Icarus Films Teams With Distrib Films For The DVD Debuts Of Christophe Barratier’s The Outsider (June 5) And Bruno Podalydès’ The Sweet Escape (May 15)

If you enjoyed films like, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street, then Icarus Films and France’s Distrib Films have one for you on June 5 that you are absolutely going to love.   This would be none other than writer/director Christophe Barratier’s The Outsider.

World markets crashed in 2008 and the Société Générale’s “rogue trading” scandal involving Jérôme Kerviel quickly became a footnote.   What’s a loss of  €4.9 billion euros to one bank when the entire world is coming unglued!

Barratier’s The Outsider details Jérôme Kerviel’s (played by Albert Dupontel — Bus Palladium, Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Normandie Nue, etc.) rise and fall in equity derivatives, swaps, index futures — all that stuff from The Big Short — that begin in 2006 and culminated in a January of 2008 announcement by the bank that one of their employees was involved in “unauthorized” trading and had been arrested.   

That was an understatement … what Kerviel did and how he did it becomes something of a whodunit that will have you wondering — by film’s end — if there was more going on within the upper echelons of the bank’s management than anyone was willing to admit.   In other words, Kerviel may have become a convenient “fall guy.”  

You can decide for yourself on June 5 when DVD editions of France’s The Outsider are released domestically.  The film is presented in French with English subtitles.

In other release news from Icarus Films and Distrib Films, look to May 15 for the DVD debut of writer/director and star, Bruno Podalydès’ whimsical comedy, The Sweet Escape.

Michel (Bruno Podalydès) is having something of a mid-life crisis and decides that the French equivalent of an Australian Aborigine walkabout.   You know, a little wanderlust … perhaps a trek to Timbuktu and back.   It will be an adventure to shake things up in his life; to change his humdrum existence … that sort of thing.

Unbeknownst to his flat mate, Rachelle (Sandrine Kiberlain — Mademoiselle Chambon, Alias Betty, etc.), Michel has ordered a kayak, which he assembles on the roof of their apartment building (on the outskirts of Paris) and has ordered all sorts of survivalist gear — enough gear for, perhaps, a kayak trip from the head waters of the Amazon to the sea. 

It’s a great set up that Podalydès delivers — think along the lines of Peter Sellers and his Clouseau character — he has gone to all of this planning, only to prove that while his intensions are in the right place, he is, nevertheless, totally inept.

When the big day comes for Michel’s adventure, it is not a trip to the airport and a flight to the some forgotten corner of the world, but to the nearby river.   And, much to the amusement of Rachelle, Michel quickly discovers that much of his gear is totally worthless for his needs — his kayak survival suit would be better served as something you’d wrap a lobster in to cook it slowly!

So off he goes and within an hour or so — perhaps a journey of three or four miles — he comes across an idyllic setting that could be right out of Philippe de Broca’s 1966 film, The King of Hearts.   A lovely women,  Laetitia (Agnes Jaoui) — who runs a nearby restaurant — her daughter, Mila (Vimala Pons), and their “King of Hearts” friends.   The voyage for Michel is done, but the adventure is only beginning!!!

The Sweet Escape is presented in French with English subtitles.

Paramount Home Media Preps 4K Ultra HD Editions Of Forrest Gump And Terminator Genisys For Delivery On June 12

The Paramount Home Media 4K Ultra HD wave continues on June 12 with two new hit theatrical upgrades.   

On May 9 we will be getting the first group with 4K Ultra HD/2 Blu-ray Combo Pack editions of Saving Private Ryan, Braveheart and Gladiator.  The release news this week focuses on a new 4K restoration of director Robert Zemeckis’ 1994 Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor-winner (among others), Forrest Gump.

Joining Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson and Robin Wright is a new 4K rendition of director Alan Taylor’s 2015 reboot of the Terminator film franchise, Terminator Genisys.  This quite excellent addition to the series features an alternate timeline with Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the original Terminator … with Jason Clarke as alternate version of John Connor.

Of note, following the release of Terminator Genisys initial plans for two sequels (forming a trilogy) were put on hold … there was a long back-and-forth on what would be next, but now it appears that the next installment in the series will be released theatrically during Thanksgiving of 2019 (Linda Hamilton will be back)!

In the meantime, we have these new 4K Ultra HD editions from Paramount Home Media to keep us busy.

