justified’ somehow hasn’t lost a step.

► A bit of ‘Tron’ meets ‘Inception’ for Ari Folman’s adventurous THE CONGRESS, in which Robin Wright plays a fictional version of herself. With her career in decline and her son suffering from a disorder that’s expensive to treat, she agrees to sell the digital rights of her likeness. Twenty years later, her alias has become the huge star of a sci-fi franchise, in which (with the help of chemicals) viewers can become animated avatars of themselves. A mindbender with Wright, on a huge roll lately, confronting Hollywood’s ageism in a fascinating way.

► We’re up to Season 17, but this is actually the 18th boxed set for THE SIMPSONS – Season 20 was released immediately back in 2010. This is the 2005/06 season, which is basically The Simpsons we have today: A handful of good to great episodes, but no outright classics. Includes what was supposed to be the Season 16 finale (‘The Girl Who Slept Too Little’), the Emmy-winning ‘The Seemingly Never-Ending Story,’ and an ‘A.I.’ riff in the Treehouse of Horror episode in which the family buys a robot son after Bart falls into a coma.

► By Season 6, HAPPY DAYS was a full-blown kiddie show (that’s right…Fonz jumped the shark the previous season). The increasingly juvenile writing saw the return of Robin Williams as Mork (who had his own show starting that season), an episode in which Fonz becomes allergic to girls, and a mafia-themed episode titled (brace yourself) ‘The Godfonzer.’ Kids ate it up, but the show’s ‘American Graffiti’-inspired roots were a memory at this point. The final season the show finished in the Top 10.

► Comedy Central’s awesomely crass BROAD CITY has Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson as two best friends stumbling through life in New York with the help of clumsy sex, toilet humor, and lots of weed. One of the executive producers is Amy Poehler, who appears in the season finale. Amy Sedaris, Seth Morris and Janeane Garofalo also show up throughout this 10-episode first season. Based on a web series which ran from 2009 to 2011, so yes kids, this shit does pay off sometimes. One of this year’s under-the-radar comedy gems.

► Well, this sure is an awkward time to debut a Bill Cosby movie on blu-ray. In 1972’s HICKEY & BOGGS, the future America’s Dad teams with his ‘I Spy’ co-star Robert Culp as two private eyes hired to find a missing girl, which leads to thieves and a $400,000 stash. Walter Hill’s first screenplay, and the only movie Culp ever directed. James Woods makes one of his earliest film appearances.

Also out this week: