Welcome to Mandatory and ComingSoon’s weekly Binge & Buy, a digital HD, Blu-ray, and DVD column for the week of April 9! Here, you’ll find detailed write-ups of different titles released this week, including a number of new movies like Holmes & Watson, reissues, combo packs, and TV seasons, none of which you can live without in 2019. Click each highlighted title to purchase through Amazon!
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Photo: Sony Pictures
New Movies on Blu-ray/DVD
Holmes & Watson
The Step Brothers are reunited, this time playing the world’s greatest detective and his loyal sidekick & biographer.
A Dog’s Way Home
This film chronicles the heartwarming adventure of Bella, a dog who embarks on an epic 400-mile journey home after she is separated from her beloved human.
We Die Young
In this action thriller, Jean Claude Van Damme stars as a veteran with PTSD who helps two boys get revenge on a cruel drug lord that rules a dangerous barrio of Washington, D.C.
Golden Job
A group of former mercenaries reunites to plan an epic heist: boosting a truck full of medicine held by a foreign intelligence agency to supply a refugee camp in need.
At the Drive-In (DVD)
From sleeping in the concession stand to working entirely for free, the quirky film fanatics at the struggling Mahoning Drive-In face uncertainty when Hollywood announces it will switch to digital projection for all new movies.
Photo: The Criterion Collection
Criterion Corner
Night on Earth
Five cities. Five taxicabs. A multitude of strangers in the night. Jim Jarmusch assembled an extraordinary international cast of actors for this hilarious quintet of tales of urban displacement and existential angst, spanning time zones, continents, and languages. Jarmusch’s lovingly askew view of humanity from the passenger seat makes for one of his most charming and beloved films.
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Photo: Insight Editions
Book Club
The Art of Missing Link
This is a lushly illustrated volume that goes behind the scenes of LAIKA’s new stop-motion adventure. Featuring concept art from the film’s creation—including sketches, storyboards, character designs, and much more—and illuminated by in-depth interviews with the film’s creative team, this is a must-have companion to the film.
Photo: Shout! Factory
Reissues
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires
Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) and Count Dracula (John Forbes-Robinson) meet again in this spectacular kung fu horror thriller set in the village of Ping Kuei. After learning about the seven golden vampires of the village, Hsi Ching (David Chiang), Vanessa Buren (Julie Ege) and Mai Kwei (Szu Shih) offer to guide Van Helsing and his son to Ping Kuei to free it from the curse of Count Dracula.
Hemisphere Box of Horrors
Though best known for their legendary Blood Island Trilogy, the Philippine/U.S. production/distribution company Hemisphere Pictures was also responsible for some of the most provocative and insane films of the ’60s and ’70s drive-in/grindhouse era.
Emmanuelle/Emmanuelle 2/Goodbye Emmanuelle
Her name evokes visions of lush sensual discovery and the extremes of forbidden ecstasy! She is Emmanuelle, and this classic and its two sequels changed the look and feel of erotic cinema forever.
The Iguana With The Tongue Of Fire
A gloriously excessive giallo that boasts a rogues gallery of perverse characters; violent, fetishized murders, and one of the genre s most nonsensical, red-herring laden plots (which sees almost every incidental character hinted at potentially being the killer).
Cold Sweat
After witnessing the sadistic ex-mercenary Katanga brutally kill a cop, Joe (Charles Bronson) abandoned his accomplices and left with their getaway car. One night, his peaceful life comes to an end, when the four men re-appear and kidnap his wife and daughter asking the seasoned ex-military Joe to get involved in a shady smuggling operation to save his family’s life.
Cleopatra Jones
Tamara Dobson is both beautiful and deadly as Cleopatra Jones, a federal super-agent on the trail of drug kingpins, targeting Shelley Winters as the notorious “Mommy.”
The Glass Bottom Boat
Doris Day stars as a widowed writer who is mistaken for a spy when she is hired to write a biography of handsome research scientist Rod Taylor.
Devil Hunter, Cannibal Terror, and Green Inferno
Three Italian cannibal classics arrive on Blu-ray from 88 Films, all of which were targeted as Video Nasties in England.
Man On A Ledge (4K)
Ex-cop Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) escapes from prison to plan the ultimate heist: steal a $40 million diamond from cutthroat businessman David Englander (Ed Harris), and in the process prove his innocence.
Photo: Annapurna Pictures
New on Digital HD
Destroyer
The moral and existential odyssey of LAPD detective Erin Bell who, as a young cop, was placed undercover with a gang in the California desert with tragic results.
Savage Youth
The lives of six troubled teens in a racially-divided town take a violent turn when drugs and broken hearts intermix. Based on true events.
The Browsing Effect
The seemingly endless possibilities of dating apps send a group of friends into a whirlwind of sex, jealousy, and self-doubt in this ensemble comedy that examines dating culture in the age of swiping.
Back Fork
Once hardworking family-man Waylon now struggles to hold his life together after an unbearable tragedy. He and his wife go through the motions of life, but all the suffering pushes Waylon to a dependency on pills and the destructive lifestyle addiction leads to.
Photo: History Channel
TV on Blu-ray and DVD
Project Blue Book: Season 1
Based on the true, Top Secret investigations into UFOs and related phenomena conducted by the U.S. Air Force, this thrilling series follows Dr. J. Allen Hynek (Aidan Gillen) a brilliant college professor recruited to spearhead operation “Project Blue Book” that researched thousands of cases, many of which were never solved.
Ray Donovan: The Sixth Season
Ray rebuilds his life in New York City in the newest season if the Liev Schreiber drama.