Also new this week — this time on DVD and Blu-ray release front — from Paramount Home Media are two anniversary editions from director John Landis featuring Eddie Murphy.   Both films will be available on June 12.

First up is Trading Places: 35^th Anniversary Edition, a comedy featuring Murphy as a Billy Ray Valentine, a smalltime Philadelphia con man, Dan Aykroyd as the snotty Louis Winthorpe III  and the Duke Brothers (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche), who set up a wager — for a dollar — just to see what would happen if they switched the positions of Valentine and Winthorpe.   

Pivotal to the undoing of their plan turns out to be a hooker name Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis), who makes a savvy financial deal with the down-on-his-luck Winthorpe.   When the blissfully ignorant Valentine tumbles to the Duke’s nasty scheme, he teams up with Winthorpe and Ophelia to exact the perfect revenge!

Bonus goodies include vintage featurettes — “Inside Trading: The Making of Trading Places,” “Trading Stories,” “Dressing the Part” and “The Trade in Trading Places.”

Skip ahead five years and you have Coming to America: 30^th Anniversary Edition, which features Murphy as Crown Prince Akeem, who rejects his parent’s “arranged marriage” plans and takes off to the United States with his friend Semmi (Arsenio Hall) to find and win the heart of an independent woman.   He finds his true love — Lisa (Shari Headley) — but his lies and deceptions threaten to undo everything!

On the DVD-only front, May 29 sees the debut of the Showtime comedy series, I'm Dying Up Here: Season One.   Included are all ten episodes — as a three-disc set — from the first season, starring Melissa Leo as Goldie Herschlag, the owner of a 1970’s era comedy club called Goldie’s, which is home to an ensemble group of up-and-coming comedians.

And, on June 12 look for the eight-disc DVD collection titled Stephen King TV and Film Collection, which features The Dead Zone, Pet Sematary, Silver Bullet, Graveyard Shift, plus The Stand, The Langoliers and Golden Years).

MIll Creek Entertainment Adds Mini-Series And More To Its May 1 DVD And Blu-ray Release Calendar

With the month of May already packed with price-to-collect DVD and Blu-ray product offerings, Mill Creek Entertainment has still found room for more!

How about the complete mini-series of filmmaker Steve Boyum’s The Lady Musketeer on DVD on May 1 for an SRO of just $14.98 for starters?   This action series has Michael York reprising his role as D'Artagnan (The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers), only not as a swordsman, but as the mentor and teacher to his daughter, Valentine (played by Susie Amy). 

No woman has ever been a member of the King’s Musketeers, but that is about to change as Valentine, with her father’s blessing, head’s off to Paris in service to King Louis XIV (Freddie Sayers), who is locked in titanic battle with Cardinal Mazarin (Gérard Depardieu) over the fate of France.   To prove her worth, she teams with the sons of Aramis, Athos and Porthos to rescue the would-be bride of the king … there will be no quarter, succeed in the mission or die!

Mini-Series?  Adventure?  Priced-to-collect?   Mill Creek Entertainment has read your mind.   Also available on May 1 is director Michael Barker’s 2009 mega-budget mini-series adaptation of Jack London’s The Sea Wolf. 

Humphrey (Stephen Campbell Moore) is out of the fire and into the frying pan — so to speak — when he is rescued by Wolf Larsen (Sebastian Koch) and the crew of The Sea Wolf.   It’s 1902, San Francisco (before the earthquake) and the hardened sailors of the infamous Barbary Coast sail with Wolf Larsen, a cruel captain — they are bound for the riches of the great northwest when Humphrey is rescued at sea and he will earn his keep on this voyage … no two ways about it.

Wolf’s biggest competitor is his brother, Death Larsen (Tim Roth), who shadows Wolf as captain of the Macedonia.   Aboard his ship is a mysterious beauty by the name of Maude (Neve Campbell), who claims to be a writer, but that’s just a cover.   Brother against brother on high seas, with Humphrey along for the ride!

Also joining Mill Creek Entertainment’s May 1 hit calendar are the five-disc DVD collection titled WWII: Through the Battles, which includes three separate series — “War  in the Pacific,” “D-Day: The Invasion – March to Victory” and “The Fight for Freedom: The Major Battles of WWII” — American Patriots (also a five-disc set), which also features three separate series — “For Love of Liberty,” “Unsung Heroes” and “The Medal of Honor” — and the eight-disc DVD collection titled Legacy Collection: Great Changemakers in America … included in this collection are: “March to Freedom,” “Abraham Lincoln: Trial by Fire” and “JFK: A New World Order.”

