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Blu-ray Today: Carrie on, Diesel Exhausted and Your Next Horror Fave


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Riddick It’s admirable that, rather than take to Kickstarter, Vin Diesel used his own money to fund a third movie featuring his favorite character. If only the final product had as much to admire: its first third, featuring Riddick alone on a hostile planet, is fantastic, a mini Conan-in-space movie to do Robert E. Howard proud. But then the movie keeps going, becoming first an Alien movie with Riddick as the barely seen killer creature, then finally a rip-off of Pitch Black with unfortunate, unpleasant gay jokes and rape humor. The unrated director’s cut features more of the Necromonger backstory with Karl Urban’s Vaako, and a complete collection is also available today, including the animated short “Dark Fury” on Blu-ray for the first time. Really, though, you’re better off just buying Pitch Black and pretending there were no sequels.

You’re Next It’s best not to say too much about this fun little horror flick if you haven’t seen it; suffice it to say it made many ten-best lists, and that its appeal lies primarily in a sudden tonal shift that happens halfway through, which illuminates the story rather than undermining it. I’ll be curious to see if any wrestling fans who aren’t paying attention pick it up thinking it’s a “Best of the Wyatt Family” disc – aside from the animal masks, there’s really no similarity.

Carrie If you must remake Carrie, the thing to do would be to re-imagine something closer to the book, making her fat like she’s supposed to be (Kimberly Peirce may have been the wrong arthouse director – Todd Solondz should’ve had a crack at it). Alas, the prospect of a plus-sized leading lady in a teen flick appears to be more terrifying to Hollywood than a hand emerging from a grave, and so my understanding is this remake basically follows the Brian De Palma pattern. I didn’t get to see it, so that could be vicious hearsay, so if you can tell me anything good you heard about it, I’ll reconsider. Anyone?

The Spectacular Now A smartass teenage alcoholic (Miles Teller) falls for a virginal manga fan (Shailene Woodley). If you can’t relate to this, you probably want to – watch it, and you’ll want to smack all those online dorks who yelled and screamed that Woodley wasn’t desirable enough to play Mary Jane Watson.

Blind Date Remember when Bruce Willis was best known as a TV comedian, and made movies like this, and then you heard he was doing an action movie and you went, “Yeah, right, that dork with the receding hairline?” Or maybe it was just me. I’m sorry, Bruce, but you did throw me off by making Blind Date.

Thief Michael Mann’s first feature, starring James Caan as a thief who agrees to one last heist. No…don’t do it…it’ll all go wrong…CAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!

Marvel Knights: Wolverine Versus Sabretooth Motion Comic The funniest thing about this one is that its Amazon page lists the lead actor as “Wolverine.” Which proves he’s a real person, because everything on Amazon is true.

The Universe in 3D NASA footage and CGI combine to deliver a 3D immersive look at the forming of the solar system…unless you don’t have a 3D TV, in which case, you are apparently not worthy.

And those are my top picks for the week. What would you add?