May has five home entertainment release weeks instead of four, so there aren’t very many new offerings this week, but there are some very interesting titles including a bleak and gritty crime film (Triple 9) and an almost equally interesting crime caper TV mini-series (The Last Panthers, which has a theme song by David Bowie), plus an inspiring Jesse Owens biopic, and the campy box office failures Gods of Egypt and Pride and Prejudice & Zombies.

Theatrical Releases

The movie due out on Tuesday that made the most money at the domestic box office is easily the worst of the bunch.  Gods of Egypt (Lionsgate, “PG-13,” 126 min., $29.95, BD $35.98) is a generic fantasy, which could manage only a 12% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.  Even putting aside the absurdity of Northern European actors are portraying the Egyptian deities, this version of “Thor in the desert” is just too confused, and burdened with a surfeit of less-than-spectacular effects.  A thirst for fantasy and a potent marketing campaign got folks into the theater on the first weekend, when Gods of Egypt made nearly 50% of its entire domestic take of $31.1 million, but word-of-mouth sent these Gods of Egypt back to the sweet embrace of Osiris.

Race (Universal, “PG-13,” 135 min., $29.98, BD $34.98) is an earnest biopic about the great Olympian Jesse Owens, who demonstrated that Hitler’s doctrine of Aryan superiority was a myth at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.  Race does a good job of also demonstrating the racism that Owens had to overcome here in the United States, but in spite of a superb performance Stephen James as Owens, Race not only lacks the scope of production that the subject demands, but also the kind of directorial imprint that would have kept it a bit farther away from “After School Special” territory.

Genre movie fans can choose between Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Sony, “PG-13,” 107 min., $26.99, BD $34.99), which does have some real laughs (along with some rather standard “scares”), but which never quite manages to decide whether it’s a send-up or a mash-up, and Triple 9 (Universal, “R,” 116 min., $29.98, BD $34.98), a bleak, but fascinating crime drama with a great cast (Casey Affleck, Kate Winslet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Aaron Paul, & Clifton Collins).  Fans of modern noir movies will want to check out this saga of a group of dirty cops who are blackmailed into performing a near impossible heist.  Director John Hillcoat channels the hardboiled crime dramas of the 1970s (Serpico, The Outfit, The French Connection) and manages to create an atmosphere of evil that is even more all-inclusive and encompassing.

TV on DVD

It is a very slim week for releases, but there is one excellent series that most Americans may not know about.  The Last Panthers (Acorn Media, 307 min., $39.99, BD $39.99) was shot in seven countries and features an excellent international cast including Oscar nominee Samantha Morton and Oscar nominee John Hurt in a fast-moving heist drama inspired by the gang of jewel thieves known as the “Pink Panthers,” who terrorized European jewelers for a decade.  Anyone who enjoys a slick, well-produced caper film will find lots to like here.  An added bonus for music fans is the series’ theme song “Blackstar,” which was written by the recently deceased David Bowie.

This week’s only other live-action TV release is Suits: Season 5 (Universal, 692 min., $44.98), which collects the 16-episodes of Aaron Korsh’s interesting legal drama about a college dropout played by Patrick Adams with a brilliant legal mind, who, though he never attended law school finds himself working with as a lawyer and hiding his lack of credentials.

The lone animated series due on Tuesday is Teen Titans Go!: Season 3, Part 1, Eat, Dance, Punch (Warner Bros., 286 min., $19.97), which includes the first 12 episodes of the third season of anime-influenced action comedy series, which debuted in 2013.  Season 3, which makes merciless fun of what the Titans do when they are not saving the world, kicked off last July.

Anime

Eichiro Oda’s epic pirate saga One Piece remains one of Japan’s most enduringly popular manga and anime properties.  Oda’s manga has reached 81 volumes, and the anime series produced by Toei, which began in 1999, has now reached 744 episodes.  This week Funimation is releasing One Piece: Season 8, Voyage 1 (Funimation, “PG-13,” 300 min., $39.98), which brings episodes 257-268 to North America, which include the action-packed story arc in which Luffy must rescue his brother Ace from the World Government, which is determined to execute him.

Because of the collapse of Geneon in 2007, fans of the When They Cry anime, which is based on a murder mystery game, had to wait until 2009 to see the entire 26-episode first When They Cry series.  Now they finally get a chance to own the 24-episode second series, which was produced in 2007 by Studio Deen.  The When They Cry-Higurashi no Naku Koroni Kai: Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 600 min., Subtitles Only, $69.98, BD $89.98) includes all 24 episodes in Japanese (with English subtitles).

The other new release is Log Horizon 2: Collection 1 (Sentai Filmworks, 325 min., $59.95, BD $69.95), which includes the first 13 episodes of the 25 episode 2014-15 anime produced by Studio Deen and based on the series of light novels (published here by Yen Press) about a group of gamers who are trapped inside the virtual world of a MMORPG they are playing.  An earlier 25-episode Log Horizon series was produced by Satelight (and was previously released here by Sentai).

Vintage anime fans have a chance this week to acquire some classic series that were available here before.  The 8 Man After: Complete Collection (Discotek Media, 104 min., $24.95) collects the 4-OVA 1993 series from J.C. Staff that was based on Kazumasa Hirai’s 1963 manga about a murdered cop who was turned into an avenging cyborg that was the inspiration for Robocop.  This series was previously released here in the 90s by Streamline Pictures, but has been OP for a long time.  Certainly longer than the 1998-2000 post-apocalyptic, Gonzo-produced OVA series Blue Submarine #6 DTS Complete Collection (Discotek Media, 120 min., $14.95), which is now available in a new edition that includes both the Toonami dubs (in which certain dialog was changed to conform to the CN’s protocols), and the Japanese DTS and 5.1 audio track.