MVD Entertainment Group Restores Writer/Director Ryan Schifrin’s Abominable For Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack Release On June 12

MVD Entertainment Group has tabbed June 12 as the street date for a new 2K restoration (from the original 35mm camera negative) of writer/director Ryan Schifrin’s 2006 creature-in-the-woods thriller, Abominable.   

Available on that mid-June date will be a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack edition, which sports an “all new cut” of the film — featuring up-dated CGI-effects — as supervised by filmmaker Ryan Schifrin and film editor Chris Conlee.

This movie is so much fun and now with updated f/x and this new HD transfer it is going to be even better … like seeing it for the first time!

Preston Rogers (Matt McCoy — immediately recognizable as L.A. Confidential’s “Badge of Honor” star Brett Chase … plus such films as DeepStar Six, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, etc.) is recovering from a horrendous climbing accident and is pretty much wheelchair bound and reliant on his nurse/caregiver (played by Christien Tinsley).   He settles down in a cabin in the woods.   This is the first element … sort like James Steward’s Jeff character in Rear Widow, only without Grace Kelly to be his legs.

Next door to his little cabin in the woods is another cabin, which is the vacation digs of a quintet of young women (aka: victim pool), who conveniently make up the second element of the story.   

And finally, from a little prologue featuring Dee Wallace (Howling, E.T., Cujo, etc.), we have Bigfoot (call it what you will), a hulking creature who dines on horses … and soon enough gets a taste for human flesh.

Preston spots the beast and tries his best to warn the nubile young ladies across the way, but quite naturally they view his window gazing episodes as that of a pervert.   He tries warning the local sheriff, but to no avail … nut job, crank caller, etc.

Now all of this could have easily gone off the rails, but Schifrin’s clever script, the addition of genre icons Dee Wallace and Lance Henriksen as cast members, plus scream queen Tiffany Shepis and Haley Joel as the resourceful Amanda (not to be confused with Haley Joel Osment) all come together to make Abominable a terrific creature feature.

Bonus features, in addition to the new “cut” of the film (plus the original theatrical version), include commentary by writer/director Ryan Schifrin, who is joined by actors Matt McCoy and Jeffrey Combs, outtakes, deleted and extended scenes, a blooper reel, Schifrin’s 2011 short film, Basil & Mobius: No Rest For The Wicked, an unreleased student film from Schifrin titled Shadows, and a featurette titled “Back to Genre: Making Abominable.”

Indican Pictures Readies DVD Release Of Marcus Shakesheff's All-Action Kamikaze Thriller

Marcus Shakesheff is an elite stuntman, stunt and fight coordinator and actor … when the star of a film or television production is about to do something dangerous on screen in comes Shakesheff to take the fall, the punch or suffer the consequences of a car crash (Christoph Waltz, Kiefer Sutherland, Jesse Eisenberg, etc. have all been covered by Shakesheff).

Word arrived this past week from Indican Pictures that this A-list stunt artist will be making his feature-length directorial debut with the DVD release of Kamikaze.   And yes, you’ve probably already guessed that the stunt artist in this high-octane action flick is none other than Mr. Shakesheff … who also has the leading role.

Here he plays Evan Reed, a former British M.I. 6 agent who has become a gun-for-hire.  His latest “contract,” unbeknownst to him, involves the highest reaches of the government, which requires him to retrieve some key computer files.  Reed carries off that part to perfection, but when he realizes what he’s got he has second thoughts about turning over the files to his “employers.”  

In the trade he is — as a result of this assignment — known euphemistically as a “loose end.”  Turn over the damning evidence will be the end of him … he will simply disappear and he knows it. 

When the moment of truth arrives, his “employers” know that they will need a bit of leverage to get Reed to complete the mission.   Why would you be willing do to something that means your death … that’s suicide; a “Kamikaze” mission.  This “leverage” comes in the form of taking his pregnant girlfriend, Jess (played by French beauty, Claire Carreno — The Exorcism of Anna Ecklund, Curse of the Witch's Doll and the forthcoming summer release of Jurassic Predator), hostage. 

