DVD Release List – 4/14/09

We're feeling a little nostalgic this week at the home offices of the DVD Release List, inspired by the motley lot of ‘80s video-store pluggers that Lionsgate is releasing as “The Lost Collection.” Want a quick round-up to the eight “Lost Collection” titles? Here goes: For the love of all that’s holy, steer clear of the painful Exorcist parody Repossessed, and don’t come within 10 feet of the Whoopi Goldberg/Jim Belushi road trip movie Homer & Eddie. (She’s a criminally insane fugitive; he’s a brain damaged simple soul. Together they’re irrepressible!) And only check out the aggressively mediocre slasher film Slaughter High, the teen monster movie My Best Friend Is A Vampire (with Robert Sean Leonard!), or the convoluted high school action pic Hiding Out (with Jon Cryer!) if you have fond memories of watching them on cable on a lazy Friday night.

As for what’s worth seeing? The “Drew Barrymore divorces her parents” melodrama Irreconcilable Differences features a clever flashback structure and some facile-but-amusing commentary on Hollywood phoniness from the writer/director team of Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer. The oddball Keanu Reeves vehicle The Night Before is also flashback-heavy, starting with Reeves awakening in an alley with short-term memory loss and then looking back over one crazy prom night. And the closest “The Lost Collection” comes to a buried gem is Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home, another Jon Cryer comedy—this one about a politician’s son whose gawkiness and horror movie fandom makes him a family embarrassment. Morgan Stewart is no classic, but it’s sweet and funny, and Cryer’s terrific.

If you’re not feeling nostalgic for the ‘80s, perhaps you could jump back to the Jane Austen craze of the mid-‘90s, and revisit the classic BBC miniseries of Pride And Prejudice, now available on Blu-ray with a cleaned-up image and hours of extras. Or retreat to the ‘70s with American Swing, a fabulously entertaining documentary about the rise and fall of the New York sex club Plato’s Retreat. American Swing is packed with frank, funny detail, as well as a tacit acknowledgment that that the good ol’ days weren’t always so good. (But then anyone who’s seen Repossessed could tell you that.)

8 Mile

Universal Blu-ray, $29.98

American Swing

Magnolia, $26.98

The Best Of The Super Mario Show

NCircle, $9.99

Cranford

BBC Warner Blu-ray, $39.98

Crude Impact

Docurama, $26.95

Decameron ’69

Televista, $19.95

Dengue Fever: Sleepwalking Through The Mekong

M80, $22.98

Fight Night

Peace Arch, $29.99

Hiding Out

Lionsgate, $14.98

Homer & Eddie

Lionsgate, $14.98

House Of Saddam

HBO, $29.98

Intelligence: Season Two

Acorn, $59.98

Irreconcilable Differences

Lionsgate, $14.98

Knots Landing: The Complete Second Season

Warner, $39.98

Malcolm & Eddie: Season One

Shout! Factory, $34.99

Mask Of The Ninja

Genius Products, $19.95

Mean Girls

Paramount Blu-ray, $29.99

Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home

Lionsgate, $14.98

My Best Friend’s A Vampire

Lionsgate, $14.98

The Night Before

Lionsgate, $14.98

The Pope’s Toilet

Film Movement, $24.95

Pride And Prejudice (1995)

A&E Blu-ray, $49.95

The Reader

Weinstein, $29.95

Repossessed

Lionsgate, $14.98

Skins: Volume Two

BBC Warner, $39.98

Slaughter High

Lionsgate, $14.98

The Spirit

Lionsgate, $29.95/$34.98; Blu-ray, $39.99

Splinter

Magnolia, $26.98; Blu-ray, $26.98

The Thirteenth Floor

Sony Blu-ray, $28.95

Wings: The Final Season

Paramount, $39.98

 
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