We're feeling a little nostalgic this week at the home offices of the DVD Release List, inspired by the motley lot of ‘80s video-store pluggers that Lionsgate is releasing as “The Lost Collection.” Want a quick round-up to the eight “Lost Collection” titles? Here goes: For the love of all that’s holy, steer clear of the painful Exorcist parody Repossessed, and don’t come within 10 feet of the Whoopi Goldberg/Jim Belushi road trip movie Homer & Eddie. (She’s a criminally insane fugitive; he’s a brain damaged simple soul. Together they’re irrepressible!) And only check out the aggressively mediocre slasher film Slaughter High, the teen monster movie My Best Friend Is A Vampire (with Robert Sean Leonard!), or the convoluted high school action pic Hiding Out (with Jon Cryer!) if you have fond memories of watching them on cable on a lazy Friday night.
As for what’s worth seeing? The “Drew Barrymore divorces her parents” melodrama Irreconcilable Differences features a clever flashback structure and some facile-but-amusing commentary on Hollywood phoniness from the writer/director team of Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer. The oddball Keanu Reeves vehicle The Night Before is also flashback-heavy, starting with Reeves awakening in an alley with short-term memory loss and then looking back over one crazy prom night. And the closest “The Lost Collection” comes to a buried gem is Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home, another Jon Cryer comedy—this one about a politician’s son whose gawkiness and horror movie fandom makes him a family embarrassment. Morgan Stewart is no classic, but it’s sweet and funny, and Cryer’s terrific.
If you’re not feeling nostalgic for the ‘80s, perhaps you could jump back to the Jane Austen craze of the mid-‘90s, and revisit the classic BBC miniseries of Pride And Prejudice, now available on Blu-ray with a cleaned-up image and hours of extras. Or retreat to the ‘70s with American Swing, a fabulously entertaining documentary about the rise and fall of the New York sex club Plato’s Retreat. American Swing is packed with frank, funny detail, as well as a tacit acknowledgment that that the good ol’ days weren’t always so good. (But then anyone who’s seen Repossessed could tell you that.)
8 Mile
Universal Blu-ray, $29.98
American Swing
Magnolia, $26.98
The Best Of The Super Mario Show
NCircle, $9.99
Cranford
BBC Warner Blu-ray, $39.98
Crude Impact
Docurama, $26.95
Decameron ’69
Televista, $19.95
Dengue Fever: Sleepwalking Through The Mekong
M80, $22.98
Fight Night
Peace Arch, $29.99
Hiding Out
Lionsgate, $14.98
Homer & Eddie
Lionsgate, $14.98
House Of Saddam
HBO, $29.98
Intelligence: Season Two
Acorn, $59.98
Irreconcilable Differences
Lionsgate, $14.98
Knots Landing: The Complete Second Season
Warner, $39.98
Malcolm & Eddie: Season One
Shout! Factory, $34.99
Mask Of The Ninja
Genius Products, $19.95
Mean Girls
Paramount Blu-ray, $29.99
Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home
Lionsgate, $14.98
My Best Friend’s A Vampire
Lionsgate, $14.98
The Night Before
Lionsgate, $14.98
The Pope’s Toilet
Film Movement, $24.95
Pride And Prejudice (1995)
A&E Blu-ray, $49.95
The Reader
Weinstein, $29.95
Repossessed
Lionsgate, $14.98
Skins: Volume Two
BBC Warner, $39.98
Slaughter High
Lionsgate, $14.98
The Spirit
Lionsgate, $29.95/$34.98; Blu-ray, $39.99
Splinter
Magnolia, $26.98; Blu-ray, $26.98
The Thirteenth Floor
Sony Blu-ray, $28.95
Wings: The Final Season
Paramount, $39.98