There’s your set up.  Mercenary, high-valued computer files and a beautiful hostage … what follows is literally non-stop stunt and parkour action. 

 

Judging from the action, Shakesheff called in favors from the stunt community and in the process lined-up a cast of villains with skills that will leave action fans panting for more … more … more!!!   Kamikaze has it all … death-defying non-stop action!   

Arrow Video Restores Death Smiles On A Murderer For Blu-ray Release On May 22

It is best to be honest right up front, it takes at least two viewings of Italian filmmaker Joe D’Amato’s 1973 giallo tale, Death Smiles on a Murderer, to make sense of what is going on.   There are two storylines that have been mish-mashed together that makes it part horror tale (think: Vincent Price and the American International films from the mid-‘60s) and part pure erotica (which is what D’Amato would become known for).  

Arrow Video, with domestic sales and distribution expertise provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has picked May 22 as the street date for a new 2K restoration (from the original camera negative) of Death Smiles on a Murderer.  It will be available as a Blu-ray SKU.

Any film that takes more than one viewing to be fully appreciated, especially when it never got a domestic theatrical run, is a film that ultimately works — like many of the Spaghetti Westerns from the ‘60s and ‘70s that seemed choppy as hell and disjointed, but grew on you just the same.

Greta (Ewa Aulin) is dead … dead three years.   The fact that she died might have been a blessing.  Her brother (Luciano Rossi) loved doing forbidden things to her and the nasty Dr. von Ravensbrück (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) had his way with her as well.

In any case Greta is back (thanks to her brother) and has an accident on the grounds of the von Ravensbrück estate (her carriage crashes … conveniently) and Walter (Sergio Doria) — the son of  Dr. von Ravensbrück — and his trophy wife, Eva (Angela Bo), take the poor young women in and nurse her back to health.   Which means that each of them have their way with her.   

Staff go missing, but no matter.   A doctor (Klaus Kinski) takes an interest in her case (and her as well) … but when Eva discovers that her husband is doing exactly what she is doing, she drugs Greta and in the very best of Edgar Allen Poe traditions walls her up to die.

There you have … jealous wife kills mistress and the body is never found.   Ha!  We are only getting started.   It seems that Greta — a homicidal maniac — staged the entire thing to gain access to the von Ravensbrücks … and killing her might be impossible.

Don’t ask, just get the Blu-ray, which arrives in with both the original Italian language track and the English-dubbed version (with subtitles), on May 22.

Bonus goodies include a newly-minted commentary track by author and critic Tim Lucas (“Mario Bava All the Colors of the Dark”), a new video session with Ewa Aulin titled “All About Ewa” and a pair of featurettes — “D'Amato Smiles on Death” and “Smiling on the Taboo: Sex, Death and Transgression.”

Clint Eastwood's The 15:17 to Paris Gets A May 22 Release Date From Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

It’s Eastwood … on time, under budget and commercial!  When director Don Siegel taught him the filmmaking trade five decades ago no one could have guessed that one of the greatest film directors in the history of cinema would have starred in a trio of Spaghetti Westerns and was Rowdy Yates in the late 1950s TV series titled Rawhide.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment announced this past week that Clint Eastwood’s latest film, The 15:17 to Paris, will be available for fans to enjoy on May 22 as a three-SKU collection of home entertainment product offerings.   Available on that date will be a stand-alone DVD edition, a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack and a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack selection.

The ARR comes in at 102 days and domestic box office receipts stand at $36.2 million.

Filmmaker Clint Eastwood took the events of August 21, 2015 on the Amsterdam to Paris train and turned it into a riveting tale of unselfish heroism.   Ayoub El Khazzani, a mid-20s Moroccan terrorist, armed with an AK-47, nearly 300 rounds of ammo, a pistol, a knife and a bottle of gasoline, attempted a massacre of the train’s passengers.   He failed because three Americans on holiday — Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos — took him down.  

The genius of Eastwood’s film is that he had the actual heroes play themselves!   Life-long friends ran to danger and saved dozens of lives by their quick thinking and action.  A magnificent story, which begins with their backstory — how they became friends and their military service — and ends with those horrific moments of terror on the train.

Bonus features include a pair of featurettes — “Making Every Second Count” and “Portrait of Courage.”