‘22 Jump Street’ sequel makes fun of everything
22 Jump Street
Sony, $30.99; Blu-ray, $40.99
Available on VOD Tuesday
Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum re-team with most of their “21 Jump Street†cast and crew — including screenwriter Michael Bacall and co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — to make a meta-comedy that pokes fun of its own sequelitis. As Hill and Tatum’s undercover cop characters move from posing as high schoolers to posing as college students, they crack inside jokes about the budget of the movie and keep sighing that the people watching in the theater just want them to do the same thing they did the last time. The result is a movie that’s familiar by design but still funny. Hill and Tatum remain a winning team. The “22 Jump Street†DVD and Blu-ray extras are winners too, tacking on a commentary track, deleted scenes, clever featurettes, bonus gags and a version of the film with no jokes at all.
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
Starz/Anchor Bay, $26.98; Blu-ray, $39.99
Available on VOD Tuesday
Nearly 10 years after director Robert Rodriguez and writer-artist Frank Miller adapted Miller’s “Sin City†comics into a hit movie, they return for a belated sequel, which didn’t do nearly as well. Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Powers Boothe and Rosario Dawson play an assortment of pulp fiction archetypes — detectives, gangsters, strippers and the like — in interlocking stories, shot in front of stylized black-and-white backdrops. The digital technology is still amazing in the way it replicates the look of Miller’s original artwork, but “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For†is more a visual triumph than an engaging motion picture. The DVD and Blu-ray add featurettes.
The Wind Rises
Walt Disney, $29.99; Blu-ray, $36.99
Available on VOD Tuesday
Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki has suggested that this historical drama may be his last film, and if so, it’s an impressive final bow, combining the director’s career-long obsessions with flying, engineering and dreams. “The Wind Rises†tells a fictionalized version of the life story of Jiro Horikoshi, the aeronautics expert who designed the Japanese “Zero†fighter aircraft. Miyazaki follows Horikoshi’s love affair with a young artist suffering from tuberculosis, at his crisis of conscience as he’s asked to use his genius to design instruments of war. This is a beautiful, philosophical film about impossible choices, which sees life as complex but ultimately endurable. It’s both melancholy and uplifting. The DVD and Blu-ray come with featurettes.
It Happened One Night
Criterion, $29.95; Blu-ray, $39.95
One of only three films in the history of the Academy Awards to win “The Big Five†(best picture, director, actor, actress and screenplay), Frank Capra’s 1934 screwball stars Clark Gable as a scruffy reporter who finds a runaway heiress (played by Claudette Colbert) who’s traveling incognito to go live with her secret husband. The two travel together, with the journalist teaching the rich girl how to live like an ordinary person, which she picks up quickly. This is one of the rare screen romances where the lovers actually get to know each other before they fall in love — which makes it a pleasure to revisit because each new viewing is another chance to take a fun trip. Criterion’s new DVD and Blu-ray editions of “It Happened One Night†include a feature-length documentary about Capra, as well as a 1922 silent Capra short and a 1982 AFI tribute to the director.
And…
And So It Goes
20th Century Fox, $22.98; Blu-ray, $29.99
If I Stay
20th Century Fox, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.99
Available on VOD Tuesday
Into the Storm
Warner Bros., $28.98; Blu-ray, $35.99
Available on VOD Tuesday
Only good movies
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