by Malakie Peters

It’s New Release Tuesday! This week we’ve got the latest from Edgar Wright, Kristen Stewart as Princess Di, Akira and the Beatles in 4K, and more!

THE ADDAMS FAMILY 2 (2021) (BD/DVD)

Everyone’s favorite spooky family is back! Morticia and Gomez are distraught that their children are growing up, skipping family dinners, and totally consumed with “scream time.” To reclaim their bond, they decide to cram Wednesday, Pugsley, Uncle Fester, and the crew into their haunted camper and hit the road for one last miserable family vacation. What could possibly go wrong?

AKIRA (1988) (4K + BLU-RAY)

In the future, Shotaro Kaneda and his motorcycle gang tear through Neo Tokyo, a city divided by growing tensions. But when caught in an accident, Kaneda’s friend Tetsuo Shima discovers a secret government project and receives psychic abilities beyond his control.

AN UNQUIET GRAVE (2020) (DVD)

On the anniversary of his wife’s untimely death, a man convinces her twin sister to help him perform a strange ritual at the site of the accident. But as the night wears on, it becomes clear that he has darker intentions.

ARTIFICIAL IMMORTALITY (2021) (DVD)

This cinematic documentary explores the latest technological advancements in AI, robotics and biotech, and poses the question: what is the essence of the human mind, and can this be replicated? Or even more unsettling, could we one day meet cloned versions of ourselves – clones which are better, smarter, and immortal?

AWAKENER (2018) (DVD)

Miguel is a federal agent of the Special Armed Division, and after experiencing a trauma, he leaves for a personal journey of vengeance and assumes the identity of a masked vigilante.

THE BLOCKHOUSE (1973) (BLU-RAY)

Seven men from different countries and backgrounds spend years trapped in an underground German blockhouse stocked with food and wine.

BRIAN WILSON: LONG PROMISED ROAD (2021) (DVD)

Join The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson on an intimate journey through his legendary career as he reminisces with Rolling Stone editor and longtime friend, Jason Fine. Featuring a new song written and performed by Wilson and interviews with Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Jonas, Linda Perry, Jim James, Gustavo Dudamel and Al Jardine.

THE BRUTE (1977) (BLU-RAY)

A battered fashion model attempts to escape from the clutches of her sadistic husband.

CANDYMAN III: DAY OF THE DEAD (1999) (BLU-RAY)

The Candyman is back, and he’s hooked on revenge! The legendary ghost returns to claim the last surviving member of his ill-fated family, setting in motion a horrifying and brutal killing spree. Only the beautiful Caroline (Donna D’Errico) knows the secret that can stop the terrible apparition once and for all in his deadly pursuit!

CLERK. (2021) (DVD)

From award winning filmmaker Malcolm Ingram (Small Town Gay Bar) comes an extensive all-access documentary examining the life and career of indie filmmaking icon Kevin Smith.

THE DRY (2020) (DVD)

Aaron Falk goes back home to his drought-stricken town to attend a tragic funeral. However, his return reopens the door to the unsolved death of a teenage girl.

DUNE (2021) (3D + BLU-RAY)

Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence, only those who can conquer their own fear will survive.

ESCAPE FROM MOGADISHU (2021) (BLU-RAY) (DVD)

As civil war rages in Mogadishu, rival North and South Korean diplomats are left trapped. With no aid from either government, their only shot at survival may require uniting with bitter adversaries to escape.

EXPRESSO BONGO (1959) (BLU-RAY)

Cohen Film Collection introduces this Fifties British rock and roll classic, a fast-paced story about a cheap, opportunistic Soho talent agent (Laurence Harvey) who always looks for the quick buck. He’s glib and he’s flashy, a bluffer with a ready talent for the quick double-cross. When he picks up amateur singer and bongo player (Cliff Richard) in a Soho espresso bar, he uses a little bit of luck and tons of chutzpah to transform the kid into a highly-regarded international singing sensation.

GIRL STROKE BOY (1971) (BLU-RAY)

Middle-class parents begin to worry when their son, who has shown no prior interest in women, brings home his fiancee.

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (1964) (4K + BLU-RAY)

Meet the Beatles! Just one month after they exploded onto the U.S. scene with their Ed Sullivan Show appearance, John, Paul, George, and Ringo began working on a project that would bring their revolutionary talent to the big screen. This film, in which the bandmates play slapstick versions of themselves, captured the astonishing moment when they officially became the singular, irreverent idols of their generation and changed music forever.

