The Hundred-Foot Journey (Touchstone, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD, VOD) is a film for our culture: a feel-foodie drama of racial tolerance, cross-cultural acceptance, and fusion cuisine. It’s produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey and directed by Lasse Hallstrom (the classiest of contemporary feel-good filmmakers) and it stars Helen Mirren as the bastion of fine French cuisine and unshakable tradition in the prettiest little village in the South of France you’ll ever see in a movie.
The journey of the title is the distance between Mirren’s French restaurant, a one-star Michelin bastion of the region, and a new Indian restaurant opened by an immigrant family headed by Om Puri and represented in the kitchen by Manish Dayal, who learned the art from his late mother. There is a very underplayed romance between Dayal and Charlotte Le Bon, the young sous chef of Mirren’s establishment, but it is so understated you wonder if it’s actually catching fire at all.
There’s not a beat here that you will surprise you, nary a narrative turn you won’t see coming. While the proprietors go to war, hammering the Mayor with hassles about noise, zoning, and all sorts of nuisance complaints, Le Bon introduces Dayal to French cooking and it turns out that he’s a natural. Competition turns into cooperation and Mirren sponsors his entry into the world of competitive cuisine.
But it’s sweet and affectionate, lovely to look at, and appreciative of the evolution that all the characters make on their own journeys. And if you love food, this film celebrates cuisine as an art, a communal experience, an act of affirmation, and a way of sharing. Pair it with a nice Bordeaux… or perhaps a cup of tea.
Blu-ray and DVD, with a 12-minute making-of featurette. The Blu-ray also features a 12-minute interview with producers Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey discussing their first collaboration since The Color Purple, a behind-the-scenes piece with Oprah Winfrey, and a tutorial video on how to cook Coconut Chicken, plus a bonus Digital HD copy of the film.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Fox, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD) picks up a decade after Rise of the Planet of the Apes, as the human population is recovering from the devastation of the virus unleashed at the end of that film and the human community has first contact with the ape civilization living in the forest outside of San Francisco. There’s a strong story involving the relationship between two families who reach across the species divide, led by Caesar (Andy Serkis in a brilliant and rich motion capture performance), who is both husband and father to his family and benevolent leader of the simian tribe, and Jason Clarke as an engineer trying to repair an electrical damn to power the human reclamation of San Francisco. They are the exceptions, however. The older apes remember the abuse they suffered at the hands of humans and the humans blame the apes for the virus (never mind that it was created by humans) and have an instinctual suspicion of any animal that can speak. It has a powerful resonance as a metaphor for wars of cultural animosity, hatred and mistrust, with human and ape both equating the worst actions of the other with the entire species.
Matt Reeves, whose Let Me In was an evocative adaptation of the Swedish horror film Let the Right One In, delivers both action spectacle and character drama, and he rightfully centers the entire film on Caesar, the noble leader who understands the best and worst of humanity, and has to come to terms with the worst of his own tribe as both sides push for war rather than co-existence. The film opens on Caesar’s eyes as he leads a hunt and it ends back on those weary but set eyes, contemplating the coming war that is now inevitable.
Fox isn’t making review copies of their discs available to most reviewers anymore—they offer a streaming link to see the film and that’s about it—so I assume the transfer and sound is good but can’t comment on the supplements or on the details of the deluxe Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Caesar’s Warrior Collection (Fox, Blu-ray).
Tales from the Crypt / Vault of Horror (Scream Factory, Blu-ray) is a double-feature of the two definitive Amicus horror anthologies adapted from the great EC horror comics of the 1950s (which later inspired an HBO series and a movie franchise). Tales from the Crypt (1972), directed by Hammer Films veteran Freddie Francis, presents five short stories hosted by Ralph Richardson as The Crypt Keeper, the most famous of which is the psycho-Santa horror “And All Through the Night,” with Joan Collins as a homicidal wife visited by psychotic killer the very night she murders her husband. Peter Cushing stars in “Poetic Justice” and Patrick Magee and Nigel Patrick go through a deadly “Blind Alley.”
Vault of Horror (1973), directed by Roy Ward Baker (who also made the Hammer masterpiece Quatermass and the Pit), has no host, merely five strangers who share their nightmares after an elevator traps them in a sub-basement. The stories are second rate compared to those adapted for Tales, which is still the best of the seventies horror anthologies, but has its moments, notably “Neat Job” with Gynis Johns and Terry-Thomas and “Drawn and Quartered” with a pre-Doctor Who Tom Baker. Though all are adapted from stories that originally appeared in EC horror comics, most of them actually appeared in sister title “Tales from the Crypt.” Both films were previously released on a double-feature DVD but that 2007 release featured the U.S. cut of Vault of Horror, which was edited for gore to get a PG rating. This set presents both the American theatrical and the original uncut version of the film
Bing Crosby Rediscovered (American Masters) (PBS, DVD) makes the case that the famous American entertainer was the first great singer of the electronic age, mastering the microphone as an instrument to make singing an intimate experience, and the man who defined early vocal recordings. There’s stuff about his private life and the movies as well, and push-back on the claims that he abused his children (not always convincing, given the troubled lives the boys of his first marriage led in adulthood) but the most interesting insights are about Crosby the artist and the entertainer who recorded nearly 400 hit singles across all musical genres.
