In the wake of the Oscars there is a bit of a slowdown in home entertainment releases though the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, a slice-of-life saga about the folk music movement of the 1960s, one of their very best efforts, debuts along with the star-studded crime drama Out of the Furnace, the gritty action drama Homefront, the cutting-edge cyberpunk anime series Psycho-Pass, and the first Blu-ray edition of the first American horror film feature.
 
Theatrical Releases
 
This week’s top offering is the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (Sony, “R,” 104 min., $29.98, BD $35.99), a bittersweet saga set in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s just as the folk music boom was taking off.  Loosely based on the career of folksinger Dave Van Ronk (though Oscar Isaac who plays Llweyn Davis doesn’t resemble the hulking Van Ronk), Inside Llewyn Davis is an occasionally humorous (“Where’s its scrotum, Llewyn?  Where’s its scrotum?") and oddly affecting film that managed a superb 94% positive rating from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.  Critics loved the film in part because it is a musical (with great musical sequences produced under the guidance of T-Bone Burnett) that doesn’t follow the clichéd story arcs typically favored in the genre.  Inside Llewyn Davis is an understated slice-of-life character study that anyone interested in folk music or what really happened in the 1960s will find very enlightening.
 
Other releases this week include Out of the Furnace (Fox, “R,” 116 min., $22.98, BD $29.99), a gritty, crime-infused family saga set in a rusted-out steel town.  Written and directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart), Out of the Furnace has an amazing cast headed by Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Sam Shepard, Woody Harrelson, and Forest Whitaker.  If this very violent revenge saga doesn’t quite live up to its impressive casting, it remains a potent working class crime drama, a honorable genre that can trace its origins back to Michael Curtiz’ The Breaking Point in 1950 and beyond.
 
Homefront (Universal, “R,” 202 min., $29.98, BD/Combo $34.98) also boasts a strong cast that includes James Franco, Winona Ryder, Kate Bosworth, Isabella Viodvic, as well as action movie stalwart Jason Statham, who plays a DEA agent who retires with his young daughter to an apparently idyllic southern town only to find that it is a viper’s nest of drugs and violence.  Homefront is a no-frills action movie that delivers the goods and deserves better than the 42% positive tomatometer rating that it received.  Homefront can trace its roots back to “clean-up-the-corrupt-cities” action classics like Phil Karlson’s Phenix City Story (1955) and Walking Tall (1973).
 
The Book Thief (Fox, “PG-13,” 131 min., $29.98, BD $39.99) was adapted from Markus Zusak’s young adult novel about a young girl growing up in a small village in Germany during World War II.  While the critics groused that it was too conventional, The Book Thief is not without its lyrical moments (aided by John Williams’ score), though it may move too slowly for some and indulge in too much sentiment for others.
 
Anime
 
This week’s top offering are Psycho-Pass Part I (Funimation, “14+,” 300 min., BD/Combo $64.98), Psycho-Pass Part 2 (Funimation, “14+,” 300 min., BD/Combo $64.98), and Psycho-Pass Complete Collection Premium Edition (Funimation, “14+,” 600 min., BD/Combo $159.98).  The Premium Edition features a distinctive artbox that holds all 22 Season 1 episodes plus two soundtrack CDs, a Criminal Investigation Division Logo Decal, a Criminal Investigation Division ID Holder, a Criminal Investigation Division Business Card Case, and a keychain.  Written by Gen Urobuchi, who created the Fate/Zero light novels as well as the 2011 anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Psycho-Pass was produced by Production I.G. and aired in 2012 and 2013 on Fuji TV’s hip Noitamina block.  This cyberpunk dystopian sci-fi series is set in a future where police can scan brains and detect evil thoughts as well as the probability that a person will commit a crime.  The show’s first season was a big success, and both a second season and a standalone Psycho-Pass animated movie are in production.  The series’ fantastic premise is well thought out, and the result is a science fiction anime that will appeal to fans who enjoy cutting edge anime sci-fi.
 
