This Week in Blu-ray / DVD Releases: Fifty Shades of Grey, Selma, Lost River

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

This Week: Fifty Shades of Grey for Mother’s Day? Why not. Also: Selma marches onto blu, and Ryan Gosling goes a bit loony with Lost River.

► Not even three months after it ruined Valentine’s Day for a lot of us, FIFTY SHADES OF GREY continues the torment on blu-ray this week. Even with lowered expectations, this adaptation of the inexplicably popular smut novel (by default, making E.L. James a hero to self-published authors everywhere) was either too tepid for fans of the book, or too sleazy for groups aghast at all this talk of bondage and spanking. For everyone else, it’s just a stale retread of ‘9 1/2 Weeks’ and the far superior ‘Secretary,’ with dialogue that had non-book devotees howling. Unrated blu-ray adds three minutes, along with featurettes on the World of Fifty Shades of Grey and a set tour of Christian’s apartment. Still the fourth-biggest movie of 2015 as of this weekend, so don’t put the whips away just yet: ‘Fifty Shades Darker’ arrives in 2017, and ‘Fifty Shades Freed’ in 2018.

► Probably the biggest load of crap surrounding this year’s Oscars was that SELMA had no chance to win Best Picture because The Academy purged its black guilt last year. No, it had no chance at Best Picture because it wasn’t nearly as good as ’12 Years a Slave.’ Ava DuVernay’s historical drama on Martin Luther King’s defiant march from Selma to Montgomery to fight for equal voting rights is certainly mannered and relevant, but as a movie it leans a bit dry and sheds little new light on King, ably played by David Oyelowo. It has the Oprah seal of approval, which is a sure sign it will tackle important stuff in a mostly sterile way. A polished movie, certainly, but not a transformative one.

► For his first film as director, Ryan Gosling goes full David Lynch with the trippy LOST RIVER. Which, of course, means describing the plot is pointless, since you’ll still be scratching your head when the credits start rolling. But somewhere in this puzzle, Christina Hendricks plays a struggling single mom who enters a weird underworld of Detroit to save her son. Cannes greeted it with boos and applause. Made a token appearance in theatres last month, where it made a whopping $33,000. Matt Smith and Eva Mendes co-star.

► Routinely hailed as the best new show of the year its first season, Showtime’s MASTERS OF SEX lost some luster (and ratings) for Season 2. Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan continue their human sexuality research as the real-life Masters & Johnson during the late ‘50s, with civil rights and the sexual revolution hanging in the air. That involves banging each other for ‘research,’ and all the consequences it entails. Allison Janney, who provided some of Season 1’s best moments, is only around for two episodes. Sarah Silverman drops by for two episodes. Season 3 starts in July.

► Among the biggest omissions at this year’s Oscars: No Best Actor nomination for Timothy Spall for MR. TURNER. The veteran British actor got the biggest acclaim of his career in Mike Leigh’s bio-pic about the great English painter J.M.W. Turner, who was punk long before punk was invented. During the last years of his life he raises hell while fraternizing with the country’s higher-ups.

► Jude Law goes deep for BLACK SEA, a submarine thriller from ‘The Last King of Scotland’ director Kevin Macdonald. After losing his job with a salvage company, Law is told by a colleague about a sunken German U-Boat containing a stash of gold which no one has been able to retrieve. He forms a crew of British and Russian men to find it, and it doesn’t take long for everyone to hate each other. A few untimely deaths add to the tension, until no one trusts each other. British-made flick made a quick appearance in U.S. theatres in January and quickly sunk.

► A slew of Steven Spielberg movies hit blu-ray as stand alone titles for the first time this week (‘The Sugarland Express,’ ‘1941’, ‘Always’), but his made-for-TV classic DUEL is the only one that matters. Made in 1971, it’s a primer on everything he would soon perfect – the brilliant editing, the slow-building tension, the intense action. Aside from Dennis Weaver’s wardrobe, it’s ageless. Weaver plays a hapless salesman tormented by a menacing truck while driving through the California desert. Spielberg’s first movie is like a masterful blueprint for ‘Jaws’ four years later, and remains a terrific thriller. Blu-ray includes a conversation with Spielberg and a segment on Richard Matheson’s script, who based it on a real-life incident he had on the highway in the early ’60s.

► Shout! Factory’s Collector’s Edition of MAD MAX (because the 100 or so previous versions weren’t collectible, I guess) includes new interviews with Mel Gibson and Joanne Samuel, who played his wife. You also get the ‘Mad Max: The Film Phenomenon’ featurette from previous versions, and both the original Australian and dubbed English audios. The movie itself never grows old – one of the most groundbreaking action films ever. No matter what the new version offers (which is apparently everything), the low-budget grime and intensity of George Miller’s first movie can’t be replicated.

Also out this week: