Cinemas & Home Entertainment This Week…
GRIM PICKINGS this week includes key dates to dismember with one of the most highly anticipated genre films of 2019 opening in cinemas while the best superhero film of 2018 slings its way onto home entertainment!
IN CINEMAS
Thursday March 28th
US
Oscar-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele follows up his 2017 feature GET OUT with a nuanced, unsettling and suspenseful genre effort that finely balances its horror and humour. US proves that Peele is no one trick pony, he’s a modern auteur of horror and we can only hope he sees fit to work further in the genre in the years to come. Set in present day along the iconic Northern California coastline, US, stars Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide Wilson, a woman returning to her beachside childhood home with her husband, Gabe, and their two children for an idyllic summer getaway. Haunted by an unexplainable and unresolved trauma from her past and compounded by a string of eerie coincidences, Adelaide feels her paranoia elevate to high-alert as she grows increasingly certain that something bad is going to befall her family. After spending a tense beach day with their friends, the Tylers, Adelaide and her family return to their vacation home. When darkness falls, the Wilsons discover the silhouette of four figures holding hands as they stand in the driveway. US pits an endearing American family against a terrifying and uncanny opponent: doppelgängers of themselves.
HOME ENTERTAINMENT
Available Now
PET SEMATARY (1989) – Blu-ray Only
Just in time for the all-new adaptation opening in cinemas next week, Paramount Pictures releases a 30th Anniversary Edition of Mary Lambert’s PET SEMATARY to Blu-ray, with a new transfer taken from the recent 4K restoration and complete with five new special features! Based on the seminal horror novel by Stephen King, PET SEMATARY follows Dr. Louis Creed, who, after relocating with his wife Rachel and their two young children from Boston to rural Maine, discovers a mysterious burial ground hidden deep in the woods near the family’s new home. When tragedy strikes, Louis turns to his unusual neighbour, Jud Crandall, setting off a perilous chain reaction that unleashes an unfathomable evil with horrific consequences. In addition to an all-new transfer and the five new Special Features: ‘Fear and Remembrance’ (Featurette), ‘Revisitation’ (Featurette) and 3x behind-the-scenes image galleries, this edition ports all of the existing archival content from the previous release too!
THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE – DVD Only
It’s the sequel you never saw coming! Universal Pictures via their Universal 1440 Entertainment offshoot have produced a sequel to the 1977 film THE CAR and well its the sequel you never needed! A follow on with the most tenuous of connections to its predecessor that has a low-rent futuristic setting and a somewhat incoherent plot! In a dilapidated cyberpunk city plagued by crime and corruption, an unscrupulous District Attorney is savagely murdered and tossed out of a building onto his brand new car. Mysteriously, the District Attorney and his car come back to life as a single being with a thirst for vengeance. The eerie driverless car embarks on a vicious rampage exacting revenge on the criminals who murdered him.
ASSASSINATION NATION
Despite being one of the most buzzed about films at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, filmmaker Sam Levinson’s ASSASSINATION NATION failed to gather any further momentum on its US theatrical run and its understandable as to why. This MEAN GIRLS meets THE PURGE hodgepodge teeters on interesting but ultimately plays it far too safe to be memorable and its vast over-stylization feels as if its catered to a crowd that only look up from their phones to the screen every two to three minutes. High school senior Lily and her group of friends live in a haze of texts, posts, selfies and chats just like the rest of the world. So, when an anonymous hacker starts posting details from the private lives of everyone in their small town, the result is absolute madness leaving Lily and her friends questioning whether they’ll live through the night.
SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE
Spider-Man goes meta in this fast-paced, action-packed and at times hilarious all-new adventure with a revolutionary style of animation that will literally have you dragging your jaw from the floor as you leave the cinema. PS: stick around after the credits for an amusing action-after-credits sequence! Spider-Man crosses parallel dimensions and teams up with the Spider-Men of those dimensions to stop a threat to all reality. Sony Pictures’s 4K Ultra-HD, Blu-ray & Blu-ray 3D releases contain a multitude of featurettes, lyric videos and even a previously unseen short film! 4K enthusiasts will be pleased to hear that UHD releases boasts HDR and an absolute sonic boom-worthy Dolby Atmos track!
Grim Pickings is written weekly by Jarret Gahan.