For those who prefer the fan service-filled girl-on-girl martial arts comedy combat of Ikki Tousen there is Ikki Tousen Season 4: Xtreme Xecutor (Funimation, “17+,” 300 min., $59.98), which collects the 12-episode fourth season produced by TNK that aired in Japan in 2010.
 
Also new this week is Accel World Set 2 (Viz Media, “17+,” 300 min., $44.82, BD $54.97), another cyberpunk series.  This one is based on a series of light novels by Reki Kawahara that features a VRMMO (an online virtual reality game) called Brain Burst that has definite real world consequences.  The 24-episode anime series adapting the Accel World novels was produced by Sunrise and aired in Japan in 2012.
 
This week’s other release is Pet Girl of Sakurasou Collection 2 (Sentai Filmworks, “14+,” 300 min., $49.98, BD $59.98), which includes the final 12 episodes of the 24-episode 2012 anime produced by J.C. Staff and based on the series of romcom light novels by Hajime Kamoshida.
 
TV on DVD
 
Slim pickings in this category this week, though there are some animated items of interest including Transformers: Armada The Complete Series (Shout Factory, 1142 min., $44.98), which contains all 52 episodes of the 2002 series that was the first co-produced by both Hasbro and Takara.
 
Also interesting is The Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour: Spotlight Collection Double Feature (Warner Bros., 382 min., $26.99), which contains thirty classic Warner Bros. theatrical cartoons that have been restored, remastered, and best of all, many of which have never released before on DVD.
 
Other animated offerings include a 3-disc collection of the popular 1980s show Dennis the Menace Vol. 1 (Mill Creek, 487 min., $12.98--note this is the animated Dennis the Menace series and is not to be confused with the live-action adaptation of Hank Ketchum’s comic strip that featured Jay North as Dennis), the 2-disc Flintstone Kids: Rockin’ in Bedrock (Warner Bros., 300 min., $19.97) and the single-disc Donkey Kong Country, Vol. 4: Legend of the Crystal (Phase 4, 90 min., $9.99).
 
With the debut of Cosmos, “real” TV documentaries may be coming back into fashion.  One of the more interesting of  such offerings for geek viewers is the BBC miniseries The Vikings (BBC, 177 min., $24.98), a fascinating and somewhat revisionist look at fierce Norse warriors of the early medieval period.
 
Also of interest is the multi-topic Big History: Season 1 (A&E, 442 min., $29.98), which contains the first 17 episodes of the H2 series narrated by Bryan Cranston, which attempts to tear down the wall between history and science, and in so doing, provide new insights that link our past to our present.
 
Classics on Blu-ray
 
Often billed as Hollywood’s first horror film feature, John Barrymore’s Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Kino, “Unrated,” 73 min., $34.98) was produced in 1920 and directed by John S. Robertson.  While its primacy demands that any true horror movie fan own a copy of this film, it is fairly creaky, even by the standards of vintage horror films.  Robertson loved his “tableaus” a little too much and as a consequence his Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde has a stodgy pace.  Mr. Hyde doesn’t make an appearance for over 20 minutes, though Barrymore does make the “most” of his transformation.  This version is not the definitive adaptation of Stevenson’s novella.  Rouben Mamoulian’s 1932 version gets the Victorian sexual repression just right--though it must be said that Barrymore attempts to do much the same thing in this version, it is just that Nitta Naldi is no Miriam Hopkins.
 
While this Blu-ray does have some excellent moments, unlike the superb rendering of Kino’s BD of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, much of the material presented here in high def simply isn’t sharp enough to deserve the treatment.  Still this is a very interesting package that also includes a look at a rival version of Dr. Jekyll starring Sheldon Lewis that was produced by Louis B. Mayer and also released in 1920, as well as a wonderful 20-minute parody of Barrymore’s Dr. Jekyll by Stan Laurel in “Dr. Pyckle & Mr. Pride.”
 
 
Tom Flinn

The opinions espressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.