This week’s roundup includes reviews of several new releases on Blu-ray, including HBO’s latest post-apocalyptic series “The Last of Us,” the offbeat Holocaust drama, “Persian Lessons,” and the even stranger Nazi-revenge thriller, “Sisu.”
Blu-ray Releases of the Week
The Last of Us—Complete 1st Season (Warner Bros)
The first HBO series based on a video game (for what it’s worth), this dystopian thriller isn’t very original—the visuals of this post-pandemic world are awfully familiar, as are the zombie-like victims of a fungal infection that’s destroyed civilization as we know it—but it gets by on clever writing and sympathetic acting, which makes the characters more human than usual in this genre. Led by Pedro Pascal, there are also formidable performances by Bella Ramsey, Nico Parker and Anna Torv: but there’s a sense that, after nine one-hour episodes—and a second season to come— the redundancy will take over soon. The hi-def transfer looks good; extras comprise several making-of featurettes, interviews and on-set footage.
Deadstream (Shudder)
I don’t think we need another found-footage horror flick at this late date, but at least writers/directors Vanessa and Joseph Winter’s foray into the genre, about a disgraced YouTuber (is there any other kind?) who goes to a supposedly haunted house, has a sense of humor about itself that sustains it for at least the first half before it ends up repeating itself to death, so to speak. The film looks quite good in hi-def; extras include several featurettes, bloopers, deleted and alternate scenes, interviews, on-set footage and a commentary.
Fool’s Paradise (Lionsgate)
Writer-director-star Charlie Day (best known for “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) has delivered a fool’s errand with this completely hamfisted Hollywood satire about a mute just released from a mental hospital, a dead ringer for a famous actor, who gets into the movie business almost accidentally. It’s an ungodly mix of “Being There” and “Mr. Hulot’s Holiday,” and Day is not a good enough actor—or writer or director—to pull it off successfully, let alone competently. Even good actors like Edie Falco and Kate Beckinsale are unable to overcome the soggy script and middling direction, and one-dimensional performers like Jason Sudekis fall back onto their usual tricks. The film looks decent on Blu.
Kandahar (Universal/Open Road)
Gerard Butler gives another solid if unexceptional performance in his second 2023 action thriller, but unlike the faceless “Plane,” Ric Roman Waugh’s film has a bit more bite for a timely excursion into the murderous world of Middle Eastern double-dealing and revenge. Although there’s nothing new here and it goes on too long, Kandahar does have its share of tense sequences, and Butler’s stoic heroism is well-suited to the role of a CIA operative desperate to save his Afghan translator and get home to his own teenage daughter. There’s a terrific hi-def transfer.
Persian Lessons (Cohen Media)
In the most contrived way possible, director Vadim Perelman has made a Holocaust film in which his protagonist Gilles, a Belgian Jew, poses as a Farsi speaker with an Iranian background in order to survive: luckily for him, the camp commandant wants to learn Farsi so he can go to Teheran and live with his brother. The ludicrousness of the premise aside—Lina Wertmuller made a masterpiece out of a similar storyline with “Seven Beauties,” in which the survival-at-all-cost antihero had sex with the obese female commandant of a concentration camp to stay alive—Perelman and writer Ilya Tsofin’s creaky plotting militates against our complete sympathy, despite the very fine performances by Nahuel Pérez Biscayart as Gilles and Lars Eidinger as the commandant. There’s a first-rate Blu-ray transfer.
Robot Monster (Bayview)
One of those all-time inept “bad movies” along the lines of “Plan Nine from Outer Space” and “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” this 1953 grade-Z sci-fi flick by Phil Tucker has virtually little to recommend it—unless, of course, you’re one of those gluttons who seeks out and devours junk like this. That’s, of course, what this 70th anniversary special edition is all about: not only do we get the amateurish B&W film in all its anti-glory in 2D and 3D versions, but there are also many contextual extras, including featurettes in both 2D and 3D and an entertaining commentary featuring the last surviving cast member, Greg Moffett.
Sisu (Lionsgate)
Another Nazi-fueled fantasy in which the underdogs have it all over the German monsters, Jalmari Helander’s relentlessly gritty film never reaches the giddily masturbatory heights of Quentin Tarantino’s egregious “Inglorious Basterds,” where French and American civilians and soldiers murder Hitler. “Sisu” and its “immortal” fighter, who has killed hundreds of Russians, takes on an entire Nazi squadron in the wilds of the Lapland region in occupied Finland with the help of truckful of women prisoners and finishes off the whole lot in spectacular fashion, is the epitome of a guilty pleasure, especially as played with single-minded viciousness by Jorma Tommila as the mainly silent title character. The hi-def transfer is excellent.
