This Week in Blu-ray / DVD Releases: Southpaw, Pixels, The Gift, Max...

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

This Week: Gyllenhaal gets his Rocky on for Southpaw, the summertime blues of Pixels, and the insane last chapter of The Human Centipede.

► Jake Gyllenhaal gets buff for SOUTHPAW, throwing haymakers in this boxing drama from ‘Training Day’ director Antoine Fuqua. It’s hardly reinventing the genre (unless you think Eminem during the training montage is cutting edge), but there’s enough bite in the script and ferocity in the fight scenes to satisfy your craving. Gyllenhaal plays a light heavyweight champ whose life falls apart after his wife (Rachel McAdams) is killed during a confrontation with an up-and-coming boxer. Forest Whittaker is the trainer who whips him back into shape before his bout with the fighter who started his downward trend. This was the last completed film score by James Horner before he was killed in a plane crash in June.

► PIXELS was ripped like no other movie this summer. To the point its very existence seemed to piss video game fanboys off. It certainly had plenty of things going against it, not the least of which is it’s an Adam Sandler movie. But the film’s sole gimmick – video game characters come to life and used to attack us by aliens – is depressingly devoid of any fun or soul, or even apparent interest by the filmmakers. It’s mostly loud, brightly-colored trash assaulting your eyes and ears, abusing the nostalgia of longtime gamers. If anything, it should be the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming adaptation of ‘Ready Player One’: Just do the opposite of this, Steve.

► Joel Edgerton pulls off a hat trick for THE GIFT – writer, producer and director – and also stars in it as an old high school classmate of Jason Bateman who starts dropping by unannounced after Bateman and his wife (Rebecca Hall) relocate from Chicago to L.A. He also starts bringing strange gifts that hint at something ominous which happened years ago. Considering its modest budget this was a decent-sized hit for Edgerton, who is all over the bonus features which include an alternate ending, deleted scenes and commentary.

► He’s not quite mad, but this MAX is still pissed off enough. He’s a military dog who is traumatized after his handler is killed in Afghanistan. Taken out of service, he’s unable to relax around anyone except his handler’s younger brother back in the U.S. But he has issues of his own, and the crowd he’s mixed up in may have links to what really happened to his brother. A real throwback to family movies of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Extras include a look at real-life military K9s.

► Not enough ass-to-mouth for you in the first two ‘Human Centipede’ movies? Director Tom Six rectifies that with THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 3: FINAL SEQUENCE, eventually stringing 500 people together for the big blow-out to his demented but lovably loony trilogy. For the finale, a psychotic prison warden (Dieter Laser, the doc in the first film) comes up with an inspired idea for prison reform after watching ‘The Human Centipede 2.’ He wants to suture all the inmates together just like in the movie, and even brings director Six in to supervise. Seeing that many mouths to buttholes isn’t enough, though. The movie also throws in castration, coma rape, and a variation of the Centipede called the ‘Human Caterpillar.’

► Fourteen years later, I still haven’t fully figured out David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE. I doubt whether Lynch even has. And yet, I can’t turn away whenever I stumble upon it. For my money it’s his second greatest film (after ‘Blue Velvet’), and yet, it’s bewildering how surreal, distant and just plain off-putting everything is. It’s both hypnotic and horrifying, and I’m pretty sure it messes with your mind in ways I’m uncomfortable with. Criterion knows it, and goes all out with a special edition blu-ray that includes a new interview with Lynch, footage from the film’s set, and an excerpt from the 2005 book ‘Lynch on Lynch.’

► Produced and released the same year as ‘King Kong,’ the barely acknowledged SON OF KONG returns Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) to Skull Island after the tragedy in New York. He’s convinced there’s treasure still there, but instead finds the natives royally pissed off that he stole their king. With the island falling apart, they encounter a 12-foot white-haired ape they assume is Kong’s offspring. He’s far friendlier than pop, saving their butts from assorted dinosaurs and a big earthquake. The sets and Willis O’Brien special effects are still cool, but there’s a reason this rush job sequel is ignored by fans of the original. It’s the pandering kiddie version of a classic.

► You’ve bought ARMY OF DARKNESS countless times, what’s one more? The 3-disc Shout! Factory Collector’s Edition includes the theatrical and director’s cuts, fan-frickin-tastic commentary from Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi, hours of behind-the-scenes and deleted stuff, and the 88-minute international cut. The perfect primer for this week’s return of Ash and the Evil Dead.

Also out this week: