This Week in Blu-ray / DVD Releases: Endless Love, Cheap Thrills, Suits

By John Law

May 27th 2014, 12:34am

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

This week: My love, my love, my 'Endless Love' remake. Also: Another slasher classic, airplanes, volcanos and the new family classic 'Cheap Thrills.'

► I was there for the first ENDLESS LOVE 33 years ago. Besides the fact you couldn’t escape that unholy Lionel Richie/Diana Ross song all friggin’ summer, it served no purpose except to give creeps more reason to perv on 16-year-old Brooke Shields. The even more pointless remake has high school grads Alex Pettyfer and Gabriella Wilde doing the whole forbidden love thing, getting even further away from Scott Spencer’s original 1979 book into pure Nicholas Sparks territory.

► Shit gets pretty dark in E.L. Katz’s CHEAP THRILLS. Swiping spare parts from ‘Trading Places’ and ‘Kenny vs. Spenny,’ Pat Healy and Ethan Embry play old high school buddies who meet in a bar, and are then propositioned by a rich couple (David Koechner and Sara Paxton) to complete random stunts for cash. They start out innocent enough (who can get a woman to slap him first?), but the freaky stuff will get under your skin. It ends up a pretty sobering portrait of our economy and the toll its taking.

► What’s this, JoBlo’s own Jimmy O in the epically titled AIRPLANE vs. VOLCANO? Believe it. Sporting a man’s mohawk, our intrepid reviewer puts his life on the line to save Dean Cain in this latest cheesefest from Asylum Pictures. Which is a good thing, because the former Superman has to land a plane stuck on auto pilot while surrounded by erupting volcanos. Look, it’s from the company that gave the world ‘Sharknado’ – you already know what to expect. Robin Givens co-stars. Based on a true story. Yes, Jimmy O actually saved Superman once.

► Always a great sign when your movie is supposed to come out in 2012 and instead comes out a year and a half later. Surprising, however, when it stars Colin Firth and is written by the Coens. In GAMBIT Firth plays an art curator who devises a plan to con his prick boss (Alan Rickman) with the help of a rodeo queen (Cameron Diaz) involving art forgery. A remake of the 1966 Shirley MacLaine/Michael Caine caper.

► Can a horror film – even a terrible one – become a classic purely on one scene? SLEEPAWAY CAMP makes a strong case, because if it wasn’t for its notorious final image, it would be lost in the trash heap of early ‘80s slasher flicks. Teens getting killed at a summer camp? That shit was already old by 1983, but this crude, mostly terrible knock-off of ‘Friday the 13th’ delivered a twist ending that’s both eerie and hilarious. Collector’s Edition blu-ray includes three commentaries, trailers and TV spots.

► Those endearingly shady lawyers of SUITS deal with the merger of a high profile British firm in Season 3. Feelings are hurt, backs are stabbed, and U.S./UK relations are strained. Michelle Fairley, ex of ‘Game of Thrones,’ and Max Beesley join the crew, and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps makes a cameo in Episode 11. The 16-episode season just ended April 10, and Season 4 already starts June 11.

► Wes Anderson and The Criterion Collection go pretty good together. The company’s lavish DVD of 2005’s peculiar THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU makes the jump to blu-ray with a new digital transfer and new interviews with Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe and Jeff Goldblum. It borders on trite, even for a Wes Anderson film, but there’s no denying it’s a gorgeous looking movie

► Now that ‘Nikita’ has been retired, does that make Piper Perabo TV’s only action heroine in USA Network’s COVERT AFFAIRS? She keeps chugging along for Season 4 of the Canadian-made show, starring as a CIA trainee who is bumped up to the big leagues, working cases with a blind special ops officer she becomes romantically involved with. Season 5 starts June 24.

Also out this week: