McFarland, USA (Disney, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD, VOD, Disney Movies Anywhere), the latest of Disney’s inspirational true-life sports dramas, stars Kevin Costner as a hothead of a football coach who lands in an impoverished California desert town and starts a cross country team with Mexican-American students who, until his arrival, had little hope of a future outside of working the fields. The story is familiar, stirring the usual ingredients around with a different set of cultural spices, and it ends up with a rousing triumph that is more satisfying because it’s true than because it’s in any way surprising and unexpected.
The reality behind the triumph is what makes it interesting. Costner’s Coach White is a minority among the brown-skinned residents of this desert community, a flat, dusty stretch between Bakersfield and Fresno where agriculture is the only industry and Spanish is the primary language. “Are we in Mexico?,” his daughter asks, as they drive past sad little homes of cracked stucco and sun-parched dirt yards, and sure enough it looks like a Third World neighborhood within our borders.
And it’s a good role for Costner, who has history as both a sports movie veteran and underdog hero (Bull Durham, For Love of the Game, Tin Cup) and mentor / father figure to the likes of Jack Ryan and Superman himself. He’s the dedicated but flawed old white guy who steps out of comfort zone and reaches out to kids who never before entertained thoughts of college, let alone a future that didn’t revolved around picking crops, and he gets to deliver the rousing pep talks and inspirational speeches with that plain-spoken, hard-earned-sincerity he does so well.
The roll-call of affable, arrogant, and resentful young men are likable if not particularly well developed and there’s even a chaste romance between the brooding start athlete (Carlos Pratts) and the coach’s teenage daughter (who gets a quinceañera before the film is over), which feels shoehorned in even by the standards of the genre. No matter, it’s still a rousing and even satisfying picture that reminds us of a world that we don’t often see on screen, and does so in a family friendly manner.
Blu-ray and DVD, with the featurettes “McFarland Reflections,” featuring Costner with the real-life Coach Jim White, and “Inspiring McFarland, deleted and extended scenes, a music video and trailer. The Blu-ray features a Digital HD copy of the film (available through iTunes).
Also on Digital HD, cable and digital VOD, and Disney Movies Anywhere.
Jupiter Ascending (Warner, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD, VOD) is old fashioned space opera with shiny new special effects and CGI flourishes. And by old fashioned, I mean interstellar monarchies and despots wreaking havoc on innocent populations, space armadas on the move, and a beautiful princess in constant need of saving from a brave knight, in this case a dog soldier with jet boots that lets him skate through the sky. It’s from the Wachowskis, who go more for speed and spectacle than story, and stars Mila Kunis as the Russian housemaid who is actually the reincarnation of galactic royalty and Channing Tatum as the genetically super soldier. Eddie Redmayne provides the corruption and power-mad decadence as the prince with designs on planet Earth, hamming it up shamelessly with a performance that yo-yos between purring whispers and apoplectic screams.
The script is disposable, the story familiar and unimpressive, and the film rushes from one chase / fight / rescue to another to keep the energy going. It’s ridiculous and oddly fun for all of its recycling, mostly because of the imagery and momentum. The cosmic palaces are a mix of old European royalty, steampunk clockwork devices, and dreamy sci-fi tech beyond the usual designs we’ve seen, the space ships look like scorpions, dragonflies, and bees, and the fashions are lush and lavish. Given the ambitions the Wachowskis have shown in the Matrix films and Cloud Atlas, this is rather retrograde as both filmmaking and storytelling, but there is a charge to their pulp sci-fi paperback cover come to life.
Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, and DVD, with the featurettes “Jupiter Jones: Destiny is With Us” and “Jupiter Ascending: Genetically Spliced.” The Blu-ray also includes the featurette “Caine Wise: Interplanetary Warrior,” “The Wachowskis: Mind Over Matter,” “Worlds Within Worlds,” “Bullet Time Evolved,” and “From Earth to Jupiter (and Everywhere in Between),” plus bonus DVD and Ultraviolet Digital HD copies of the film.
Focus (Warner, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD, VOD) – Moviemaking is a confidence game at heart: getting the audience to believe in the story they are spinning and using narrative sleight of hand to keep you from seeing through the construction. Focus pretty much plays by the rules. Will Smith is the veteran who teaches the ropes (“This is a game of focus”) to protégé Margot Robbie, who sashays through the film in tight dresses, short shorts, and a bikini, playing the distraction. We jump from picking pockets in New Orleans to working a con on the race track circuit in Buenos Ares and the rules of the con—never break character and never let emotion get in the way of a job—are upended in the complications after an abrupt, all-business break-up. Filmmaking team Glenn Ficarra and John Requa would like nothing more than to evoke the easy style and playful personality of the Oceans movies, but surface glamor is no substitute for character. They are so busy keeping us guessing at the endgame with their carefully engineered bluffs and feints and reversals that they fail to give us a story.
Blu-ray and DVD, with deleted scenes. The Blu-ray release also includes the featurettes “Masters of Misdirection: The Players in a Con,” “Will Smith: Gentleman Thief,” and “Margot Robbie: Stealing Hearts,” an alternate opening, and bonus DVD and Ultraviolet Digital HD copies of the film.
Also on Digital HD, and cable and digital VOD.
Li’l Quinquin (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD), a four-part miniseries created by Bruno Dumont for French television, is the strangest genre mix this side of Twin Peaks. There’s a tale of adolescent boredom and mischievous antics over a summer vacation in rural Northern France, the deadpan comedy of eccentric village behavior, and a perverse murder mystery involving a serial killer, the severed remains of his victims, and dead farm animals. Leading the investigation is a tetchy old investigator with bushy eyebrows, a symphony of facial tics, and the manner of a classic movie clown, equal parts brilliant and bumbling as he sifts through a body count that builds with each episode. Dumont’s penchant for casting non-professionals only adds to the mix of the serene, the surreal, and the grotesque, but never at the expense of the actors or the characters. Call it an existential comedy about good and evil and the savage innocence of childhood. And to shows that Dumont is as eccentric and engaging a director of comedy as he is of enigmatic arthouse drama.
In French with English subtitles, no supplements. Also available on Neflix.
TVD:
The Wire: The Complete Series (HBO, Blu-ray) is the easily the marquee release of the week. My feature review of this magnificent (and somewhat controversial and compromised) release is here.
Rectify: The Complete Second Season (Anchor Bay, DVD) continues and expands on the superb series created by actor Ray McKinnon for Sundance Channel. The first season follows a week in the life of Daniel Holden (Aden Young) a man released into the world after spending 19 years—over half of his life—on death row for the rape and murder of a young woman. His sentence is vacated after DNA analysis undercuts prosecution evidence, but that’s not exoneration and the question of guilt hangs over him when he returns home.
The second season opens with Daniel in a coma, the victim of a near-fatal beating, and upon awakening he refuses to identity his attackers. But this isn’t about some saintly victim. It’s about a man whose life was on hold since he was a teenager now trying to find his place in the world that had gone on without him, about the secrets he can’t tell anyone, and about the effect of his presence on everyone around him, from the family that wants to protect him to the townsfolk who believe he is guilty to the politicians and law officials trying to bring him back to trial. It’s a slow, still, introspective show, focused on inner lives and uneasy relationships, and at the center is a man afraid of who he really might be under his calm, placid surface.
The second season expands the number of episodes to 10, and the DVD includes a featurette on the season. Also available on Netflix.
Also new (but no review copies to view):
Justified: The Complete Final Season (Sony, Blu-ray, DVD), a satisfying end to the series that ends as it had to.
Parks and Recreation: Season Seven – The Farewell Season (Universal, DVD) and Parks and Recreation: The Complete Series (Universal, DVD), featuring the best comic ensemble on TV. I’m going to miss this show.
Also new and notable: 
The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (Paramount, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD, VOD) is the second animated feature based on the popular kids TV show.
Camp X-Ray (IFC, Blu-ray, DVD) stars Kristen Stewart as a young soldier assigned to guard the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who befriends one of the incarcerated men.
I’ll be digging into two new Blu-ray releases in an upcoming feature: Luciano Ercoli’s Killer Cop (Raro / Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD), an Italian poliziotteschi from 1975 that revolves around a couple of honest cops in the corrupt Milan police force, and Dziga Vertov: The Man with the Movie Camera and Other Newly-Restored Works (Flicker Alley, Blu-ray), with newly restored editions of four films by the great Soviet filmmaker: the silent films The Man with the Movie Camera (1929) and Kino Eye/The Life Unexpected (1924) and the sound productions Enthusiasm – The Symphony of the Donbass (1931) and Three Songs About Lenin (1934).
Also new on Blu-ray this week: John Wayne Westerns Film Collection (Warner, Blu-ray), which features two new-to-Blu-ray titles, which are also available in individual volumes, The Train Robbers (Warner, Blu-ray) and Cahill United States Marshal (Warner, Blu-ray). The set is filled out by Fort Apache, The Searchers, and Rio Bravo.
Digital / VOD / Streaming exclusives:
Ned Rifle, the third and final film in what has become Hal Hartley’s trilogy of the Grimm family (following Henry Fool and Fay Grimm), is now on Cable On Demand and Video On Demand.
Available On Demand on Friday, June 5, same day as theaters, are Wild Horses, a modern western mystery from director / writer / star Robert Duvall, the indie drama Hungry Hearts with Adam Driver. Available via Digital VOD is Freedom (ARC, iTunes).
Available for digital purchase in advance of disc:
The Lazarus Effect (Fox, Digital HD)
Run All Night (Warner, Digital HD)
54: The Director’s Cut (Miramax / Lionsgate, Digital HD)
Classics and Cult:
1776 (Sony, Blu-ray)
Apollo 13: 20th Anniversary Edition (Universal, Blu-ray+DVD)
John Wayne Westerns Film Collection (Warner, Blu-ray)
The Train Robbers (Warner, Blu-ray)
Cahill United States Marshal (Warner, Blu-ray)
Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection (Warner, DVD)
Killer Cop (Raro / Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Pope of Greenwich Village / Desperate Hours – Mickey Rourke Double Feature (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray)
Scarecrows (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)
TV on disc:
Falling Skies: The Complete Fourth Season (Warner, Blu-ray, DVD)
Rizzoli & Isles: The Complete Fifth Season (Warner, DVD)
A Place to Call Home: Season 2 (Acorn, DVD)
Hart to Hart: The Final Season (Shout! Factory, DVD)
The Facts of Life: Season Six (Shout! Factory, DVD)
More releases:
Blindsided (Cinedigm, DVD, Digital HD)
Know How (First Run, DVD, iTunes)
Asmodexia (IFC, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Taking of Tiger Mountain (Well Go, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD)
Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire in the 60s (First Run, DVD)
Killing Jesus (Fox, Blu-ray, DVD)
Free the Nipple (IFC, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital)
Eastern Boys (First Run, DVD)
She Must be Seeing Things (First Run, DVD)
Private Number (ARC, DVD)
Monsters: Dark Continent (Anchor Bay, Blu-ray, DVD)
Eat With Me (Wolfe, DVD)
Asylum (Lionsgate, DVD, Digital HD, VOD)
The Legend of Longwood (Shout! Factory, DVD)
The Dog That Saved Summer (Anchor Bay, DVD)
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD