Welcome to Mandatory and ComingSoon’s weekly Binge & Buy, a digital HD, Blu-ray, and DVD column for the week of Dec. 25 – Jan. 2! Here, you’ll find detailed write-ups of different titles released this week, including a number of new movies, reissues, combo packs, and TV seasons, none of which you can live without in 2019. Click each highlighted title to purchase through Amazon!
Photo: 20th Century Fox
New Movies on Blu-ray/DVD
Bad Times at the El Royale
Seven strangers, each with a secret to bury, meet at Lake Tahoe’s El Royale, a rundown hotel with a past. During one night, all will have a shot at redemption…before everything goes to hell.
White Boy Rick
Set in 1980s Detroit at the height of the crack epidemic and the War on Drugs, this film is based on the moving true story of a blue-collar father and his teenage son, Rick Wershe Jr., who became an undercover police informant and later a drug dealer before he was abandoned by his handlers and sentenced to life in prison.
Night School
When accidentally destroying his workplace gets successful salesman Teddy (Kevin Hart) fired, he can’t find another decent job unless he finally gets his GED. But two major things stand in his way: Carrie (Tiffany Haddish), a teacher with no time for grown-up class clowns, and Stewart (Taran Killam), Teddy’s high school nemesis-turned-principal who will do anything to see him fail.
Love, Gilda (DVD)
In her own words, comedienne Gilda Radner looks back and reflects on her life and career. Weaving together recently discovered audiotapes, interviews with her friends, rare home movies and diaries read by modern-day comediennes (including Amy Poehler).
Leave your cape at home: Non-Superhero Movies We Want to See in 2019
Red vs. Blue: The Shisno Paradox
A simple trip out for pizza ends with the Reds and Blues scattered and lost in time. Their ridiculous adventures in history inadvertently make them pawns in a war between Gods and Titans, which has been raging since before the dawn of time.
Snowflake
Take a dash of Tarantino, a splash of Coen brothers, a metric ton of pretzel-logic self-awareness, and a fast-paced series of humorously violent misadventures, and you’re halfway to grasping the magnificent German madness of this bizarre import.
Photo: The Criterion Collection
Criterion Corner
Forty Guns
Director Sam Fuller’s western features a showdown in Arizona between the Bonnell brothers, U.S.Marshals, and Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck), the iron-fist rancher who controls the territory.
Sawdust and Tinsel
Ingmar Bergman’s 1953 film explores the complicated relationships between a circus ringmaster, his estranged wife, and his lover.
Photo: MGM
Reissues
El Paso
After serving in the Civil War, an ex-Confederate captain (John Payne) is ready for a quiet life as a lawyer in peacetime El Paso, Texas. However, with a corrupt sheriff, a drunken judge and a crooked landowner running the town, he decides to form a vigilante group to combat them.
The Appaloosa
Screen icon Marlon Brando stars in a tale of vengeance against a Mexican bandito and his gang of “pistoleros.”
Topper Takes a Trip
To gain entry to heaven, a ghost attempts to reunite a divorcing couple as a good deed.
Sleepover
Alexa Vega stars in this irresistible comedy about four best friends who embark on a zany, all-night scavenger hunt against their ”popular girl” rivals!
Not Without My Daughter
Betty (Sally Field) has come to the Middle East with her daughter and native-born husband Sayeed (Alfred Molina) for a visit with his family, but soon the horrible truth about their vacation surfaces: Betty’s husband doesn’t intend to bring his family back to America…ever.
Tailspin Tommy in the Great Air Mystery
Tailspin Tommy is back in a second explosive serial filled with non-stop action, nail-biting suspense, thrilling stunts, and unbelievable special effects.
The Miracle Worker
The true story of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, a gripping battle to overcome impossible obstacles and the struggle to communicate, starring Melissa Gilbert and Academy Award Winner Patty Duke.
Terror test: Do Horror Movies Exorcise Real-Life Demons Or Exploit Trauma?
Photo: Universal Pictures
New on Digital HD
Halloween
Forty years after the events of 1978’s Halloween, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) now lives in a heavily guarded home on the edge of Haddonfield, where she’s spent decades preparing for Michael’s potential return. Myers manages to escape, leading to chaos in the same town he preyed on decades earlier. Laurie now faces a terrifying showdown when the deranged killer returns for her and her family – but this time, she’s ready for him.
American Renegades
A team of Navy SEALs is hired to salvage Nazi gold stored in a bank vault in a submerged town at the bottom of a Bosnian lake.