HIDE AND SEEK (2021) (DVD)

When a wealthy businessman follows a lead to find his missing brother, he dives headlong into a twisted underworld of squatters and vagrants that threatens to tear apart his family as he struggles to maintain his sanity.

HIVE (2020) (DVD)

This Sundance triple award winner is a searing drama based on the true story of Fahrije, who, like many of the other women in her patriarchal village, has lived with fading hope and burgeoning grief since her husband went missing during the war in Kosovo. In order to provide for her struggling family, she pulls the other widows in her community together to launch a business selling a local food product. Together, they find healing and solace in considering a future without their husbands, but their will to begin living independently is met with hostility.

HOFFMAN (1970) (BLU-RAY)

Peter Sellers gives a rare dramatic performance as Benjamin Hoffman, a lonely middle-aged businessman who blackmails a beautiful young secretary (Sinead Cusack) into spending a week with him. But what begins as a seemingly sinister ordeal will slowly reveal itself to be an uncommon bond of tender yearnings, dark secrets, and some very surprising realizations about the possibilities of love. 

INHERIT THE WIND (1999) (BLU-RAY)

Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott star in this remake of the dramatization of the 1925 Scopes “monkey trial”, in which a schoolmaster is tried for teaching the theory of evolution.

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (2021) (4K + BLU-RAY) (BD/DVD) (DVD)

In acclaimed director Edgar Wright’s psychological thriller, Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), an aspiring fashion designer, is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s, where she encounters a dazzling wannabe singer, Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). But the glamour is not all it appears to be, and the dreams of the past start to crack and splinter into something far darker.

LIAR LIAR [25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION] (1997) (BLU-RAY)

Conniving attorney Fletcher Reede (Jim Carrey) is an ace in the courtroom, but his dishonesty and devotion to work ruin his relationships. His wife has left him for a more dependable man, and Fletcher often breaks the commitments he makes to his beloved son, Max. When Max wishes his dad would stop lying for 24 hours, Fletcher suddenly finds that he can only speak the truth — on the day his career-deciding court case has to be won.

LOVE FRAUD (2020) (DVD)

This four-part docu-series follows the search for Richard Scott Smith, who used the internet and his dubious charms to prey upon unsuspecting women looking for love. The story unravels in real time as Smith’s victims band together to seek sweet revenge.

PREMUTOS: THE FALLEN ANGEL [2 DISC EXTENDED DIRECTOR’S CUT] (1997) (BLU-RAY)

A man living in Germany begins to have flashbacks of his life as the son of Premutos, the first of the fallen Angels. When he discovers a strange book and yellow potion in his garden, he awakens Premutos’ army of the undead.

SONG OF THE THIN MAN (1947) (BLU-RAY)  

At a charity gambling benefit aboard the S.S. Fortune, the tables are hot, the jazz is hotter and, before you know it, a bandleader’s body is growing cold. They’re playing your song, Nick and Nora Charles! William Powell and Myrna Loy return as the married sleuths, rousting suspects out of bed for 4 A.M. interrogations while trying to fathom the bebop argot of ’40s jazz jive. 

SPENCER (2021) (BLU-RAY) (DVD)

The marriage of Princess Diana and Prince Charles has long since grown cold. Though rumors of affairs and a divorce abound, peace is ordained for the Christmas festivities at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate. There’s eating and drinking, shooting and hunting. Diana knows the game. But this year, things will be profoundly different….

SWORD OF DESPERATION (2010) (BLU-RAY)

In order to save his fief, expert swordsman Kanemi Sanzaemon publicly assassinates his lord’s favorite concubine. Instead of being beheaded, he is sentenced to solitary confinement for one year, then ordered to serve as the lord’s bodyguard. This tale of honor, intrigue and deception inevitably ends in bloodshed and betrayal.

THIS GAME’S CALLED MURDER (2021) (BLU-RAY)

Mr. Wallendorf (Ron Perlman) is an iconic women’s footwear designer with a sadistic streak. His wife (Natasha Henstridge) is his equal in conniving and brutality, while their troubled daughter Jennifer (Vanessa Marano) is a social media celebrity trying to figure out her love life and world domination at the same time. The Wallendorfs are power-crazed sociopaths, and This Game’s Called Murder exposes their most outrageous transgressions with shocking savagery.

