This Week in Blu-ray / DVD Releases: Maleficent, Hercules, A Most Wanted Man

By John Law

November 3rd 2014, 11:31pm

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

This week: A wickedly good Angelina Jolie in ‘Maleficent,’ The Rock hulks out for ‘Hercules,’ and big boxed sets for Kubrick and Doctor Who.

► Currently the fifth biggest movie of 2014, and Angelina Jolie’s biggest hit ever, MALEFICENT had everyone aflutter about whether an early scene was a metaphor for rape. Or whether the story was full of political subtexts. Either way, this wasn’t the usual ‘Sleeping Beauty’ tale, and kudos to Disney for keeping things dark. Jolie is superb as a betrayed faerie who places a curse on the king’s unborn daughter, then finds herself growing fond of her as she grows older. Blu-ray includes five deleted scenes.

► Dwayne Johnson gives it his all in HERCULES, but as that shit blu-ray cover makes obvious, this is a Brett Ratner movie. There’s only so much you can do. The Rock brings some humanity to the big guy, forsaking Zeus (who, legend says, is his dad) and living as a mortal. But he has to face some old demons when he’s asked to train an army from attack by a warlord. Revisionist take on the story based on the graphic novel by Steve Moore, who died four months before the movie was released.

► Though he’ll be seen in the next two Hunger Games movies, A MOST WANTED MAN was Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last starring role. He plays a German espionage agent tracking a possible terrorist who entered the country illegally. Based on a John le Carre book, it’s a tight spy thriller from Anton Corbijn, who did the vastly unappreciated ‘The American’ with George Clooney four years ago.

► For THE ONE I LOVE, ‘The League’s Mark Duplass and ‘Mad Men’s Elizabeth Moss star as a struggling married couple who head to a cottage to find their spark again. There, they appear to find their doppelgangers who appease them in all the ways their real versions don’t. Shifty rom-com from first-time director Charlie McDowell.

► Christmas must be near if there’s another Stanley Kubrick collection out. Warner’s THE MASTERPIECE COLLECTION contains, well, half masterpieces (‘A Clockwork Orange,’ ‘Dr. Strangelove,’ ‘The Shining’ and ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’) and four merely great (‘Lolita,’ ‘Barry Lyndon,’ ‘Full Metal Jacket’ and ‘Eyes Wide Shut’). All have been released before, exhaustively, so the set’s big selling points are the two new documentaries ‘Kubrick Remembered’ and ‘Stanley Kubrick in Focus.’

► PLANES: FIRE & RESCUE is the watered-down sequel to the watered-down ‘Cars’ spin-off…which means things are getting pretty thin by this point. Another generic knock-off repeating the same story – an air racer shifts gears to join a bunch of firefighters, learning valuable life lessons, blah, blah. Dane Cook, Brad Garrett and Teri Hatcher lend their voices.

► The weird thing about HBO’s THE NEWSROOM is that it has never found a way to equal its first five minutes. Not even close. The series blew its wad with that now-classic opener, in which news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) gave a brutally honest summary of modern-day U.S. Season 2 takes place over five days leading to the 2012 election, in which the station faces a wrongful termination suit from an ex-staffer accused of faking a report about a U.S. drone strike. The six-episode final season starts Nov. 9

► The 11th Doctor gets his own massive boxed set with the DOCTOR WHO: THE MATT SMITH YEARS. The 16-disc collection gathers Smith’s three beloved seasons (2010 to 2013), the specials ‘The Day of the Doctor’ and ‘The Time of the Doctor,’ plus the anniversary special ‘An Adventure in Space and Time.’

Also out this week: