Starting on Friday, The Dissolve will have eight straight days of coverage of the 2015 Sundance film festival, and my Day 1 post will double as a look back at last year’s fest—in part because I won’t have seen that many movies by then, and in part because the 2014 Sundance was one for the ages and deserves a fuller appreciation. How amazing was it? This week, four films arrive on DVD and Blu-ray that, in any other year, would’ve been festival standouts, but were kind of lost in 2014’s shuffle: the documentaries The Green Prince (about an unlikely partnership between a Shin Bet agent and a Hamas operative) and The Internet’s Own Boy (about the life and death of activist Aaron Swartz), and the indie dramas Rudderless (William H. Macy’s directorial debut, about a middle-aged slacker who forms a band to play his dead son’s songs), and White Bird In A Blizzard (the latest Gregg Araki film, with Shailene Woodley as a self-absorbed teenager whose sexual awakening corresponds with her mom’s disappearance).
But the big home-video release this week isn’t a festival film, though it is admirably arty. Luc Besson’s philosophical thriller Lucy starts with a cool (if preposterous) premise, casting Scarlett Johansson as a party-happy student who unwillingly becomes a mule for Korean gangsters, and then has her intellect and physical abilities enhanced by the experimental drug she’s forced to carry. What makes Lucy so exciting—beyond Besson’s usual visual flair and rocket-fueled pacing—is that it alternates dynamic action sequences with trippy musings about what it means to be human. As silly as Lucy can be, it’s hard not to love a movie that starts with gun-toting goons and ends up with the super-intelligent heroine sending her consciousness back to the dawn of time.
DVD and Blu-ray (* = combo pack)
Annabelle (Warner Bros.)
The Atticus Institute (Starz/Anchor Bay)
La Belle Captive (Olive)
The Boxtrolls (Universal)*
The Drop (20th Century Fox)
The Green Prince (Music Box)
Life’s A Breeze (Magnolia)
Love Is The Devil: Study For A Portrait Of Francis Bacon (Strand)
Lucy (Universal)*
May In The Summer (Cohen)
The Mule (XLrator)
My Winnipeg (Criterion)
The Palm Beach Story (Criterion)
The Pirates (Well Go USA)
Track The Man Down (Olive)
The Weapon (Olive)
White Bird In A Blizzard (Magnolia)
Woman They Almost Lynched (Olive)
World For Ransom (Olive)
The Zero Theorem (Well Go USA)
DVD
Alien Rising (Breaking Glass)
Attack Of The Morningside Monster (Apprehensive)
BattleDroid (Tomcat)
A Bet’s A Bet (Cinedigm)
Boys Behind Bars 2 (Live Wire)
Bring Me The Head Of The Machine Gun Woman (Screen Media)
Chasing Beauty (Grand)
Coherence (Oscilloscope)
Collar (Unearthed)
Cut! (MTI)
A Date With Ghosts (Wild Eye)
Desolate (Wild Eye)
Dick: The Documentary (Indiepix)
Discarded (Grand)
Double Tap (R Squared)
Frankie In Blunderland (Wild Eye)
Gnome Alone (Lionsgate)
The Great Chicken Wing Hunt (100 Out Of 99)
Hansel Vs. Gretel (Asylum/Gaiam)
Insight Of Evil (Leomark)
The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story Of Aaron Swartz (Kino/Alive Mind)
In The House Of Flies (Parade Deck)
A Little Game (Arc)
Lizzie Borden’s Revenge (Tomcat)
Lost Legion (Lionsgate)
Of Oozies And Elephants (Mostly Movies)
Possession: The Ingloda Within (Hannover House)
Rudderless (Paramount)
Safeword (R Squared)
Slaughter Is The Best Medicine (Leomark)
Torture Factory: Depraved Female Hostages (World Wide Multimedia)
Winter In The Blood (Kino/Alive Mind)
Wolves (Ketchup)
Wrestling With Satan (Morning Lamb)
Blu-ray
Adua & Her Friends (Kino Raro)
On Golden Pond: Collector’s Edition (Shout! Factory)
War And Peace (Warner Brothers)