THREE WOMEN (1924) (BLU-RAY)

Pauline Frederick and May McAvoy star as a mother and daughter who find themselves competing for the attention of George, a handsome opportist (Lew Cody) who yearns to lay hands on the women’s $3 million fortune. Marie Prevost stars as George’s mistress, a sultry femme fatale who threatens to sabotage any romance that may transpire, further testing the strength of the primal mother/daughter relationship. 

TIME (2020) (BLU-RAY) (DVD)

The Academy Award–nominated feature documentary debut of Garrett Bradley traces the decades-long quest of Sibil Fox Richardson, an indefatigable mother of six and a fiercely outspoken prison abolitionist, to free her husband from the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he is serving a sixty-year sentence for robbery. 

TO SIR WITH LOVE 2 (1996) (BLU-RAY)

This made-for-TV sequel to the 1968 theatrical feature stars Sidney Poitier, recreating his role as Mark Thackery, an American-born schoolteacher who takes a job at a run-down multi-racial high school in Chicago and begins to teach the youngsters respect.

WILDLAND (2020) (DVD)

Following a tragic car accident, 17-year-old Ida moves in with her estranged aunt and her aunt’s grown sons. The home is filled with tenderness and love, but outside of the house, the family leads a violent and criminal life.

THE CAPTURE [SPECIAL EDITION] (1950) (BLU-RAY) (DVD)

From writer Niven Busch, the author of Duel in the Sun, comes an equally torrid sizzler, loaded with the intrigue and passion that marked the golden age of cinema. Cast with strong performers, this story of guilt and forbidden love still packs a jolt. Injured and on the run from police, Lin Vanner (Lew Ayres) confesses the sordid details of his life to a priest, which includes the death of a man he’d turned over to the police. Vanner also reveals that he fell in love with the dead man’s widow (Teresa Wright), only to have his past catch up to him.

RED ANGEL (1966) (BLU-RAY)

When Sakura Nishi is dispatched in 1939 to a ramshackle field hospital in Tientsin, the frontline of Japan’s war of with China, she and her colleagues find themselves fighting a losing battle tending to the war-wounded and emotionally shell-shocked soldiers while assisting head surgeon Dr Okabe conduct an unending series of amputations. As the Chinese troops close in, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Okabe who, impotent to stall the mounting piles of cadavers, has retreated into his own private hell of morphine addiction.

SHOCK (1977) (BLU-RAY)

Dora (Daria Nicolodi) moves back into her old family home with her husband, Bruno (John Steiner), and Marco (David Colin Jr.), her young son from her previous marriage. But domestic bliss proves elusive as numerous strange and disturbing occurrences transpire, while Dora is haunted by a series of nightmares and hallucinations, many of them involving her dead former husband. Is the house itself possessed? Or does Dora’s increasingly fragile grip on reality originate from somewhere far closer to home? 

THE TOOLBOX MURDERS (1978) (4K + BLU-RAY)

In a quiet apartment complex in Los Angeles, a deranged handyman goes on a killing spree, savagely murdering ‘immoral’ women with the tools of his trade – claw-hammers, screwdrivers, power drills and even a deadly nail gun! But these gruesome massacres are just the beginning of this landmark epic of violence and depravity that was vilified by critics, banned by censors, and treasured by splatter fans worldwide. Bit by bit by bit… he carved a nightmare!

VHS MASSACRE TOO (2019) (BLU-RAY)

In a post video store era (except for us!), media consolidation has led to the censorship and near death of the independent and exploitation film industry. Joe Bob Briggs (Last Drive-in), Debbie Rochon (Toxic Avenger IV), Lloyd Kaufman, and James Rolfe (Angry Video Game Nerd) take us on an adventure that leads from the last Blockbuster video store in Bend Oregon to Troma Entertainment in New York, all in an effort to examine how history keeps repeating itself from the video store era to the modern streaming. This film is a follow-up to the award-winning VHS Massacre documentary. Viva physical media!

THE WITCHES OF THE ORIENT (2021) (DVD)

The Witches of the Orient tells the tale of the Japanese women’s volleyball team’s thrilling rise and eventual gold at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.