Originally presented on the PBS showcase American Masters. With deleted scenes and an interview with director Robert Trachtenberg.
Stanley Kubrick: The Masterpiece Collection (Warner, Blu-ray), which is vying to be the must-have box set of the season, is reviewed here.
Also new and notable: 
The Congress (Cinedigm, Blu-ray, DVD), Ari Folman’s follow-up to Waltz with Bashir starring Robin Wright as an aging actress who sells her likeness to a studio for use in virtual films, uses a mix of animation and live action for a science-fiction satire of identity, image and moviemaking in the modern era..
Magic in the Moonlight (Sony, Blu-ray, Digital HD), Woody Allen’s latest, takes him back to Britain for a romantic comedy about a possibly-phony spiritualist (Emma Stone) and the magician (Colin Firth) determined to unmask her.
The Quatermass Xperiment (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD) and Hickey & Boggs (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD) are two more upgrades from Kino Lorber’s Studio Classics series. Both were previously released on DVD-R from the MGM Limited Edition Collection.
The Strain: The Complete First Season (Fox, Blu-ray, DVD) – This FX original series comes from Guillermo del Toro, who wrote the original novels, developed the adaptation for TV, and directed the pilot episode.
Digital / VOD / Streaming exclusives:
Dying of the Light, written and directed by Paul Schrader, has been the target of a silent protest by Schrader, stars Nicolas Cage and Anton Yelchin, and producer Nicolas Winding Refn after the studio took the film from Schrader’s hand. It debuts on cable VOD on Friday, December 5, the same day it opens in theaters.
Also debuting on Cable VOD this Friday, same day as theaters, is the thriller By the Gun with Ben Barnes and Leighton Meester and the comedy Murder of a Cat with Greg Kinnear and Nikki Reed.
I Origins, the indie sci-fi film from Another Earth director Mike Cahill, arrives on Cable VOD a week before disc. Michael Pitt and Brit Marling star. And showing up weeks after disc is the oldster romantic comedy And So It Goes with Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton.
Classics and Cult:
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Sony, Blu-ray)
The Emerald Forest (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Package (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Offence (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD)
Witness to Murder (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD)
Kung Fu Girl / Whiplash (Shout Factory, DVD)
Into the Woods (American Playhouse, 1991) (Image, Blu-ray, DVD)
Looney Tunes: Back in Action (Warner, Blu-ray)
TV on disc:
Broad City: Season One (Paramount, DVD)
Justified: The Complete Fifth Season (Sony, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Simpsons: The Seventeenth Season (Fox, Blu-ray, DVD)
Zane Grey Theatre: The Complete Third Season (Timeless, DVD)
Sliders: The Complete Series (Universal, DVD)
A Charlie Brown Christmas (remastered) (Warner, DVD)
Robin Williams Remembered: A Pioneers of Television Special (PBS, DVD)
The Legend of Korra – Book Three: Change (Paramount, Blu-ray, DVD)
Secrets of the Dead: Resurrecting Richard III (PBS, DVD)
More releases:
As Above So Below (Universal, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD, VOD)
Kite (Anchor Bay, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, VOD)
Field of Lost Shoes (Arc, DVD, VOD)
The Notebook (Le Grand Cahier) (Sony, DVD, Digital HD)
Pay to Play: Democracy’s High Stakes (TDC, DVD)
To Kill a Man (Film Movement, DVD)
Cantiflas (Lionsgate, DVD, Digital HD, VOD)
The Notebook (Le Grand Cahier) (Sony, DVD, Digital HD)
Fifi Howls From Happiness (Music Box, DVD, VOD)
Apaches (Film Movement, DVD)
InRealLife (First Run, DVD)
Design is One: Lella and Massimo Vignelli (First Run, DVD)
Kids for Cash (Alive Mind, DVD)
The Dark Matter of Love (Virgil, DVD, Digital)
Jingle All the Way 2 (Fox, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD)
Big Gay Love (Canteen Outlaws, DVD)
Speak No Evil (Lionsgate, DVD, Digital)
Gutshot Straight (Lionsgate, DVD, Digital HD, Cable VOD)
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD
