Welcome to Mandatory and ComingSoon’s weekly Binge & Buy, a digital HD, Blu-ray, and DVD column for the week of Jan. 15! 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: Universal Pictures
New Movies on Blu-ray/DVD
Halloween
Jamie Lee Curtis returns to her iconic role as Laurie Strode, who comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers, the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night four decades ago.
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
With their after school junk business, best friends Sonny and Sam hope to find treasure in other people’s trash. But when cleaning out the old Stine house, they open a locked book that frees a supernatural nightmare – Slappy!
The Old Man and the Gun
The mostly true story of bank robber Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford), who escaped prison at age 70, yet refused to retire from his chosen profession.
Speed Kills
John Travolta stars as a speedboat racing champion and multimillionaire whose secret life as a drug trafficker lands him in a deadly crossfire between the DEA and the Mob.
Mandatory movie battle: ‘Halloween’ (1978) Versus ‘Halloween’ (2018)
Photo: Criterion Collection
Criterion Corner
Notorious
With this twisting love story, Alfred Hitchcock summoned darker shades of suspense and passion by casting two of Hollywood’s most beloved stars starkly against type. Ingrid Bergman stars as Alicia, an alluring woman of ill repute recruited by Devlin (Cary Grant), a suave but mysterious intelligence agent, to spy for the U.S.
Photo: Shout Factory
Reissues
The Plague of the Zombies
In a remote 19th Century Cornish village, an evil presence lurks within the darkness of the witching hour. A mysterious plague relentlessly consumes lives at an unstoppable rate. Unable to find the cause, Dr. Peter Tompson enlists the help of his mentor, Sir James Forbes. Desperate to find an antidote, they instead find inexplicable horror: empty coffins with the diseased corpses missing! Following a series of strange and frightening clues, they discover a deserted mine where they discover a world of black magic and a doomed legion of flesh-eating slaves…the walking dead!
Four Times That Night
Italian director Mario Bava crafted a swinging sex comedy laced with dark undertones and structured it in the style of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon.
Knives of the Avenger
Mario Bava also directed this barbaric revenge picture flavored with the inky darkness and splashes of color that have become the maestro’s stylistic trademark.
Obsession
A 10th wedding anniversary celebration ends tragically when Michael Courtland (Cliff Robertson) discovers that his wife (Geneviève Bujold) and 9-year-old daughter have been kidnapped. When an attempt to thwart the captors goes awry, Courtland’s wife and daughter are never recovered. Several years later while vacationing in Florence, Courtland falls in love with a young woman who is an exact double of his dead wife.
Howling III
Long ago, the now-extinct marsupial wolf (a.k.a. Tasmanian Tiger) roamed the Australian Outback. Today, a werewolf colony that has descended from these marsupials has taken over the land. This race of human-like creatures roams the outback, feeding its need. The race for survival is on as the humans struggle to contain these out of control creatures.
The ‘Walking Dead’ movies: The Good, The Bad, And The Zombies
Photo: Orion Pictures
New on Digital HD
All These Small Moments (in theaters Jan. 17, on digital HD Jan. 18)
A teenage boy’s (Brendan Meyer) infatuation with a woman he sees on the bus further complicates his already tumultuous adolescence.
The Last Man (in theaters and on VOD Jan. 18)
In this chilling dystopian thriller, Hayden Christensen plays Kurt, a vet suffering from PTSD who comes home to an unholy, unruly land. The world is bad, no question, but local street prophet Noe (Harvey Keitel) says it’ll get even worse when a catastrophic storm strikes. As Kurt heeds Noe’s advice and readies for the apocalypse, he meets sultry Jessica, who also begins to believe. Even as the planet falls apart, Kurt finds his life finally coming together.
The Brawler (in theaters and on VOD January 18)
Based on the true events behind Rocky. Local boxer Chuck Wepner was slinging liquor in Bayonne, New Jersey, when he got the call. Chuck was going to fight the Heavyweight Champion of the World, Muhammad Ali. Wepner trained hard, pushing himself to the limit so he could go toe to toe with the greatest fighter of all time. His heroic battle with Ali was only the beginning of a wild ride that takes Wepner from the lows of New Jersey to highs of Hollywood.
Photo: Fox Television
TV on Blu-ray and DVD
Family Guy’s 20 Greatest Hits
Celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary with this outrageous collection of 20 song-and-dance-filled episodes.
